Salem Witch Trials

1876 illustration of the courtroom; the central figure is usually identified as Mary Walcott

The Salem witch trials (also known as the Salem witch hunt and the Salem witchcraft episode) began in 1692 as a result of the bizarre and inexplicable behavior of two young girls, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village. In looking for a reason to explain the behavior, the doctor concluded that the girls were bewitched. This diagnosis resulted in several convictions and executions of innocent people who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Fourteen women and six men were killed, and between 175-200 were imprisoned during the trials. The convictions and executions reached not only Salem Village (Danvers), but Salem Town and other surounding areas in Massachusettes. The modern town of salem is dedicted to remembering the witch hysteria of 1692, as well as educating the population on the practices of modern withcraft.

Background

To understand how something as unfathomable as the Salem witch trials could have occured, it is neccessary to evaluate the beliefs and customs practice by the Puritan people at the time. The belief system of Salem in 1692 centered around Heaven and Hell, with a strong belief in the power of the devil. The devil, the Puritans believed, was a fallen angel and a being capable of tempting and influencing the weak and fallible. The lessons taught in church, at school, and around the home consisted of the imcumbent need to be good and to avoid the evils the devil could invoke. If anything unfavorable happened to a person or a family, it was considered evidence of the wrath of God. Things such as loss of crops, livestock, and even children were a direct result of God's punishment for some evil act or another. Far-reaching events such as earthquakes, flooding, and droughts were revelations from God that He was displeased with the town, or with something a person in the town was doing. It became difficult, obviously, for a righteous person to understand why bad things were happening, thus the belief in witches and the power of witchcraft became the explanation. If a child got sick, it was a very common occurance to blame a spell cast by a witch as the reason. Often the town would narrow the blame onto one person and either brand the culprit and cast them from the town, imprison them, or worse, execute them.

Other beliefs about gender also played a key role in the condeming of so many innocent women and children. The Puritan community held strong to the fact that a woman was not as important as a man and should be ruled and governed by a man. They also believed the the nature of a woman was different than that of her male counterpart; a woman was more likely to enlist in the Devil's service, and women were naturally more lustful than men. Thus, an unmarried woman, living alone, without the guidance of a man, became the main target for the persecution. It was believed that if a woman didn't have a man in her life to tell her what to do, then she had most likely turned to the devil for instruction.

Finally, the rumors and gossip spread in such small communities made it virtually impossible for anyone to keep secrets, and opinions about certain people were soon turned into facts. Children represented the lowest part of society, and female children the very lowest. There were very few toys or games ever allowed, and any type of play was seen as troublesome and was discouraged. However, while boys were able to go hunting, fishing, exploring the forest, and often became apprentices, girls were allowed to only spin yarn, cook, sew, weave, and to generally be servants.

Origin of trials

Map of Salem Village, 1692

In the village of Salem in 1692, Betty Parris, age 9, and her cousin Abigail Williams, age 11, the daughter and niece (respectively) of Reverend Samuel Parris, fell victim to what was recorded as fits "beyond the power of Epileptic Fits or natural disease to effect," according to John Hale, minister in Beverly, in his book A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (Boston, 1702). The girls screamed, threw things about the room, uttered strange sounds, crawled under furniture, and contorted themselves into peculiar positions. They complained of being pricked with pins or cut with knives, and when Reverend Samuel Parris would preach, the girls would cover their ears, as if dreading to hear the sermons. When a doctor, historically assumed to be William Griggs, could not explain what was happening to them, he said that the girls were bewitched. Others in the village began to exhibit the same symptoms.

Doctor Griggs may have been influenced in his diagnosis by Cotton Mather's work Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689). In the book he describes the strange behaviour exhibited by the four children of a Boston mason, John Goodwin, and attributed it to witchcraft practiced upon them by an Irish washerwoman, Mary Glover. Mather, a minister of Boston's North Church (not to be confused with the Episcopalian Old North Church of Paul Revere fame), was a prolific publisher of pamphlets and a firm believer in witchcraft. Three of the five judges appointed to the Court of Oyer and Terminer were friends of his and members of his congregation. He wrote to one of the judges, John Richards, supporting the prosecutions, but cautioning him of the dangers of relying on spectral evidence and advising the court on how to proceed. Mather was present at the execution of Reverend George Burroughs for witchcraft and intervened after the condemned man had successfully recited the Lord's Prayer (supposedly a sign of innocence) to remind the crowd that the man had been convicted before a jury. Mather had access to the official records of the Salem trials, upon which his account of the affair, Wonders of the Invisible World, was based.

Traditionally, the affected girls are said to have been "entertained" by Parris' slave Tituba, during the winter of 1692, although there is no contemporary evidence to support the story (Reis 56). Tituba's race is also often cited as Carib-Indian or that she was of African descent, but contemporary sources describe her only as an "Indian." Research by Elaine Breslaw has suggested that she may well have been captured in what is now Venezuela and brought to Barbados, and so may have been an Arawak Indian, but other slightly later descriptions of her, by Gov. Hutchinson writing his history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 18th century, describe her as a "Spanish Indian." In that day, that typically meant an Indian from the Carolinas/Georgia/Florida. Contrary to the folklore, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the assertion that Tituba told any of the girls any stories about using magic. The one supportable association with any kind of magical practices is that John Indian, another slave in the Parris household and assumed to have been Tituba's husband, was told a recipe for discovering the identity of a witch, a British recipe given to him by a neighbor of the parsonage.

The first three people accused were arrested for allegedly afflicting Ann Putnam, Jr., age 12: Sarah Good, a beggar, Sarah Osburne, a bedridden old woman, and Tituba (Boyer 3). Tituba, as a slave of a different ethnicity than the Puritans, was an obvious target for accusations. Sarah Good, a poverty-worn, easily-angered woman, often muttered under her breath as she walked away from failed attempts of obtaining food and/or shelter from neighbors, and people interpreted her muttering as curses. Sarah Osburne, an irritable old woman, was already marked for marrying her indentured servant. All of these women fit the description of the "usual suspects," since nobody would likely stand up for them; neither Osburne nor Good attended church, which made them especially vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft.

These women were brought before the local magistrates on the complaint of witchcraft on March 1, 1692, and held in prison (Boyer 3). Other accusations followed in March: Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Dorothy Good, and Rachel Clinton. Martha Corey, ever an outspoken woman, was skeptical about the credence of the girls from the start and scoffed at the trials, unfortunately drawing attention to herself. Dorothy Good, the daughter of Sarah Good, was only 4 years old, and easily manipulated by the magistrates to say things that were taken as a confession, implicating her own mother. In order to be with her mother after the accusations, she claimed to herself be a witch, thereby she was arrested. The charges against Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey greatly disturbed the community. Martha Corey was a full covenanted member of the Church in Salem Village, as was Rebecca Nurse in the Church in Salem Town. If the upstanding people could be accused of witchcraft and seen as possible witches, that meant that anybody could be a witch, but also that Church membership was no protection from accusation.

Throughout April, many more were arrested: Sarah Cloyce (Nurse's sister), Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor and her husband John Proctor, Giles Corey (Martha's husband, and a covenanted church member in Salem Town), Abigail Hobbs, Bridget Bishop, Mary Warren (a servant in the Proctor household and sometime accuser herself), Deliverance Hobbs (step-mother of Abigail Hobbs), Sarah Wilds, William Hobbs (husband of Deliverance and father of Abigail), Nehemiah Abbott Jr., Mary Esty (sister of Cloyce and Nurse), Edward Bishop Jr. and his wife Sarah Bishop, and Mary English, and finally on April 30, Rev. George Burroughs, Lydia Dustin, Susannah Martin, Dorcas Hoar, Sarah Morey and Philip English (Mary's husband). Nehemiah Abbott Jr. was released because the accusers agreed he was not the person whose spectre had afflicted them. Mary Esty was released for a few days after her initial arrest because the accusers failed to confirm that it was she who had afflicted them, and then she was rearrested when the accusers reconsidered.

The main evidence used against the accused was "spectral evidence," or the testimony of the afflicted who claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the person who was allegedly afflicting them. The theological dispute that ensued about the use of this evidence centered on whether a person had to give their permission to the Devil for their "shape" to be used to afflict. Opponents to the trial claimed that the Devil was able to use anyone's "shape" to afflict people, but The Court contended that the Devil could not use a person's shape without their permission, therefore when the afflicted claimed to "see" the apparition of a specific person, that was accepted as evidence that the accused had been complicit with the Devil. Increase Mather and other ministers sent a letter to the Court, "The Return of Several Ministers Consulted," urging the magistrates not to convict on spectral evidence alone. A copy of this letter was printed in Increase Mather's ["Cases of Conscience"] published in 1693. See facsimiles of [page 73] and [page 74] of this rare book.

As the number of accusations grew, the jail populations of Salem, Ipswich, Charlestown, Cambridge, and Boston swelled and a new problem surfaced: the new governor and charter for the colony were only a few months from arriving. Some have postulated that without this, there was no legitimate form of government to try capital cases (Boyer 6), but this was not true. In the years between charters, according to the Records of the Court of Assistants, a group of thirteen pirates led by Thomas Johnson, a mariner of Boston, were tried and hanged on January 27, 1690 for acts of piracy and murder in August and October of 1689. Elizabeth Emerson of Haverhill, Massachusetts was tried and hanged for double-infanticide in May 1691. The fact that none of the witchcraft cases were tried until late May, after Governor Sir William Phips arrived and instituted a Court of Oyer and Terminer (to "hear and determine"), was likely in deference to his imminent arrival. Phips appointed William Stoughton, who had theological training but no legal training, as the Chief Justice of this court (Boyer 7). By then, Sarah Osborne had died of natural causes in jail on May 10 without a trial (Boyer 3), as had Sarah Good's infant.

In May, warrants were issued for 36 more people: Sarah Dustin (daughter of Lydia Dustin), Ann Sears, Bethiah Carter Sr. and her daughter Bethiah Carter Jr., George Jacobs Sr. and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs, John Willard, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Abigail Soames, George Jacobs Jr. (son of George Jacobs Sr. and father of Margaret Jacobs), Daniel Andrew, Rebecca Jacobs (wife of George Jacobs Jr. and sister of Daniel Andrew), Sarah Buckley and her daughter Mary Witheridge, Elizabeth Colson, Elizabeth Hart, Thomas Farrar Sr., Roger Toothaker, Sarah Proctor (daughter of John and Elilzabeth Proctor), Sarah Bassett (sister-in-law of Elizabeth Proctor), Susannah Roots, Mary DeRich (another sister-in-law of Elizabeth Proctor), Sarah Pease, Elizabeth Cary, Martha Carrier, Elizabeth Fosdick, Wilmot Redd, Sarah Rice, Elizabeth How, John Alden (son of John Alden and Pricilla Mullins of Plymouth Colony), William Proctor (son of John and Elizabeth Proctor), John Flood, Mary Toothaker (wife of Roger Toothaker and sister of Martha Carrier) and her daughter Margaret Toothaker, and Arthur Abbott. John Willard and Elizabeth Colson managed to evade capture for a while but were finally taken into custody, whereas Daniel Andrew and George Jacobs Jr. were never apprehended. When the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened at the end of May, this brought the total number of people in custody for the court to handle to 62.

Legal Procedures

After someone concluded that a loss, illness or death had been caused by witchcraft, the accuser would enter a complaint against the alleged witch with the local magistrates.

If the complaint was deemed credible, the magistrates would have the person arrested and brought in for a public examination, essentially an interrogation, when the magistrates pressed the accused to confess.

If the magistrates at this local level were satisfied that the complaint was well-founded, the prisoner was handed over to be dealt with by a superior court. In 1692, the magistrates opted to wait for the arrival of the new charter and governor, who would establish a Court of Oyer and Terminer to handle these cases.

The next step, at the superior court level, was to summon witnesses before a grand jury. A person could be indicted on charges of afflicting with witchcraft, or for making an unlawful covenant with the Devil. Once indicted, the defendant went to trial, sometimes on the same day, as in the case of the first person indicted and tried on June 2, Bridget Bishop, who was executed on June 10, 1692.

There were four execution dates, with one person executed on June 10, 1692, five executed on July 19, 1692, another five executed on August 19, 1692 (Susannah Martin, John Willard, George Burroughs, George Jacobs Sr., and John Proctor), and eight on September 22, 1692 (Mary Esty, Martha Cory, Ann Pudeator, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Alice Parker, Wilmot Redd, and Margaret Scott). Several others, including Elizabeth (Bassett) Proctor and Abigail Faulkner were convicted but given temporary reprieves because they were pregnant (Chronology). Though convicted, they would not be hanged until they had given birth (Chronology). Five other women were convicted in 1692, but sentence was never carried out: Ann Foster (who later died in prison), her daughter Mary Lacy Sr., Abigail Hobbs, Dorcas Hoar, and Mary Bradbury.

Giles Corey, an 80-year-old farmer from the southeast end of Salem called Salem Farms, refused to enter a plea when he came to trial in September. The law provided for the application of a form of torture called peine fort et dure, in which the victim was slowly crushed by piling stones on a board that was laid upon the victim's body. After two days of peine fort et dure, Corey died without entering a plea (Boyer 8). Though his refusal to plead is often explained as a way of preventing his possessions from being confiscated by the state, this is not true; the possessions of convicted witches were often confiscated, and the possessions of persons accused but not convicted were confiscated before a trial, as in the case of Corey's neighbor John Proctor and the wealthy English's of Salem Town. Some historians hypothesize that Giles Corey's personal character, a stubborn and lawsuit-prone old man who knew he was going to be convicted regardless, led to his recalcitrance (Boyer 8).

Sadly, not even in death were the accused witches granted peace or respect. As convicted witches, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey had been excommunicated from their churches and none were given proper burial. As soon as the bodies of the accused people were cut down from the trees, they were thrown into a shallow grave and the crowd would then leave. Oral history claims that the families of the dead reclaimed their bodies after dark and buried them in unmarked graves on family property. The record books of the time do not mention the deaths of any of those executed.

Philip and Mary English escaped to New York. They returned after the trials to find their property pillaged. Philip English eventually recovered 260 pounds out of a claim of 1183 pounds.

Closure

The Reverend Francis Dane led the opposition and supported the accused. He petitioned the Governor and General Court, condemning the trials due to unfounded accusations. The last witch trials took place in May of 1693, although people already found not guilty of witchcraft were not released until they paid their jailers' fees. On October 3, 1692, Increase Mather published "Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits." In it, Increase Mather stated "It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned." After another trial was conducted, all those in jail were set free in May of 1693 (this amnesty is what saved Elizabeth Proctor).

Many descendants of the people who were wrongfully convicted still sought closure. Numerous petitions were filed between 1692 and 1711, demanding monetary restitution to those wrongly imprisoned.

The Massachusetts House of Representatives finally passed a bill disallowing spectral evidence. However, they only gave reversal of attainder for those who had filed petitions. This applied to only three people, who had been convicted but not executed: Abigail Faulkner Sr., Elizabeth Proctor, and Sarah Wardwell.

In 1704, another petition was filed, requesting a more equitable settlement for those wrongly accused. In 1709, the General Court received a request to take action on this proposal. In May 1709, 22 people who had been convicted of witchcraft, or whose parents had been convicted of witchcraft, presented the government with a petition in which they demanded both a reversal of attainder and compensation for financial losses.

In 1706, Ann Putnam, one of the most active accusers, was the only girl to offer a written apology. She claimed that she had not acted out of malice, but was being deluded by Satan into denouncing innocent people, and mentioned Rebecca Nurse in particular. In 1712 the pastor who had cast Rebecca out of the church formally cancelled the excommunication.

On October 17, 1711, the General Court passed a bill reversing the judgment against the 22 people listed in the 1709 petition. There were still an additional 7 people who had been convicted, but had not signed the petition. There was no reversal of attainder for them.

On December 17, 1711, monetary compensation was finally awarded to the 22 people in the 1709 petition. 578 pounds 12 shillings were authorized to be divided among the survivors and relatives of those accused. Most of the accounts were settled within a year. 150 pounds were awarded to the Proctor family for John and Elizabeth. The Proctor family received much more money from the Massachusetts General Court than most families of accused witches.

By 1957, not all the condemned had been exonerated. Descendants of those falsely accused demanded the General Court clear the names of their family members. An act was passed pronouncing the innocence of those accused — however, it only listed Ann Pudeator by name, and the others as "certain other persons", still failing to include all names of those convicted.

In 1992, The Danvers Tercentenial Committee persuaded the Massachusetts House of Representatives to issue a resolution honoring those who had died. After much convincing and hard work by Salem school teacher Paula Keene, Representatives J. Michael Ruane and Paul Tirone and a few others, the names of all those not previously listed were added to this resolution. When it was finally signed on October 31, 2001 by Governor Jane Swift, more than 300 years later, all were finally proclaimed innocent.

Possible Explanations of the "Possessed"

The idea that the girls were truly afflicted by the Devil is no longer accepted as a reasoning behind the odd behavior. There are several ideas as to the cause of the hysteria, but none have been proven true.

• A few academics believe that the behavior of the girls was all an act that was motivated by jealousy or spite.
• The hysteria was just a form of some type of mental illness.
• In 1976, graduate student Linnda Caporael published an article in Science magazine, making the claim that the hallucinations of the afflicted girls could possibly have been the result of ingesting rye bread that had been made with moldy grain. "Ergot of Rye" is a plant disease that is caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea. It is the ergot stage of the fungus that contains a similar chemical compounds to the illegal drug, LSD.
• In the bookA Fever in Salem, author Laurie Winn Carlson believes that the girls who claimed to be bewitched, were, in fact, suffereing from encephalitis lethargica, a disease whose symptoms match some of what was reported in Salem and could have been spread by birds and other animals (Aronson).
• It has also been suggested that the girls could have had Huntington's Chorea, carriers of which have been traced to be among the colonists that settled in that area [1].
• It should be noted that no serious historian believes these medical explanations because of the sporadic placement of the victims across the village with no other family members suffering from the illness

Salem Today

"With one of the highest concentrations of historic sites, museums, cultural activities, fine dining and shopping in Massachusetts, Salem is America's Bewitching Seaport with a little history in every step" (Destination Salem). The modern-day Salem seems to exist for the sole purpose of making money. A tourist can visit Salem and see many historical museums, dramatic reinactments of the trials, and even modern witches trying to explain the basis of Wicca. There is a wax museum for a quick historic look at the trial, the well-preserved cemetery, and a part of the real dungeon the accused were housed in. It is easy to connect to Boston by train and bus.

Further reading

• Aronson, Marc. "Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials." Atheneum: New York. 2003.
• Boyer, Paul & Nissenbaum, Stephen. "Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft." Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. 1974.
• Boyer, Paul & Nissenbaum, Stephen, eds.. "Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England" Northeastern University Press: Boston, MA. 1972.
• Breslaw, Elaine G.. "Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies." NYU: New York. 1996.
• Brown, David C.. "A Guide to the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692." David C. Brown: Washington Crossing, PA. 1984.
• Godbeer, Richard. "The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England." Camridge University Press: New York. 1992.
• Hansen, Chadwick. "Witchcraft at Salem." Brazillier: New York. 1969.
• Hoffer, Peter Charles. "The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History." University of Kansas: Lawrence, KS. 1997.
• Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: Vintage, 1987. [This work provides essential background on other witchcraft accusations in 17th century New England.]
• Miller, Arthur. "The Crucible — a play which implicitly compares McCarthyism to a witch-hunt".
• Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Random House, 2002.
• Reis, Elizabeth. "Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England." Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY. 1997.
• Roach, Marilynne K. The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-To-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege. Cooper Square Press, 2002.
• Robinson, Enders A.. "Salem Witchcraft and Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables." Heritage Books: Bowie, MD. 1992.
• Rosenthal, Bernard. "Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692." Cambridge University Press: New York. 1993.
• Sologuk, Sally. "Diseases Can Bewitch Durum Millers". Milling Journal. Second quarter 2005.
• Starkey, Marion L. The Devil in Massachusetts. Alfred A. Knopf: 1949.
• Trask, Richard B.. "`The Devil hath been raised`: A Documentary History of the Salem Village Witchcraft Outbreak of March 1692." Revised edition. Yeoman Press: Danvers, MA. 1997.
• Upham, Charles W.. "Salem Witchcraft." Reprint from the 1867 edition, in two volumes. Dover Publications: Mineola, NY. 2000.
• Wilson, Lori Lee. "The Salem Witch Trials." How History Is Invented series. Lerner: Minneapolis. 1997.
• Woolf, Alex. "Investigating History Mysteries". Heinemann Library: 2004.

See also

• The Crucible
• A Break with Charity
• Jury Nullification
• McCarthyism
• Red Scare
• Spectral evidence
• Supernatural
• Torsåker witch trials
• Pendle witches

External links

• Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692
• A documentary archive including original court papers on the trials, maps, interactive maps, biographies, and internal and external links to more resources.
• University of Virginia: Salem Witch Trials (includes former "Massachusetts Historical Society" link)
• "Diseases Can Bewitch Durum Millers" article about ergot-infected grains, ergotism and how it is prevented today.
• PBS Secrets of the Dead: "The Witches Curse" (concerning the Salem trials and ergot)
• Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II, by Charles Upham, 1867, fron Project Gutenberg
• Salem Witch Trials:The World Behind the Hysteria
• SalemWitchTrials.com essays, biographies of the accused and afflicted

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