The Salem Witch Trials

1. The Salem Witch Trials A set of court trials that were part of the witch-hunt in 1692 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. They were full of hysterical accusations, fear, and panic that eventually led to the deaths of twenty-five people. By Bernard Slawomirski 7C3 ID2

2. Where Did Witch-Hunts Come From? In Europe, people hunted for witches long before they did in the colonies. Great European witch-hunts started from about 1450 and continued on till about 1750. These European witch-hunts were on a more massive scale than the one in Salem. Thousands of people became victims and were thought of as being witches. The witch-hunts swept over entire countries. Witches were considered to be people who practiced black magic and caused hurt to others. The officials of the Christian religion (which all of Europe practiced) believed that performing magic was a sin, and they related it to worshiping the devil. Thus witchcraft was a serious crime and all witches were killed, usually by burning at stake. Almost all of the people who were tried and sentenced to death for witchcraft were really innocent. But they were condemned just because they were suspicious and may have confessed when tortured. The Europeans were afraid of witches because of the turmoil caused by the spread of poverty, rebellions, famines, and religious struggles that the continent experienced back then.

3. How Did The Salem Witch Trials Happen? The Salem witch trials began because of four girls: Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Parris, and Elizabeth Hubbard. In the winter of 1692, these girls started to act strangely and to have physical problems. They went into convulsions, twisting themselves into positions that a normal person couldn’t even do. They had bites and pinches on their bodies made by unknown causes. They disrupted the Puritan church services they attended. In addition to all this, they claimed to see visions of spirits and ghosts. The girls’ behavior alarmed their families and the town of Salem. They were examined by a physician, who is believed to be Dr. William Griggs, and diagnosed as certainly being bewitched. Some time after the examination, the girls blamed Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Tituba as the witches who were harming them. The three women were arrested and held in jail. After them, more accused witches started being arrested, since bewitchment supposedly started to spread throughout Salem. As the amount of witches increased, a new court, called the Court of Oyer and Terminer, was formed in order to judge them. It was when this court was formed that the Salem witch trials began.

4. Were The Girls Actually Bewitched? • No, historians do not think that the girls who started the Salem witch trials were actually bewitched. Several other reasons are given as to explain their unusual state of being. • The girls could just have pretended to be bewitched. But when their acting started to be too much, and people were getting executed because of them, they still pretended in order not to punished for deceiving and false accusations. • The girls maybe had psychological problems. They might have been experiencing hysteria, were unhappy about their society, had mental conflicts with members of other generations, or wanted to find a way to show their inner rage and aggravation. • The girls might have gotten ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that grows on grains. The colonists in Salem ate bread made from the rye grain. The rye used in making the bread the girls ate could have been infected. If so, the poisoned bread could have caused some of the girls’ physical problems. This theory is doubtful though, since all the girls didn’t live in the same house and eat at the same table. But it’s a possibility that the girls were poisoned in some mild form and which started their whole “bewitchment”.

5. What Spread The Witch Hunt In Salem? • Mass hysteria caused by the fear that witches had infiltrated the community was most likely the reason that the witch hunt spread so much throughout Salem and the surrounding regions. What started out with three accused witches, went to more than 100. There are two reasons for this. • When the girls were exhibiting their strange behavior, Samuel Parris, the reverend of Salem who also had two of the “bewitched” girls in his household (his niece Abigail Williams and his daughter Elizabeth Parris), started prayer meetings and fasts in order to hopefully cure the girls. Parris also preached a message suggesting that more “witches” than just the three that were accused, were among the town population, pretending to be normal people. Back then ministers were very influential people, so everyone took into account what Parris said. The two actions the reverend made fueled the hysteria by drawing more attention to the afflicted girls and making it seem like bewitchment was on the rampage in Salem. • In addition to this, Salem was having tough times. Massachusetts had experienced some Indian attacks and the col0ny still thought there was a possibility for it to get attacked again. Along with the threat of an Indian attack, the colony’s charter had been taken away by the king, making it a royal colony. This meant that the colony could no longer elect its own governors, the king appointed them. Not only did the king appoint the governor but he also tried to diminish the Puritan’s power in the colony. These two things made the colonial population feel as though they were under attack from outside forces and that they were a failure to God. When witchcraft was discovered in Salem, the town frantically tried to destroy it, hoping that making itself pure before God would save it from downfall. This also caused hysteria.

6. Vulnerability of the First Accused Witches • The first three women to be accused at the Salem witch trials were all helpless, outcast individuals that had no one to defend them from their accusers. In a way, each of the woman stood out from among the rest of the people. • Tituba was a West Indian slave owned by Samuel Parris. When bewitchment broke out in Salem, the aunt of one of the afflicted girls convinced Tituba and her husband John Indian to create magic to counter bewitchment. In her native country Tituba had learned some remedies that supposedly stopped bewitchment. One of those remedies was witchcake. Witchcake was made by taking urine from the afflicted people, mixing it with rye meal, and then baking the whole substance. It was believed that when witchcake was fed to a dog, the dog would then show who the witches afflicting the people were. When Tituba experimented with witchcake in Salem, it obviously didn’t work but made the afflicted girls think of her as a witch. Tituba had already been telling stories about witchcraft from her native country to some of the afflicted girls, before the Salem trials. Her actions made her an ideal person for the girls to blame of witchcraft. • Good was a poor beggar, whose husbands’ were in debt. She lived wherever anybody would take her in, and seemed to gripe when she wasn’t given aid. • Osborne was an old, argumentative women who had married her indentured servant after her first husband died. She hadn’t gone to church for about a year and was fighting with her first set of sons over the property that her first husband left.

7. This is a drawing of Tituba and the four afflicted girls. The West Indian slave is shown teaching the girls some magic and fortune-telling techniques.

8. The Trial Of The First Three Witches The trial of the first three accused witches took place from March 1, 1692 to March 5, 1692. Before the court trial even took place, the judges already thought of the women as witches. As so, the method of interrogation and the evidence used to find the women guilty, was biased. The questions the accused women were asked went something like this: “Are you a witch?”, “Have you seen Satan?”, “If you are not a witch, then how can you explain the contortions these children have at your presence?”. The four girls that were bewitched testified against the women, claiming to have seen their spirits and describing what happened when they bewitched them. Also, the girls cried out upon and mimicked every movement the accused witch made. Neighbors told stories of how they received bad fortune, such as an animal being born with defects, after a visit by one of the women.

9. Other Methods Used To Test For Witchcraft • There were other ways that people were also tested for witchcraft, in addition to the testimonies of witnesses. Although these methods of testing for witchcraft, along with the testimonies, did not really prove a person’s guilt and were often silly, back then people believed in them. If a person could not pass these tests, this was considered evidence of them being a witch. These tests, some of which are listed below, were carried out in the Salem witch trials on the first three accused women and the others following them. • The judges and the jury tried to find some proof that the accused people had supernatural abilities, such as mindreading or superb strength. • The accused people’s bodies were examined for a witch’s tit, an irregular , small, projecting body part through which people thought a witch fed the devil in the appearance of a small creature (such as a frog, bird, or turtle). • Accused witches were forced to stare at the bewitched victims, in order to determine if their gaze would make the victims have convulsions. • When the afflicted people were thrown fits, the witches were made to touch them, to see if their touch could heal the affliction. • If an accused witch cursed a person, the court would try to find out if the curse actually came true. Only the demonic powers that witches had were thought to make a curse come true. • Witches were made to say the Lord’s Prayer. It was a common belief back then that witches could not repeat the prayer perfectly and would make mistakes.

10. Results Of The First Salem Witch Trial • The first Salem witch trial ended badly for both the three women and the judges themselves. It did not end the witchcraft and anxiety in Salem, only deepened it even more. These are its results. • Sarah Good didn’t confess of being a witch, instead she blamed Tituba and Osborne of the crime. Nevertheless, she was found guilty of witchcraft and was sent to prison. After some time, her case was heard again by the Court of Oyer and Terminer (which was not formed until May), and she was sentenced to death. She was hanged on Gallows Hill on July 19. • Sarah Osborne also denied being a witch. She claimed that she was innocent and refused to accuse anyone else of witchcraft. In her defense, she stated that the devil could transform into her image when causing harm to others, unbeknownst to her. She was found guilty by the court and was put in prison as well, where she died on May 10, 1692. • Tituba was the only survivor out of the three women. Although she denied being a witch at first, later on she confessed, She told stories to the court about how the devil appeared to her in the form of animals and a tall white man dressed in black, who came from Boston.

11. (continued) She accused Good and Osborne of being the witches who served him. She said that the devil and the two women forced her to hurt the four afflicted children, saying that she would die if she didn’t obey them. According to Tituba herself, she was sorry for her crimes and would have confessed them sooner if the devil hadn’t threatened her with death. Additionally, Tituba mentioned that there were other witches besides her, Good, Osborne, and the wizard in whose form the devil appeared. Ironically, Tituba was sent to prison like the other women, but wasn’t executed. It is thought that the court spared her life in order for her to testify against other witches. But even though Tituba survived, she still faced the hardships of being held in the poorly managed colonials jails.

12. The Court Of Oyer And Terminer The Court of Oyer and Terminer (which means to “hear and determine”) was formed in May 27, 1692 by the governor of Massachusetts, William Phips. As more and more witches were being accused and arrested by the people, the local courts were having a hard time putting everyone on trial. The prisons began filling up with suspected witches which couldn’t yet be tried. As a result, a separate court had to be made especially for the witchcraft cases. This court had the ability to condemn a witch and order her execution immediately. That was the purpose of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. The special court was made up of six magistrates, who were all part of Phips’s group of advisors. William Stoughton, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, became the Chief Magistrate of the court. Samuel Sewall, also part of Phips’s advisors, became one of the magistrates, and recorded all the trials of the court. The attorney general of Massachusetts, Thomas Newton, became in charge of the prosecution of the witches. In addition to the magistrates, there was a set of twelve jurors who served in the court. The Court of Oyer and Terminer held trials four times during their existence. Their first meeting was on June 2. They found a total of twenty seven people guilty and hanged nineteen of them. Accused witches were hanged on June 10, June 19, August 19, and September 22. The court was ended on October 29.

13. Governor William Phips Magistrate Samuel Sewall Chief Magistrate William Stoughton

14. This shows how during the Salem witch trials, people envisioned witches as having strange powers. The court and people were afraid of witches, and didn’t want to take any chances letting them destroy society.

15. Ways Of Avoiding Execution In Salem The witch cases which followed the first one of Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba were no better than it at all. All of the accused witches that went on trial before either the local court of Salem or the Court of Oyer and Terminer, were condemned. There were three ways witches could avoid execution, though. About fifty-five out of all the accused people confessed that they were indeed witches, even if they were innocent. Once a person confessed their sin, the Puritans thought that it was God’s choice on how they should be punished, so the court let them go free. These people maybe saved their own lives, but their confessions increased the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. Since such a large group of people affirmed they were witches, it just made the other people in Salem even more suspicious of one another. Confessed witches were made to testify against other accused witches. Pregnant women, that were accused of witchcraft, weren’t executed. The Puritans believed that the baby that a woman had didn’t deserve to die because of its mother’s wrongdoing. Condemned witches could attempt to flee from the jail they were held in. Several people actually achieved this, including Philip and Mary English, John Alden, Hezekiah Usher, and Mrs. Nathaniel Cary.

16. Witch Cases Following The First One • As bewitchment spread throughout Salem, more people, including Ann Putnam Sr. (mother of Ann Putnam), Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, became “afflicted”. The women listed above, along with the initial four afflicted girls, were the ones who usually filed accusations against people for witchcraft. They were all related to the Putnam family, an influential wealthy family that lived in Salem. It was the people that opposed these women’s charges, maintaining that they were innocent, that were the ones who got killed. Several of such cases are described below. • Bridget Bishop was the first person to become executed by the Court of Oyer and Terminar. She was an old woman who didn’t pay some of her bills, had bad relations with her neighbors, and whose house was in bad condition. Many witnesses, in addition to the afflicted women, testified against her, stating that they saw ghosts of her and her robbing other people. The witch tests that were carried out on Bishop all went against her. She was hanged on June 10. • Rebecca Nurse was a good, religious woman, unlike Bishop. She was accused of witchcraft, though, for two reasons. Some time ago her mother had been accused of witchcraft, and this made people suspicious of Nurse also. The second reason was that Rebecca’s family, the Topsfield, had a bit of a rivalry with the Putnam, making her a possible target by the influential family. In the end, even as good as Nurse was, the Court of Oyer and Terminer convicted her, and she was hanged on June 19.

17. (continued) • George Burroughs was the former minister of Salem. After having held his position there for a year or so, he had moved out and lived in Maine. The people of Salem disliked him, and had had conflicts with him. So during the Salem witch trials, he was accused of being the one whom the devil lived in, based to Tituba’s story. He was convicted by the court of witchcraft, even though he had held the honorable office of reverend in the community. Just before his execution, Burroughs recited the Lord Prayer perfectly, amazing the crowd who had gathered to watch the spectacle. There would’ve been a chance of him being able to avoid execution through this feat, if it weren’t for Cotton Mather, another minister who supposedly was a professional on witches. Mather persuaded the crowd that Burroughs was still guilty so the hanging carried on. • Giles Corey was a respectable eighty year-old man, whose wife had been hanged during the witch trials. When he was later on suspected of witchcraft, too, he stood mute at his court trial rather than to confess or to plead not guilty. He knew that if made a plea, he would be judged unfairly, so he decided not to stand trial at all. He endured peine forte et dure (hard and severe punishment) for his actions. This is the only torture that we know as a fact, was used in the Salem witch trials. It involved putting a person’s body between two boards and piling rocks upon them. The person then would either make a plea, or eventually get squished by the rocks. In Corey’s case, he was pressed to death by the rocks and still refused to stand trial.

18. End Of The Salem Witch Trials The Salem witch trials had started in the spring, continued on through the summer, and finally came to an end in the fall. By then, the prisons in Massachusetts were almost at their full capacity. The government was afraid that they might overfill. The Court of Oyer and Terminer wasn’t going through all the witch cases fast enough, and the witchcraft hysteria still didn’t stop. Finally, the governor William Phips decided to abolish the special court he created. In its place, he put another court, called the Superior Court of Judicature, to test the witches. This court proved to be the opposite of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Out of the fifty-two cases the new court judged, in forty-nine of them the witches are pardoned, and only in three were the witches condemned because of their confession. In the end, even the three convicted witches are released from their death penalties by Phips himself. Perhaps the governor began to doubt the existence of witches, after his own wife was accused by the afflicted girls, close to the finish of the witch trials. But whatever the reason, the governor along with his new court, stopped the witch trials and the witch hysteria. As time passed by, Salem overcame this dreadful event in its history. Although this event is long gone by now, Massachusetts and the rest of the country still remembers it, honoring those that had bravely died in it, maintaining their innocence, and we hope that we may learn from our past, never to let such an occurrence happen again.

19. References • http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/sal_acct.htm • http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm • http://www.nationalgeographic.com/salem/ • At Issue In History: The Salem Witch Trials Edited by Laura Marvel • http://www.salemwitchtrials.com/timeline.html • http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon-salem/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=salem/texts/bios.xml&style=salem/xsl/dynaxml.xsl&chunk.id=b21&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes • http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SAL_Bgoo.HTM • http://home.texoma.net/~adwignall/ • http://www.witchway.net/times/salemwitchtrials.html