The Salem Witch Trials

An Introduction to Hysteria

The Background• In 1689, Reverend Samuel Parris

became village minister in Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts)

More Background

• He was unpopular from the start.

• By early 1692, his family was nearly starving -- the Village had cut him off financially.

The Evil Hand• January, 1692: Parris’s daughter Betty (age 9)

and niece Abigail (age 12) began acting strangely.

• They had fits, blasphemed (cursed God) heavily, etc.

• Prayers could not stop their behavior.

• The Village doctor said they were suffering “The Evil Hand.”

The First Cry of “Witch”

• A neighbor had Parris’s slave make a witch cake -- made from the girls’ urine & fed to the family dog. This cake, local magic lore said, would cause the girls to confess the names of the witches.

“Witch!”

• They identify: Sarah Good (a homeless woman), Tituba (Parris’s slave), and Sarah Osburn (a socially unpopular woman)

• What do these women have in common?

Clarification of Terms

• To the Puritans, the word witch had a very specific meaning: one who associated with or is in a league with Satan.

Tituba’s Confession

• The slave, Tituba, confessed that Parris had beaten her and made her confess.

• She said that she did consort with the devil, who appeared to her “sometimes like a hog and sometimes like a great dog.”

The Accusations Continue• Accusations of witchcraft spread like

wildfire.

• People began saying that they, too, had been harmed or afflicted by witches.

• Many of the accused were social problematic -- people who went against the normal social order.

A New Turn

• Over the spring of 1692, many highly respected women of Salem Village began to be accused.

The Witch Court

• In May 1692, the Governor of Massachusetts established a special witchcraft Court.

• This court began to hear witchcraft cases.

“Evidence”

• Various forms of evidence were accepted in the court:– confessions & accusations

– “witchmarks”

– reactions of those afflicted to the accused

– spectral evidence -- the Devil could take the form of an innocent person

The Examination of a Witch

Bridget Bishop

• Bridget Bishop is convicted of witchcraft in early June.

• On June 10, 1692, Bishop was hanged to death for witchcraft.

Totals

• By the end of the trials, 19 people were hanged for witchcraft.

• At least 5 more died of poor conditions in prison.

• One man was tortured to death for refusing to stand trial. (He was pressed with stones until dead.)

In summary

• In the words of Martha Carrier, one of the accused:– “It is a shameful thing that you should mind

these folks that are out of their wits.”

• In what ways were the people of Salem Village “out of their wits?”