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?”
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