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The History of Salem Witch Trials
by Christie Chu
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Overview
Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay colony was a town founded on strict Puritan values and rules of conduct. Community members regarded those who did not conform to the village's social mores and religious standards with suspicion. Neighbors blamed each other for crop failures and sick children.
Repressive regulations, intolerance, childish rebellion and abject fear of the devil combined in Salem to produce a tragic period of New England's history: the Salem witch trials of 1692.
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The Afflicted Girls
The trials began in January 1692, when the Rev. Samuel Parris' daughter and niece, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, began to have fits similar to epileptic seizures. No medical cause could be found for the episodes, however, and the minister begged his congregation to fast and pray for an end to the girls' affliction, but the convulsions continued.
Soon, several other young women in the town began having similar fits, during which they cried out that witches were tormenting them. When pressured to identify the witches, the "afflicted" girls, as they were called, began naming community members who were then accused of witchcraft.
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The Accused
Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were the first to be named as witches. They were each misfits in the small community: Tituba was a slave in the Rev. Parris' house who continued to practice traditions she brought with her from Barbados, Sarah Good was a beggar and Sarah Osborne did not attend church.
When Tituba confessed to practicing witchcraft, the accusations and witch-hunt hysteria spiraled out of control. The "afflicted" girls, drunk on the power and prestige they had acquired in the community, continued to accuse dozens of Salem inhabitants of witchcraft.
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The Trials
A court was set up to hear the trials of the accused witches. The accused were told that if they confessed, their lives would be spared. If they did not, they would be hanged. Several people, like Tituba, confessed to save their lives.
Spectral evidence, such as testimony from an afflicted girl that the defendant's "shape" hurt her during fits, was allowed at the witch trials. Many men and women were condemned to die because of spectral evidence presented in court. Bridget Bishop, who argued her innocence, was the first person to be found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to death. She was taken to the gallows on June 10, 1692.
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The Executions
Nineteen people were hanged as witches. Giles Corey, a man accused of witchcraft, refused to stand trial and was "pressed" (weights laid on his chest) until he died. Several others accused of witchcraft died while in prison.
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Conclusion
More than 150 people were accused of witchcraft during the trials. The accusations and hearings ended in October 1692 when Massachusetts Bay's governor, Sir William Phips, prohibited the admittance of spectral evidence in court, then disbanded the Salem court. Ten years later, the General Court declared that the trials had been unlawful because most of the condemned were accused only on the basis of spectral evidence.
Ann Putnam, one of the afflicted girls, later publicly apologized for her role in the trials. Though she did not admit that she and the other girls pretended to have seizures and made false accusations, it is generally assumed that the fits were faked to get attention and break the monotony of small-town life.
