Little Elizabeth had been fine just days before when she returned home with a neighbor, Goodwife Ayres. The distraught parents, grasping at any Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians in Europe, inspiring the iconic Halloween figure.
Images of witches have appeared in various forms throughout history—from evil, wart-nosed women huddling over a cauldron of boiling liquid to hag-faced, cackling beings In early , several girls in the colonial Massachusetts village of Salem began exhibiting strange symptoms, including twitching, barking, and complaining of being pinched or pricked by invisible pins.
The afflicted girls soon accused several local women of bewitching them, A doctor diagnosed the children as being victims of black magic, and over the next several months, John Proctor sat in the courtroom, watching his pregnant wife, Elizabeth on the stand. Paranoia was sweeping Salem, and Elizabeth was being examined by a local judge on suspicion of witchcraft. Watching his wife withstand the heated examination was bad enough, but suddenly the The trials claimed at least victims the actual toll may be higher , with just Live TV.
In their book Salem Possessed, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum attribute the witch trials to this political, economic, and religious discord in Salem Village:. Boyer and Nissenbaum go on to provide examples, such as the fact that Daniel Andrew and Philip English were accused shortly after they defeated one of the Putnams in an election for Salem Town selectmen.
They also point out that Rebecca Nurse was accused shortly after her husband, Francis, became a member of a village committee that took office in October of that was vehemently against Salem Village minister Samuel Parris, whom the Putnams were supporters of. Charles Upham suggested this as a major cause and Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have provided a brilliant analysis of the Salem community to support that argument.
Indian warfare and the uncertainties related to the arrival of a new charter and new Governor in the two years before the witchhunt also added to the level of social stress. But other towns in frontier Massachusetts that experienced the same socio-economic-political difficulties did not spark a similar witchscare. Several communities suffering from less stress did suffer from contact with Salem as the witchscare virus spread.
This contagion too was a unique aspect of the episode. Baker suggests though that fraud may have been a bigger problem in the witch trials than we realize:. Not surprisingly, there is no agreement on the answer. Most historians acknowledge that some fakery took place at Salem. A close reading of the surviving court records and related documents suggests that more fraud took place than many cared to admit after the trials ended.
In Charles W. Many of the accused also stated that they believed that the afflicted girls were lying or only pretending to be ill. One of the accused, John Alden, later gave an account of his trial during which he described a moment that he believed to reveal fraud:.
The magistrates demanded of them several times, who it was of all the people in the room that hurt them? One of these accusers pointed several times at one Captain Hill, there present, but spake nothing; the same accuser had a man standing at her back to hold her up; he stooped down to her ear, then she cried out.
Aldin, Aldin afflicted her; one of the magistrates asked her if she had ever seen Aldin, she answered no, he asked her how she knew it was Aldin? She said, the man told her so. After the girl made this claim though, a young man stood up in the court and explained that the knife was actually his and that he broke it himself the day before, according Winfield S. Nevins in his book Witchcraft in Salem Village in He produced the remaining part of the knife. It was then apparent that the girl had picked up the point which he threw and put it in the bosom of her dress, whence she drew it to corroborate her statement that some one had stabbed her.
She had deliberately falsified, and used the knife-point to reinforce the falsehood. If she was false in this statement, why not all of it? If one girl falsified, how do we know whom to believe? Bernard Rosenthal also points out in his book, Salem Story, several incidents where the afflicted girls appeared to be lying or faking their symptoms, such as when both Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams claimed George Jacobs was sticking them with pins and then presented pins as evidence or when both girls testified that they were together when they saw the apparition of Mary Easty, which makes it unlikely that the vision was a result of a hallucination or psychological disorder since they both claimed to have seen it at the same time.
Witch Pins, Court House, Salem. In the 20th century, artists and scientists alike continued to be fascinated by the Salem witch trials. Playwright Arthur Miller resurrected the tale with his play The Crucible , using the trials as an allegory for the McCarthyism paranoia in the s.
Additionally, numerous hypotheses have been devised to explain the strange behavior that occurred in Salem in One of the most concrete studies, published in Science in by psychologist Linnda Caporael, blamed the abnormal habits of the accused on the fungus ergot, which can be found in rye, wheat and other cereal grasses.
Toxicologists say that eating ergot-contaminated foods can lead to muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions and hallucinations. Also, the fungus thrives in warm and damp climates—not too unlike the swampy meadows in Salem Village, where rye was the staple grain during the spring and summer months. Also in Salem, the Peabody Essex Museum houses the original court documents, and the town's most-visited attraction, the Salem Witch Museum, attests to the public's enthrallment with the hysteria.
Editor's note - October 27, Thanks to Professor Darin Hayton for pointing out an error in this article. While the exact number of supposed witches killed in Europe isn't known, the best estimate is closer to tens of thousands of victims, not hundreds of thousands. We have fixed the text to address this issue. Ask Smithsonian A Smithsonian magazine special report. A girl is accused during the Salem Witch Trials The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between and Salem Struggling Several centuries ago, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty.
At the same time, the accused would be denied legal representation. Two days before the court convened, a Puritan minister from Boston named Cotton Mather wrote to one of the judges expressing his concern over the admissibility of such evidence.
A large proportion of the case against Bishop also focused on her lifestyle, especially her rumoured promiscuity and un-Puritan ways. Tried and found guilty within the course of a single day, Bishop was hanged a week later on 10 June, the first execution of the trials. In early July, Sarah Good and her four co-accused were tried and found guilty of bewitchment, making that journey to the gallows on that wooden cart a few days later. The indictments then came thick and fast. Another five were executed exactly a month later on 19 August, four of whom were men.
One of them, George Burroughs, protested his innocence as the noose was readied. Three days earlier, the death of another of the accused had occurred. Corey still refused to offer a plea and paid with his life. By now, seven months on from the arrest of Sarah Good, the hysteria was decelerating. Not that the prosecutions were concluded even then.
Fresh witchcraft cases continued to come before the new Superior Court of Judicature that, while again presided over by William Stoughton, was ordered not to accept spectral evidence. Even when the court ordered further executions, Phips wisely issued pardons to those convicted.
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