Salem Witch Trials (Historical Point of View) 

The Salem witch trials (also known as the Salem witch hunt and the Salem witchcraft episode) resulted in a number of convictions and executions for witchcraft in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. It was the result of a period of factional infighting and Puritan witch hysteria which led to the deaths of 19 people (mostly female but also male) and the imprisonment of scores more. Witch trials were held in Europe several hundred years before those in Salem.

Background

In the town of Salem in 1692, eight young townswomen fell victim to “fits, outbreaks of obscene babbling, and wild partying in the local woodland.” [1] The girls claimed they were bewitched by other members of the community and possessed by the devil. The initial accusers were Betty Parris and her cousin, Abigail Williams.

The first three accused were Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. Good, orphaned as a teenager at the death of her mother (a French innkeeper), was the town beggar, noted for her strange “muttering”. Osborne was a bedridden elderly woman who had gotten on the wrong side of the Puritans when she cheated her first husband’s children out of their inheritance, giving it to her new husband. Tituba was the Carib Native American slave of Samuel Parris (a preacher in Salem Village); though she is very often referred to as black in modern historical and fictional interpretations of the trials, there is no evidence that she was anything but Native American.

These women were charged with witchcraft on March 1, 1692 and put in prison. Other accusations followed: Dorcas Good (four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good), Rebecca Nurse (a bedridden grandmother of saintly reputation), Abigail Hobbs, Deliverance Hobbs, Martha Corey, and Elizabeth Proctor and John Proctor. As the number of accusations grew, the jail populations of Salem, Boston, and surrounding areas swelled, and a new problem surfaced: Without a legitimate form of government, there was no way to try these women. None of them were tried until late May, when Governor Sir William Phips arrived and instituted a Court of Oyer and Terminer (to “hear and determine”). Phips appointed William Stoughton, who had theological training but no legal training, as the chief justice of this court. Stoughton notoriously allowed spectral evidence, repeatedly met with accusers in private, and refused to allow defense council for the accused. By then, Sarah Osborne had died in jail without a trial, as had Sarah Good’s newborn baby girl, and many others were ill; there were perhaps 80 people in jail awaiting trial. One unusual aspect of Salem’s jail cells is that prisoners had to pay room and board for their stay. The wealthy could afford to rent the larger cells while the poor were often confined in those with only enough room to stand.

Trial

Over the summer, the Court heard cases approximately once per month, at mid-month. Of the accused, only one was released when the girls recanted their identification of him. All cases that were heard ended with the accused being condemned to death for witchcraft; no one was found innocent. There was no way to escape the stigma of being labeled ‘witch.’ Only those who pleaded guilty to witchcraft and supplied other names to the court were spared execution. Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Faulkner were given respite “for the belly,” because they were pregnant. Though convicted, they would not be hanged until they had given birth. A series of four executions over the summer saw nineteen people hanged, including a respected minister, a former constable who refused to arrest more accused witches, and at least three people of some wealth. Six of the nineteen were men; most of the rest were impoverished women beyond childbearing age.

Only one execution was not by hanging. Giles Corey, an 80-year-old farmer from the southeast end of Salem, refused to enter a plea. The law provided for the application of a form of torture called peine fort et dure, in which the victim was slowly crushed by piling stones on him; after two days of peine fort et dure, Corey died without entering a plea. Though his refusal to plead is often explained as a way of preventing his possessions from being confiscated by the state, this is not true; the possessions of convicted witches were often confiscated, and possessions of persons accused but not convicted were confiscated before a trial, as in the case of Corey’s neighbor John Proctor and the wealthy English’s of Salem Town. Some historians hypothesize that his personal character, a stubborn and lawsuit-prone old man who knew he was going to be convicted regardless, led to his recalcitrance.

The land suffered along with the people. Crops went untended, cattle uncared for. Often, accused people who had not yet been arrested gathered up their most portable belongings and fled to New York or beyond. Sawmills, their owners missing or distracted, their workers arrested or gawking at the spectacles at the jails or in the meetinghouses, sat idle. Commerce ground to, if not a halt, at least a snail’s pace. And there was news of further Indian unrest to the west.

Closure

The witch trials ended in January of 1693, although people already jailed for witchcraft were not all released until the next spring. The royal appointed governor of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips, disturbed when his wife was accused of witchcraft, ended them by appealing to the Boston-area clergy headed by Increase Mather. In October 3, 1692, Increase Mather published “Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits.” In it, Increase Mather stated “It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that the Innocent Person should be Condemned.”1 This incident was so profound that it helped end the influence of the Puritan faith on the governing of New England.

Ergot theory

It is not widely believed any longer that the girls were actually possessed by the devil nor that their neighbors had anything to do with their symptoms. So what really happened? Some experts believe the accusers were motivated by jealousy or spite and their behavior was an act. Some believe they were afflicted by hysteria, a form of mental illness. In 1976, a psychologist named Linnda Caporeal theorized that the girls’ symptoms (convulsive jerking, stupor, delirium, and hallucinations) precisely mirrored those of poisoning by ergot [2]. Ergot is a poisonous fungus that often grows on cereal grains, especially rye and wheat, which were commonly grown around Salem. Ingestion of infected grains can lead, in severe cases, to ergotism [3]. The people of Salem did not have any other explanation for the symptoms of ergot poisoning except to call it witchcraft. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) is a hallucinogenic drug that is derived from ergot today.

There are two types of “ergotism” (the name for the collection of symptoms a human or animal has when it has ingested too much of this fungus): gangrenous and convulsive. As the name implies, gangrenous ergotism is characterized by dry gangrene of the extremities followed by the falling away of the affected portions of the body. The condition occurred in epidemic proportions in the Middle Ages and was known by a number of names, including ignis sacer, the holy fire. There were no reports of gangrene in Salem. Convulsive ergotism is characterized by crawling sensations in the skin, tingling in the fingers, vertigo, tinnitus aurium, headaches, disturbances in sensation, hallucination, painful muscular contractions leading to epileptiform convulsions, vomiting, and diarrhea. The involuntary muscular fibers such as the myocardium and gastric and intestinal muscular coat are stimulated. There are mental disturbances such as mania, melancholia, psychosis, and delirium. All of these symptoms are alluded to in the Salem witchcraft records. Ergot poisoning has also been linked to the witch hunts which occurred throughout Europe in the 1600s in locations where rye was grown [4]. Witch hunts that cannot be linked to ergot also occurred in different seasons and in areas where rye does not grow; the root cause of those hunts remains to be explained.

Salem Today

Today the Salem Witchcraft Trials have become the basis of a money-making tourist industry in Salem. Witch shops are seen all over the community. Museums promise glimpses of the supernatural. Gift shops sell everything from Witch City shirts to Buddhism in a can. Tourists are treated to informational exhibits and programs.

Executed

  • Bridget Bishop
  • George Burroughs
  • Martha Carrier
  • Giles Corey
  • Martha Corey
  • Ann Pudeator
  • Wilmot Redd
  • Margaret Scott
  • Samuel Wardwell
  • Sarah Wildes
  • John Willard
  • George Jacobs, Sr.
  • Susannah Martin
  • Rebecca Nurse
  • Alice Parker

Note

1 Increase Mather is frequently misquoted as saying it is better that “a hundred guilty witches go free”: what he actually wrote, however, was “Ten Suspected Witches”.