The Salem Witch Trials

Salem was already a community where neighbors were less-than-friendly. Add a couple of little girls acting wacky and weird…and well, you get hundreds being accused of witchcraft by their own friends, family, and neighbors.

JANUARY 1692

It all started in the house of the minister, Samuel Parris. His young daughter Betty and niece Abigail start suffering from a strange affliction. They writhed in pain in bed, their screams echoing through the small house. When Samuel brings in a doctor, guess what they’re diagnosed with? A bad case of witchcraft. As a hyper-religious community, the Puritans believed strongly in God…and in the existence of Satan. They were primed to look out for signs of bewitchment. It didn’t take long for the entire community to accept the fact that Betty and Abigail were being attacked by witches. The question was, who were these witches?

“Who is doing this to you?!” Reverend Parris demanded. They pointed the finger at three women who were already somewhat unpopular in the community: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, a black servant working in Samuel Parris’ house. It doesn’t take long for the young girls’ affliction to spread to the girls in the Putnam family. They point the finger at the same women.

MARCH 1692

The accused are dragged in front of magistrates. Tituba denies bewitching the girls at first, but very soon her choices become clear: confess or hang. It’s a terrifying position to be in, especially as a woman of color facing the wrath of powerful white men. Eventually, she breaks and confesses to hurting the children. She claims the devil threatened her, telling her to bewitch the children or be torn to pieces. Whilst Sarah Good was being questioned, so was her four-year-old daughter Dorothy. It didn’t take Dorothy long to tell the magistrate what they wanted to hear, “Yes, my mommy is a witch.” She even admits to witchcraft herself. The accused are sent to Boston in chains to await trial, scared and desperate. Willing to say anything, point the finger at anyone else, to save themselves from the end of a rope.

They can’t go to trial until they get a new charter from England. This takes months, and while Salem waits, the affliction spreads. The women sitting in jail start to remarkably remember other people who are involved in witchcraft. Things in this small, religious community start to spiral out of control.

Accusations were flying, the affliction was spreading, and Sunday sermons were focusing more and more on the evils of witchcraft. The accused continued to tell more wild stories under questioning, pointing more fingers at their neighbors. Marketplace gossip was going crazy. Big shocker here, but 75 percent of those accused are female. As the accusations grew, it wasn’t just outsiders being accused but upstanding members of the community. Nobody was safe. Satan was waging a war on Salem, and he seemed to be winning. Between January and May, there were 81 people accused of witchcraft. It’s a huge crisis.

May 1692

Governor Phipps returned from England with a new charter, allowing Massachusetts to open up its courts and put the accused witches on trial. But with wars with Native Americans to the north and war between the English and the French, he couldn’t stay in Salem to oversee the witch trials. This is something the community had to take care of on its own.

JUNE 1692

The trials take place in the meeting house, where church usually took place. It was stuffy, cramped, noisy, and packed with neighbors eager to watch the events unfold. The accused have to defend themselves—they don’t have lawyers. It was an intimidating and daunting task before them, one that could end with a noose around their necks. The afflicted girls are brought in and the theatrics unfold. They writhe, they whimper, they babble nonsense. They flinch as if the accused are hitting them, screaming, “She’s hurting me!” An accused person could raise and arm to scratch her nose and a girl would fling herself to the ground as if she’d been slapped. It was quite a show for the onlookers, and horrifying for those who stood accused. If they’re judged guilty, they’ll be hanged. The only real option was to confess, guilty or not. Those who confessed were at least seen as remorseful. You’d lose your reputation, but you’d keep your life.

When Tituba took the stand, she not only confessed to being a witch, but she said there was an entire network of witches, working together in the area. She was spared. One person after another confessed and were spared, and the list of accused grew. The court decided to introduce something called spectral evidence, which was evidence that came to the afflicted in visions. It’s essentially impossible to disprove. Most of the community just stood by and let it happen, even when loved ones were accused. Standing up for someone could cast suspicion onto yourself, after all.

Bridget Bishop was the first to be sentenced. She was found guilty and was sentenced to be publicly hanged. She maintained her innocence to the very end. The Salem Witch trials claimed its first victim. The same day, one of the judges resigned from the court. Things are getting serious. On June 29, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Wild were all found guilty and sentenced to death. “A false tongue will never make a guilty person,” Susannah Martin said in her defense. It unfortunately fell on deaf ears. The death toll had gone up to six. “I’m no more a witch than you are a wizard,” Sarah Good said July 16th at the gallows. “God will give you blood to drink!”

Doubts start to brew as people start being executed. Ministers were asked their opinions on the trials and the use of spectral evidence. Could these girls be making things up? They call in Cotton Mather, a senior minister and intellectual considered a bit of an expert on the divine. While the ministers believed the magistrates should proceed with “exquisite caution,” they ultimately approved of the trials, as they believed there were really witches in Salem. On August 19th, five more people were hanged. Are you keeping count? That’s 11 executions. And one of them was even a former minister! George Burrows, Samuel Parris’ predecessor. He gives an impassioned speech at the gallows, condemning what’s taken place in the community. He finishes off by perfectly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This is a significant, mic-drop moment because it was believed that witches were unable to get through the Lord’s Prayer without slipping up. The crowd demands the execution be stopped, and it almost turns into a riot. But who saunters up but Cotton Mather, urging the executions to continue. The crowd accepted his authority. The victims aren’t even given a proper burial.

September 1692

Giles Corey, one of the accused, refused to plead at his trial on the 18th of September. It was an act of defiance. In response, he was subjected to torture. Heavy weights were piled on top of his body, slowly suffocating and crushing him. “What do you wish to say to the court?” his tormentors demanded. All he said in response was, “More weight!” If he was to die anyway, it would be on his terms. His death would mark 16 people murdered. One benefit of his dying without entering a plea was that his estate remained his property and could be passed on to his family. Another was that he kept his dignity. Without a plea or a sentence, his execution was considered unlawful and it shook the entire community. His wife Martha was executed only a few days later. She was the 20th victim.

Witch hunts spread throughout all of New England. Clergymen are starting to take notice, including Increase Mather (father of Cotton Mather). He wrote a letter expressing his doubts about the evidence and accusations, especially spectral evidence to Governor Phipps. This catches his attention, but what really seals the deal is that Phipps’ own wife is accused of witchcraft. He had plenty of motivation to put an end to these witch trials. He dismantled the courts holding the trials, making the remaining accused safe from execution. Those imprisoned were released.

What’s left is a community in tatters. An embittered Samuel Parris is eventually pushed out of the community. Things could never go back to the way it was. Neighbors had accused neighbors, people had died. The heavy weight of guilt hung over the village.

In 1697, the general court ordered a day of prayer and fasting to reflect on the horrible events. The same year, one of the judges published a public apology for his part. Fast-forward to the 20th century, the event is revisited in The Crucible, a 1953 play by Arthur Miller. This led the state of Massachusetts to formally apologize for the trials in 1957. It remains a cautionary tale of the danger of groupthink, paranoia, and scapegoating ꩜