By late February 1692, local authorities had issued an arrest warrant for the Reverend Parris’ slave, Tituba. In the late 1600s the Salem Village community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (now Danvers, Massachusetts) was fairly small and undergoing a period of turmoil with little political guidance. The relationship became so strained that by the fall of 1691, there was talk amongst some church members of discontinuing Reverend Parris’ salary or even providing him and his family with firewood during the upcoming winter months. She claimed that she was being assisted by other witches who were serving Satan in bringing down the Puritans. Salem Witchcraft Museum, Massachusetts. The events in Salem in 1692 were but one chapter in a long story of witch hunts that began in Europe between 1300 and 1330 and ended in the late 18th century (with the last known execution for witchcraft taking place in Switzerland in 1782). There is little doubt that some individuals did worship the devil and attempt to practice sorcery with harmful intent. In November 1689, Salem Village hired its first ordained minister – the Reverend Samuel Parris – and finally, Salem Village had a church for itself. The lead villain in Schiff’s account (a figure who is absent from Miller’s play) is William Stoughton, chief justice of the court. As the weeks passed, many of the accused proved to be enemies of the Putnams, and Putnam family members and in-laws would end up being the accusers in dozens of cases. This suspect, Rebecca Nurse, is one of the notably innocent suspects who also appears in Miller’s play. There is only a thin layer of reproving sarcasm to draw attention to the impossibility of the more far-fetched events. Engraving by William A. Crafts, 1876 / Public Domain. In some respects, the events that unfold in Schiff’s book are more upsetting than those in The Crucible. Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 20.07 EDT. Jeff Wallenfeldt, manager of Geography and History, has worked as an editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1992. In fact, there were reports of some 700 witches flying around Massachusetts, the youngest aged five and the eldest aged 80. 32496, f. 53). Click here to order a copy for £16, Available for everyone, funded by readers. Further, several more would die jail while awaiting trial. Their initial accusations gave way to trials, hysteria, and a frenzy that resulted in further accusations, often between the differing factions. After some young girls of the village (two of them relatives of Parris) started demonstrating strange behaviours and fits, they were urged to identify the person who had bewitched them. Tituba and The Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The process of identifying witches began with suspicions or rumours. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Schiff’s explanations for the events are convincing. Witch hunts. A Brief History of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, Martin Kelly, M.A., is a history teacher and curriculum developer. Given the subsequent spread of the strange behaviour to other girls and young women in the community and the timing of its display, however, those physiological and psychological explanations are not very convincing. These young girls were observed having fits, which included throwing themselves on the ground, violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming and/or crying almost as if they were possessed by demons inside. Most shockingly, Stoughton is so distressed when the jury finds one of the suspects not guilty that he immediately opens the case again and succeeds in attaining an indictment. Biography of Elizabeth Parris, Accuser in the Salem Witch Trials. (There is uncertainty regarding the relationship between the slaves and their ethnic origins. Significantly, those that they began identifying as other witches were no longer just outsiders and outcasts but rather upstanding members of the community, beginning with Rebecca Nurse, a mature woman of some prominence. Parris had shrewdly negotiated his contract with the congregation, but relatively early in his tenure he sought greater compensation, including ownership of the parsonage, which did not sit well with many members of the congregation. Sarah Good Biography. They screamed, made odd sounds, threw things, contorted their bodies, and complained of biting and pinching sensations. Over the next three months, eighteen more would be hanged. With the accusers were displaying their fits in open court, both Good and Osborn continually denied any guilt whatsoever. Children were accused of witchcraft and ended up confessing to events that were no less convincing than a bedtime story. These courts had jurisdiction over all the witchcraft cases for Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk counties. I n 1692… The witch trials. The haphazard fashion in which the Salem witch trials were conducted contributed to changes in U.S. court procedures, including rights to legal representation and cross-examination of accusers as well as the presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty. This strategy enables Schiff to recreate the confusion of Salem at the time. Salem witch trials - Salem witch trials - The trials: On May 27, 1692, after weeks of informal hearings accompanied by imprisonments, Sir William Phips (also spelled Phipps), the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, interceded and ordered the convening of an official Court of Oyer (“to hear”) and Terminer (“to decide”) in Salem Town. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Salem Witch Trials Timeline. Those events, occurring more than three centuries ago, exert enormous power on our subsequent history. Say “Salem,” say “witch trials,” and you have stepped into the American consciousness. He is the author of "The Everything American Presidents Book" and "Colonial Life: Government. But there are others in Schiff’s account whose stories are even more distressing because they are even more vulnerable. Absurdly, we see John Proctor simultaneously lecturing the town meeting on the dangers of mass hysteria, devilishly sitting on the marshal’s lap and leaping astride the minister’s dog. In 1692, 14 women, five men and two dogs were executed for witchcraft in Salem. Additional warrants were issued two other women that these sick young girls accused of bewitching them, Sarah Good, who was homeless, and Sarah Osborn, who was quite elderly. In May 1693, the Governor pardoned all witches and ordered their release from prison. There were two Salems in the late 17th century: a bustling commerce-oriented port community on Massachusetts Bay known as Salem Town, which would evolve into modern Salem, and, roughly 10 miles (16 km) inland from it, a smaller, poorer farming community of some 500 persons known as Salem Village. Like a domino effect, the witch trials began to take over the local courts. Over the following year many trials were held and many people imprisoned. Rev. They hardly need introduction or summary. In June of 1692, the special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) sat in Salem to hear the cases of witchcraft. Mon 2 Nov 2015 03.00 EST Questions and answers about the Salem witch trials. Abigail Williams of the Salem Witch Trials . The Salem trials occurred late in the sequence, after the abatement of the European witch-hunt fervour, which peaked from the 1580s and ’90s to the 1630s and ’40s. Some three-fourths of those European witch hunts took place in western Germany, the Low Countries, France, northern Italy, and Switzerland. The Crucible Overview. However, no one ever embodied the concept of a “witch” as previously described. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. Additionally, a man was pressed beneath heavy stones until he died. In February, unable to account for their behaviour medically, the local doctor, William Griggs, put the blame on the supernatural. All rights reserved. Previously he wrote rock criticism for Cleveland’s. ", ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. George Burroughs and the Salem Witch Trials. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra , the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. By May 1693 everyone in custody under conviction or suspicion of witchcraft had been pardoned by Phips. Witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts, lithograph by George H. Walker, 1892. Some scholars believe that they were of African heritage, while others think that they may have been of Caribbean Native American heritage.). In the process Salem divided into pro- and anti-Parris factions. The litany of odd behaviour also mirrored that of the children of a Boston family who in 1688 were believed to have been bewitched, a description of which had been provided by Congregational minister Cotton Mather in his book Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689) and which may have been known by the girls in Salem Village. The number of trials and executions varied according to time and place, but it is generally believed that some 110,000 persons in total were tried for witchcraft and between 40,000 to 60,000 were executed. History of Witches Signing the Devil's Book. The hanging took place in Salem Town on what would be called Gallows Hill. Omissions? Lara Feigel. The only possible way to save yourself was to confess. Children were also accused of witchcraft. The Salem trials also went on to become a powerful metaphor for the anticommunist hearings led by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the 1950s, famously in the form of Arthur Miller’s allegorical play The Crucible (1953). At the suggestion of a neighbour, a “witch cake” (made with the urine of the victims) was baked by Tituba to try to ferret out the supernatural perpetrator of the girls’ illness. Mon 2 Nov 2015 03.00 EST . However, Tituba confessed. At first glance, the Salem witch trials of 1692 seem like a putrid, horrifying excrescence straight out of medieval Europe. A major problem with these prosecutions was that the only evidence against most of the ‘witches’ was spectral evidence – which was that the accused’s spirit had come to the witness in a vision or a dream. The Salem witch trials and executions came about as the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all of which unfolded in a vacuum of political authority. This is not the tale of a good man who discovers his own goodness too late, but the story of hundreds of innocent people flailing in the face of a few powerful men. https://www.britannica.com/event/Salem-witch-trials, Salem Witch Trials - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Salem witch trials - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). After spending eight months in miniature manacles and watching her mother (against whom she had testified) executed at the gallows, another five-year-old girl went insane and would require care for the rest of her life. Then several other young girls from Salem Village also displayed similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott, and Mary Warren. These are upsetting tales and Schiff writes movingly as well as wittily; this is a work of riveting storytelling as well as an authoritative history. Parris, whose largely theological studies at Harvard College (now Harvard University) had been interrupted before he could graduate, was in the process of changing careers from business to the ministry.

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