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An Account
of Events in Salem
By Douglas Linder
"O Christian Martyr Who for Truth could die when all about thee
owned the hideous lie! The world, redeemed from superstition's sway,
is breathing freer for thy sake today."
- Words
written by John Greenleaf Whittier and inscribed on a monument marking
the grave of Rebecca Nurse, one of the condemned "witches"
of Salem.
From June through September of 1692, nineteen men and women, all having
been convicted of witchcraft, were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren
slope near Salem Village, for hanging. Another man of over eighty
years was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit
to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations
of witchcraft. Dozens languished in jail for months without trials.
Then, almost as soon
as it had begun, the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts
ended. Why did this travesty of justice occur? Why did it occur
in Salem? Nothing about this tragedy was inevitable. Only an unfortunate
combination of economic conditions, congregational strife, teenage
boredom, and personal jealousies can account for the spiraling accusations,
trials, and executions that occurred in the spring and summer of
1692.
In 1688, John Putnam,
one of the most influential elders of Salem Village, invited Samuel
Parris, formerly a marginally successful planter and merchant in
Barbados, to preach in the Village church. A year later, after negotiations
over salary, inflation adjustments, and free firewood, Parris accepted
the job as Village minister.
He moved
to Salem Village with his wife Elizabeth, his six-year-old daughter
Betty, niece Abagail Williams, and slave Tituba, a West African native
acquired by Parris in Barbados. The Salem that became the new home
of Parris was in the midst of change: a mercantile elite was beginning
to develop, prominent people were becoming less willing to assume
positions as town leaders, two clans (the Putnams and the Porters)
were competing for control of the village and its pulpit, and a debate
was raging over how independent Salem Village, tied more to the interior
agricultural regions, should be from Salem, a center of sea trade.
Sometime during February
of the exceptionally cold winter of 1692, young Betty Parris became
strangely ill. She dashed about, dove under furniture, contorted
in pain, and complained of fever. The cause of her symptoms may
have been some combination of stress, asthma, guilt, child abuse,
epilepsy, and delusional psychosis, but there were other theories.
Cotton Mather had
recently published a popular book, "Memorable Providences,"
describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston,
and Betty's behavior in some ways mirrored that of the afflicted
person described in Mather's widely read and discussed book.
It was easy to believe
in 1692 in Salem, with an Indian war raging and the village in political
turmoil, that the devil was close at hand. Talk of witchcraft increased
when other playmates of Betty, including eleven-year-old Ann Putnam,
seventeen-year-old Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, began to exhibit
similar unusual behavior.
When his own nostrums
failed to effect a cure, William Griggs, a doctor called to examine
the girls, suggested that the girls' problems might have a supernatural
origin. The widespread belief that witches targeted children made
the doctor's diagnosis seem increasing likely. A neighbor, Mary
Sibley, proposed a form of counter magic. She told Tituba to bake
a rye cake with the urine of the afflicted victim and feed the cake
to a dog. (dogs were believed to be used by witches as agents to
carry out their devilish commands.)
By this time, suspicion
had already begun to focus on Tituba, who had been known to tell
the girls tales of omens, voodoo, and witchcraft from her native
folklore. Her participation in the urine cake episode made her an
even more obvious scapegoat for the inexplicable.
Meanwhile, the number
of girls afflicted continued to grow, rising to seven with the addition
of Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren.
According to historian Peter Hoffer, the girls "turned themselves
from a circle of friends into a gang of juvenile delinquents."
(Many people of the period complained that young people lacked the
piety and sense of purpose of the founders' generation.) The girls
contorted into grotesque poses, fell down into frozen postures,
and complained of biting and pinching sensations.
In a
village where everyone believed that the devil was real, close at
hand, and acted in the real world, the suspected affliction of the
girls became an obsession. Sometime after February 25, when Tituba
baked the witch cake, and February 29, when arrest warrants were issued
against Tituba and two other women, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams
named their afflicters and the witch-hunt began. The consistency of
the two girls' accusations suggests strongly that the girls worked
out their stories together.
Soon Ann Putnam and
Mercy Lewis were also reporting seeing "witches flying through
the winter mist."
The prominent Putnam
family supported the girls' accusations, putting considerable impetus
behind the prosecutions. The first three to be accused of witchcraft
were Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn. Tituba was an obvious
choice. Good was a beggar and social misfit who lived wherever someone
would house her and Osborn was old, quarrelsome, and had not attended
church for over a year.
The Putnams brought
their complaint against the three women to county magistrates Jonathan
Corwin and John Hathorne, who scheduled examinations for the suspected
witches for March 1, 1692 in Ingersoll's tavern. When hundreds showed
up, the examinations were moved to the meeting house. At the examinations,
the girls described attacks by the specters of the three women,
and fell into their by then perfected pattern of contortions when
in the presence of one of the suspects.
Other villagers came
forward to offer stories of cheese and butter mysteriously gone
bad or animals born with deformities after visits by one of the
suspects. The magistrates, in the common practice of the time, asked
the same questions of each suspect over and over: Were they witches?
Had the seen the Devil? How, if they are not witches, did they explain
the contortions seemingly caused by their presence? The style and
form of the questions indicates that the magistrates thought the
women guilty.
The matter might
have ended with admonishments were it not for Tituba. After first
adamantly denying any guilt, afraid perhaps of being made a scapegoat,
Tituba claimed that she was approached by a tall man from Boston-obviously
the Devil-who sometimes appeared as a dog or a hog and who asked
her to sign in his book and to do his work. Yes, Tituba declared,
she was a witch, and moreover she and four other witches, including
Good and Osborn, had flown through the air on their poles. She had
tried to run to Reverend Parris for counsel, she said, but the Devil
had blocked her path.
Tituba's confession
succeeded in transforming her from a possible scapegoat to a central
figure in the expanding prosecutions. Her confession also served
to silence most skeptics, and Parris and other local ministers began
witch hunting with zeal. Soon, according to their own reports, the
spectral forms of other women began attacking the afflicted girls.
Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce, and Mary were accused
of witchcraft. During a March 20 church service, Ann Putnam suddenly
shouted, "Look where Goodwife Cloyce sits on the beam suckling
her yellow bird between her fingers!"
Soon Ann's mother,
Ann Putnam, Sr., would join the accusers. Dorcas Good, four-year-old
daughter of Sarah Good, became the first child to be accused of
witchcraft when three of the girls complained that they were bitten
by the specter of Dorcas. (The four-year-old was arrested, kept
in jail for eight months, watched her mother get carried off to
the gallows, and would "cry her heart out, and go insane.")
The girl's accusations and their ever more polished performances,
including the new act of being struck dumb, played to large and
believing audiences.
Stuck in jail with
the damning testimony of the afflicted girls widely accepted, suspects
began to see confession as a way to avoid the gallows. Deliverance
Hobbs became the second witch to confess, admitting to pinching
three of the girls at the Devil's command and flying on a pole to
attend a witches' Sabbath in an open field.
Jails approached
capacity and the colony "teetered on the brink of chaos"
when Governor Phips returned from England. Fast action, he decided,
was required. Phips created a new court, the "court of oyer
and terminer," to hear the witchcraft cases. Five judges, including
three close friends of Cotton Mather, were appointed to the court.
Chief Justice, and
most influential member of the court, was a gung-ho witch hunter
named William Stoughton. Mather urged Stoughton and the other judges
to credit confessions and admit "spectral evidence" (testimony
by afflicted persons that they had been visited by a suspect's specter).
Ministers were looked to for guidance by the judges, who were generally
without legal training, on matters pertaining to witchcraft. Mather's
advice was heeded.
The judges also decided
to allow the so-called "touching test" (defendants were
asked to touch afflicted persons to see if their touch, as was generally
assumed of the touch of witches, would stop their contortions) and
examination of the bodies of accused for evidence of "witches'
marks" (moles or the like upon which a witch's familiar might
suck. Evidence that would be excluded from modern courtrooms-hearsay,
gossip, stories, unsupported assertions, surmises-was also generally
admitted.
Many protections
that modern defendants take for granted were lacking in Salem: accused
witches had no legal counsel, could not have witnesses testify under
oath on their behalf, and had no formal avenues of appeal. Defendants
could, however, speak for themselves, produce evidence, and cross-examine
their accusers. The degree to which defendants in Salem were able
to take advantage of their modest protections varied considerably,
depending on their own acuteness and their influence in the community.
The first accused
witch to be brought to trial was Bridget Bishop. Almost sixty years
old, owner of a house of ill repute, critical of her neighbors,
and reluctant to pay her bills, Bishop was a likely candidate for
an accusation of witchcraft The fact that Thomas Newton, special
prosecutor, selected Bishop for his first prosecution suggests that
he believed the stronger case could be made against her than any
of the other suspect witches.
At Bishop's trial
on June 2, 1692, a field hand testified that he saw Bishop's image
stealing eggs and then saw her transform herself into a cat. Deliverance
Hobbs, by then clearly insane, and Mary Warren, both confessed witches,
testified that Bishop was one of them. A villager named Samuel Grey
told the court that Bishop visited his bed at night and tormented
him. A jury of matrons assigned to examine Bishop's body reported
that they found an "excrescence of flesh." Several of
the afflicted girls testified that Bishop's specter afflicted them.
Numerous other villagers
described why they thought Bishop was responsible for various bits
of bad luck that had befallen them. There was even testimony that
while being transported under guard past the Salem meeting house,
she looked at the building and caused a part of it to fall to the
ground. Bishop's jury returned a verdict of guilty. One of the judges,
Nathaniel Saltonstall, aghast at the conduct of the trial, resigned
from the court. Chief Justice Stoughton signed Bishop's death warrant,
and on June 10, 1692, Bishop was carted to Gallows Hill and hanged.
As the summer of
1692 warmed, the pace of trials picked up. Not all defendants were
as disreputable as Bridget Bishop. Rebecca Nurse was a pious, respected
woman whose specter, according to Ann Putnam, Jr. and Abagail Williams,
attacked them in mid March of 1692 Ann Putnam, Sr. added her complaint
that Nurse demanded that she sign the Devil's book, then pinched
her. Nurse was one of three Towne sisters, all identified as witches,
who were members of a Topsfield family that had a long-standing
quarrel with the Putnam family.
Apart from the evidence
of Putnam family members, the major piece of evidence against Nurse
appeared to be testimony indicating that soon after Nurse lectured
Benjamin Houlton for allowing his pig to root in her garden, Houlton
died. The Nurse jury returned a verdict of not guilty, much to the
displeasure of Chief Justice Stoughton, who told the jury to go
back and consider again a statement of Nurse's that might be considered
an admission of guilt (but more likely an indication of confusion
about the question, as Nurse was old and nearly deaf).
The jury reconvened,
this time coming back with a verdict of guilty. On July 19, 1692,
Nurse rode with four other convicted witches to Gallows Hill. Persons
who scoffed at accusations of witchcraft risked becoming targets
of accusations themselves. One man who was openly critical of the
trials paid for his skepticism with his life. John Proctor, a central
figure in Arthur Miller's fictionalized account of the Salem witch-hunt,
the Crucible, was an opinionated tavern owner who openly denounced
the witch-hunt.
Testifying against
Proctor were Ann Putnam, Abagail Williams, Indian John (a slave
of Samuel Parris who worked in a competing tavern), and eighteen-year-old
Elizabeth Booth, who testified that ghosts had come to her and accused
Proctor of serial murder. Proctor fought back, accusing confessed
witches of lying, complaining of torture, and demanding that his
trial be moved to Boston. The efforts proved futile. Proctor was
hanged. His wife Elizabeth, who was also convicted of witchcraft,
was spared execution because of her pregnancy (reprieved "for
the belly").
No execution caused
more unease in Salem than that of the village's ex-minister, George
Burroughs. Burroughs, who was living in Maine in 1692, was identified
by several of his accusers as the ringleader of the witches. Mercy
Lewis, the most imaginative and forceful of the young accusers,
offered unusually vivid testimony against Burroughs. Lewis told
the court that Burroughs flew her to the top of a mountain and,
pointing toward the surrounding land, promised her all the kingdoms
if only she would sign in his book (a story very similar to that
found in Matthew 4:8). Lewis said, "I would not writ if he
had throwed me down on one hundred pitchforks."
At an execution,
a defendant in the Puritan colonies was expected to confess, and
thus to save his soul. When Burroughs on Gallows Hill continued
to insist on his innocence and then recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly
(something witches were thought incapable of doing), the crowd reportedly
was "greatly moved." The agitation of the crowd caused
Cotton Mather to intervene and remind the crowd that Burroughs had
had his day in court and lost.
One victim of the
Salem witch-hunt was not hanged, but rather pressed under heavy
stones for two days until his death. Such was the fate of octogenarian
Giles Corey who, after spending five months in chains in a Salem
jail with his also accused wife, had nothing but contempt for the
proceedings. Seeing the futility of a trial and hoping that by avoiding
a conviction his farm, that would otherwise go the state, might
go to his two sons-in-law, Corey refused to stand for trial. The
penalty for such a refusal was peine et fort, or pressing.
Three days after
Corey's death, on September 22, 1692, eight more convicted witches,
including Giles' wife Martha, were hanged. They were the last victims
of the witch-hunt. By early autumn of 1692, Salem's lust for blood
was ebbing. Doubts were developing as to how so many respectable
people could be guilty. Reverend John Hale said, " It cannot
be imagined that in a place of so much knowledge, so many in so
small compass of land should abominably leap into the Devil's lap
at once."
The educated elite
of the colony began efforts to end the witch-hunting hysteria that
had enveloped Salem. Increase Mather, the father of Cotton, published
what has been called "America's first tract on evidence,"
a work entitled Cases of Conscience, which argued that it "was
better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent
person should be condemned." Increase Mather urged the court
to exclude spectral evidence. Samuel Willard, a highly regarded
Boston minister, circulated Some Miscellany Observations, which
suggested that the Devil might create the specter of an innocent
person.
Mather's and Willard's
works were given to Governor Phips. The writings most likely influenced
the decision of Phips to order the court to exclude spectral evidence
and touching tests and to require proof of guilt by clear and convincing
evidence. With spectral evidence not admitted, twenty-eight of the
last thirty-three witchcraft trials ended in acquittals. The three
convicted witches were later pardoned.
In May of 1693, Phips
released from prison all remaining accused or convicted witches.
By the time the witch-hunt ended, nineteen convicted witches were
executed at least four accused witches had died in prison, and one
man, Giles Corey, had been pressed to death. About one to two hundred
other persons were arrested and imprisoned on witchcraft charges.
Two dogs were executed as suspected accomplices of witches.
A period of atonement
began in the colony. Samuel Sewall, one of the judges, issued a
public confession of guilt and an apology. Several jurors came forward
to say that they were "sadly deluded and mistaken" in
their judgments.
Reverend Samuel Parris
conceded errors of judgment, but mostly shifted blame to others.
Parris was replaced as minister of Salem village by Thomas Green,
who devoted his career to putting his torn congregation back together.
Governor Phips blamed the entire affair on William Stroughton. Stroughton,
clearly more to blame than anyone for the tragic episode, refused
to apologize or explain himself. He criticized Phips for interfering
just when he was about to "clear the land" of witches.
Stoughton became the next governor of Massachusetts.
The
witches disappeared, but witch-hunting in America did not. Each generation
must learn the lessons of history or risk repeating its mistakes.
Salem should warn us to think hard about how to best safeguard and
improve our system of justice.
The
Salem Witch Trials: Why 1692?
Although numerous
witchcraft accusations had occurred in New England prior to 1692,
several factors made this particular outbreak so profound. As Indians
attacked randomly not only along the frontier but also deep within
the colonial landscape, most colonists feared for their own lives.
In addition to deadly
cold winters, a smallpox epidemic had been circulating for over
a decade. The superstitions of the people led them to believe that
their God had abandoned them. The incipient luck of the colonies
began to turn against them: in 1684 Great Britain revoked its charter
of Massachusetts, merchants spread the disease of worldliness into
the communities, and neighboring colonies, with their tolerances
for evil, started to choke Massachusetts.
Once
the hysteria began, people who didn't believe in witchcraft understood
that they could not protest their feelings, as John Proctor had found
out before. By merely laughing at the accusations, the non-believers
themselves came under criticism by the community.
Victims of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692
Hanged on June 10
Bridget Bishop, Salem
Hanged on July 19
Sarah Good, Salem
Village
Rebecca Nurse, Salem Village
Susannah Martin, Amesbury
Elizabeth How, Ipswich
Sarah Wilds, Topsfield
Hanged on August
19
George Burroughs,
Wells, Maine
John Proctor, Salem Village
John Willard, Salem Village
George Jacobs, Sr., Salem Town
Martha Carrier, Andover
September 19
Giles Corey, Salem
Farms, pressed to death
Hanged on September
22
Martha Corey, Salem
Farms
Mary Eastey, Topsfield
Alice Parker, Salem Town
Ann Pudeater, Salem Town
Margaret Scott, Rowley
Wilmott Reed, Marblehead
Samuel Wardwell, Andover
Mary Parker, Andover
Other accused witches
that were not hanged, but died in prison:
Sarah Osborne, Salem
Village
Roger Toothaker, Billerica
Lyndia Dustin, Reading
Ann Foster, Andover
Thirteen others may
have also died in prison, but sources conflict on the exact number.
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