Cases Of The Salem Witch Trials

Many people were accused of being witches in 1692 and hung or pressed to death for their crime, many others were thrown in prison for life. When the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 swept Salem Village and surrounding areas, it was not a happy time. Many of the people living in Salem at the time were Protestants seeking religious freedom. Protestants were very religious people and looked to the Bible for help as God’s words were all true. One of the subjects that the Bible addressed was the Devil and how he possessed people to make them witches. When two young girls asked a West Indian slave woman be the name of Tituba to show them their fortunes, they begun to get more curious about her abilities. Tituba showed them the “magic” she knew from her former tribe, but when the young girls started acting strangely, she was accused for being a witch along side two other local white women. Instead of pleading guilty, Tituba confessed that she was a witch and told the audience of her trial that there were 6 more witches amongst them. This lead to a hectic frenzy to find the remaining witches and it turned neighbors onto each other, husbands on wives and entire families were thrown into prison for their crime. The three main reasons for the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 were a group of young girls looking for attention, neighbor conflicts and gender/status/age.

In the spring of 1692 , a small town named Salem is located in Salem, Massachusetts is where the witch hunt started(Blumberg). The girls who started they were caught dancing in the woods. Then they started to accused people of being witches(Blumberg). One of the first to be accused was Tituba which she confessed to being a witch(Blumberg). When they started the trails, the governor Phipps called for a special court to deal with the witch problem(Blumberg). Most people didn't even knew about them questions surrounding villages about consorting with the devil(Blumberg). The governor’s wife was even accused of being a witch(Blumberg). The first conviction was Bridget Bishop and she was hanged eight days later(Blumberg).

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of trials in which twenty-four people were killed after being accused of practicing witchcraft. These trials were caused by different social climates of the area including the very strong lack of a governor, the split between Salem Village and Salem Town, and the strict puritan lifestyle during the time period. Tituba, the black slave, was a foreigner from Barbados. Her role in society was to take care of Mr. Parris’s family. Tituba’s situation contributed to her role in the witch trials because Mr. Parris promised her freedom if she confessed guilty. Tituba also realized that with her false confession of being a witch also helped keep her life, therefore she accused other people in the village

Salem was first settled in 1626 by Puritans who were seeking a safe place to practice their strict religious beliefs (Source 1). Over time, Salem grew in size, both increasing their boundaries and population over 500%. As Salem spread, rumors began to emerge, and darkness covered Salem. In February of 1692, three woman were accused of witchcraft, Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, by girls who were supposedly affected by witches (Source 4).

On February 29, 1692, under the guidance of magistrates Johnathan Corwin and John Hathorne, Ann, Elizabeth and Abagail accused three women for afflicting them: Tituba a slave girl from the Caribbean who was owned by the Parris’s; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar and Sarah Osborne, an elderly woman. All three women were brought to trial before the local magistrates and interrogated for days at a time, these interrogations began on March 1, 1692. Both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good claimed to be innocent, but Tituba confessed, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him” (Witch Hunt). Tituba states that she has seen images of huge black dogs, red cats and a huge black man who asked her to write her name in his book. She said that she indeed did sign the book along with several other witches who sought out to destroy the Puritans. The Puritans were eager to believe the confession from the slave girl. Tituba’s skin reminded them of the Indians they came to hate so much. She was a dark skinned woman from Barbados, Tituba was also known for speaking her native language and practicing her native religion. Since Tituba confessed, all three women were sent to jail.

The Salem Witch Trials, which occurred in colonial Massachusetts, were an act of mass hysteria leading to the deaths of twenty citizens. In late 1691 a young group of girls, including Betty Parris and Abigail Williams who lived with Revered Samuel Parris, began asking an African American, or possibly Native American, slave named Tituba about witchcraft. They soon began acting abnormally and were diagnosed as being bewitched. In April of 1692, Ann Putman accused the first three people, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osburne, as being witches. The next month, Governor William Phips established the Court of Oyer and Terminer to handle any cases involving witchcraft. Bridget Bishop was the first accused witch to be hung in June 1692, followed by

As a child, Tituba was taken captive and sold into slavery. She was between the ages of 12 and 17 when she became a slave in the Parris house.("Tituba") Tituba married another Indian slave, John, in 1689. She also had a daughter, Violet, that lived in the Parris's house with her. According to law2.unmkc.edu, "Tituba made herself a likely target for witchcraft accusations when shortly after Parris's daughter, Betty, began having strange fits and symptoms, she participated in the preparation of a 'witchcake' (a mixture of rye and Betty's urine, cooked and fed to a dog, in the belief that the dog would then reveal the identity of Betty's afflicter." Samuel Parris, Tituba's employer, was extremely angry when he found out about Tituba making the cake, so he beat her until she confessed to being a witch. Tituba was the first Salem witch to confess and she most likely confessed to avoid punishment. In her confession, Tituba named several other witches, which managed to help her avoid going to trial. During the trials, a Tituba tried to recant her earlier confession. This attempted recantation angered Samuel Parris and he refused to get her out of prison. After spending over a year in jail Tituba was bought by an unknown person. It is also unknown what happened to Tituba after she began her new life.

The first trial in Salem, Massachusetts wasn’t even a real trial. It was more of a preliminary hearing to see if they have enough evidence. It was on March 1, 1692 that Sarah Good, Sarah Osbourne, and Tituba were questioned on whether or not they participated in witchcraft. Sarah Good was a poor beggar while Sara Osbourne, sometimes known as Goody Osbourne, was just social outcast. That essentially made them very easy targets. Tituba was the was the one who accused Sarah Good and Osbourne, which the girls agreed. They were mercifully attacked and questioned, hoping to elicit a confession. Betty and Abigail, along with the other girls, were present during this interrogation. Every time they would denied witchcraft the girls would

The girls of the Parris’ family stood on blaming Tituba for what occurred. Two other women were accused, both of whom were nobodies and held no position in the church whatsoever. Tituba confessed of being a witch and confirmed the role the other two women had, this was one of the reasons the trials escalated so much, she actually admitted there was a coven of witches in Salem and the townspeople went hysterical trying to find the people who were under the devil’s spell. For many, it was easier to pledge to a crime they did not commit to being submitted to excruciating torture with no way of getting out of what the town had already named them as. As soon as a person got accused there was already no speculation of the truth. These people were casted out as dangerous and weird specimens and held no importance in the town. Being accused basically meant he or she was already dead to the

In 1692, in Massachusetts Bay Colony town of Salem Village there were many contributing factors to the execution of fourteen women, five men, and two dogs. The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. It began as a few girls being accused of witchcraft, then slowly and more progressively it was many people that were being accused. The first few started it out of boredom, then it gout out of hand. The process of identifying witches began with suspicions or rumours.

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. These resulted in 20 executions and 2 of them were kids. The first victims were a group of young girls that people said were possessed by the devil, that is the first people that were killed in this era.

Before plunging into the deep ordeal of the Salem Witch Trials, let’s take a look at how it all started. One quiet evening in the rectory, a group of small girls gathered around an old woman. The old woman’s name was Tituba, and she was a slave. She was told to watch the girls and entertain them. She did the latter by weaving

In January 1693, the Superior Court of Judicature, the new supreme court of Massachusetts Bay, would make its first task to deal with the backlog of witchcraft cases. With this came the pardon of those who had been condemned but not executed during the trials. All defendants had their charges dismissed or were acquitted except for three who confessed and received pardons from Governor Phips. In one of the last cases taken up by the court, on May 9, 1693 a grand jury refused to indict Tituba. Reverend Parris refused to pay her jail fees, so the Boston jailer sold her back into slavery (Roach, 2002). When the Salem witch trials had finally ended twenty-five would perish in the crisis. This composed of the nineteen people executed and Giles Cory’s pressing, and at least five people died while in prison. At least 156 people were formally accused, and another sixteen are named in contemporary accounts, meaning at least 172 were accused or informally cried out upon (Burns and Rosenthal, 2008).

The Salem Witch Trials was a hysterical tragedy that began in the Spring of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. The beginning of the Witch Trials came after a group of young women claimed to be possessed by the devil, claiming that witchcraft was the cause of this possession. To rid Salem of this witchcraft, the people of Salem began fasting and praying in hopes to remove the devil’s influence on Salem. Inside their community in Salem, the young women were pressured to identify the witches, influencing the young women to blame several women in the crime of witchcraft in Salem. Once the initial wave of hysteria settled in Salem, special courts were made to preside over the trials of witchcraft in June 1692. Chief Justice William

This occasion fit into the story in light of the fact that it set off the witchcraft madness that tailed it. Numerous individuals abruptly got to be charged after the young ladies got to be connected with Tituba and witchcraft. This occasion gave a decent delineation of life in the late seventeenth century by demonstrating how neurotic individuals were about the vicinity of witchcraft in their general public. They were prepared to accept that individuals were witches suddenly, and as a result of this, they unreasonably blamed and killed hundreds for individuals. This can be seen as the beginning stage of the witchcraft madness in Salem that executed such a large number of