The Salem Witch Trials : A Series Of Events That Killed Innocent People

In January 1692, when a group of juvenile girls began to display bizarre behavior, the tight-knit Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts couldn’t explain the unusual afflictions and came to a conclusion. Witches had invaded Salem. This was the beginning of a period of mass hysteria known as The Salem Witch Trials. Hundreds of people were falsely accused of witchcraft and many paid the ultimate price of death. Nineteen people were hung, one was pressed to death, and as many as thirteen more died in prison. One of the accused Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, a faithful wife and mother, endured her fictitious accusation with honor and integrity.

In January 1692 a group of young girls in Salem Village in Massachusetts became consumed by disturbing fits, seizures, violent actions and really loud screams. A doctor in the village diagnosed the girls as being victims of black magic. A few months later the infamous salem witch trials began in February of 1692 and ended May of 1693 in Massachusetts. More than 200 people were wrongly accused of witchcraft and 20 of them were executed. 19 of the executed where hung and one of them was crushed to death. Some of the judges during the witch trials where Samuel sewall, william stoughton and Jonathan corwin. The most notorious of them was Jonathan corwin he was a very

The Salem Witch Trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts during 1692 when citizens turned on each other and accused their neighbors of witchcraft, the Devil’s magic. The trials, which lasted from June to September, resulted in nineteen men and women being hanged, one man being pressed to death, and many other people dying in jail. Almost as soon as it began, the hysteria that had swept through Puritan Massachusetts ended. There are many opinions as to why the witchcraft trials caused such hysteria in Salem but many conclude that it was triggered by a spoiled food supply, Puritan religious beliefs, the constricted roles of females in Salem society, and the political and social tensions in the colony.

While the people of 1692 thought their actions were justified, The Salem Witch Trials remains one of the most terrible events in American history because people were unjustly accused and mistreated for witchcraft, faith in the church was weakened, and innocent men and women were executed. One eerie day in Salam, Massachusetts two girls were observed exhibiting abnormal behaviors. They were witnessed screaming, contorting their bodies, throwing objects, and even claimed they were getting bite marks from some invisible entity. In the whole town of Salam there was only one verified doctor who could read but not write. He concluded that their symptoms could in no way have resulted from natural causes.

The Salem Witch Trials are one of the best known outbreaks of hysteria and fear in American history. This event began when Betty Parris, who was a daughter of Salem’s church’s minister, and Abigail Williams, who was her cousin, experiences several occasions of odd, violent behavior that they blamed on witchcraft. They accused two white women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, as well as a slave, Tituba, of practicing witchcraft in the village. The three women were arrested, interrogated, and kept in jail (Plouffe 1587). Hysteria and fear quickly spread throughout the village. Eventually, nineteen people were executed for witchcraft, about one hundred people spent time in jail, and about two hundred people were accused (“Salem Witch Trials”). Although the reasons behind this massive burst of terror seem clear and simple, there are actually several aspects of the trials that should be more closely examined. Topics that need to be analyzed include the ties between Puritanism and witchcraft, the difficult and obscure nature of the witchcraft accusations, and the socioeconomic factors within the village that led to the witch trials themselves.

The Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to spread and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.

Puritans in Salem were colonists that had left England to seek religious tolerance. The life of a Puritan was extremely restrained and strict. Reverend Samuel Parris, was appointed minister to the village’s only church in 1689, to later have strong objections lodged against him in 1691. Parris’ response was that the Devil was set on destroying their, to which his job was to bring God back to Salem village. The first to be afflicted was his daughter, Betty, and niece, Abigail. After trying to cure both girls, it was concluded that witchcraft was the cause of their inability to control their own bodies. The majority of villagers who were accused of witchcraft did not belong to the covenant, implying that those who didn’t live the same life as a Puritan were easily the ones behind the witchcraft. During these accusations, mostly women were accused of witchcraft. As mentioned in ___________ , it said that “As Richard Latner has recently shown, there was ‘an environment of divisive religious contention’ in

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft. “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

In early January of 1692, cries of witchery flew through the town of Salem. Allegations surrounded two young girls, Abigail Williams, age 11, and Elizabeth Parris, age 9. These girls would spend their free time listening to their slave, Tituba, reminisce about her life back in Barbados. Soon after the girls started to have convulsive fits and outcries. Once the local doctor deemed it spiritual doing and not physical, the trial’s wheels were set into motion, rolling over many of

In January 1692, when a group of juvenile girls began to display bizarre behavior, the tight-knit Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts couldn’t explain the unusual afflictions and came to a conclusion. Witches had invaded Salem. This was the beginning of a period of mass hysteria known as The Salem Witch Trials. Hundreds of people were falsely accused of witchcraft and many paid the ultimate price of death. Nineteen people were hung, one was pressed to death, and as many as thirteen more died in prison. One of the accused Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, a faithful wife and mother, endured her fictitious accusation with honor and integrity.

What had been just a suspicion turned into a craze, the conflict these people had created would kill many innocent people until a compromise was found. Most women accused as witches were older, ugly, and unkempt (Wilson; 26; Roach 84). If someone was different in any way they could be accused as a witch; age, physical disability, mental disability, looked down on, powerless, outcasts, or criminals (Smith; how). The witch trials would then continue, so special courts were needed. A special court was set up by Sir William Phips to decide the fate of the witches. The two courts were Oyer; to hear, and terminer; to decide the fate of witches (Cellania; Roach 3). People were accused as a witches if they denied their existence (Latson). All the witches had

Mid-January 1642, 9-year-old Betty Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams, with the help[ of the Parris slave Tituba, participated in an act that set off a spark that would start the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria. Wishing to know about their future, Betty and Abigail suspended a raw egg in a glass over a light.The images would act as messages and clues. Although this seems innocent enough after this “reading” they began to display unusual behavior associated with possession symptoms. This led to a full scale investigation and arrests of the slave Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne under the charges of witchcraft. Tituba was the only one to confess, this confession unknowingly saved her from the gallows that Good and Osborne would soon meet. This first event led to hundreds of other trials and hunts that put both men and women into jail or even hung.

Between June 10th and September 22nd, 1692, 20 people were put to death and 141 people were arrested in Salem, Massachusetts. All but one of these people were believed to be witches (Background Essay). Prior to the hearing in Salem witch trials were carried out in several different towns. “In 17th century New England witchcraft was a serious crime (Background Essay).” Two girls aged nine and 11, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, identified a slave name Tituba and two other local women as witches. This led to the accused women being carted off to jail starting the Salem Witch Trials. Without the girls having accused Tituba and two other local women the Salem Witch Trials would have never started. The Salem Witch Trials was the first step

The settlers would live for many years with only one major crime happening in 1638, where a woman by the name of Dorothy Talbye was hanged for murdering her daughter. It was in 1641, when English law made witchcraft a capital crime. Later in 1688, after a disagreement with Goody Glover, a 13 year old girl, Martha Goodwin began exhibiting “signs” of bizarre behavior. The behavior spreads to her brothers and sisters and Goody Glover is arrested for “bewitching” the Goodwin children. The Reverend Cotton Mather tries to persuade Goody Glover to repent her witchcraft, but she is later hanged. Martha Goodwin’s behavior continues and worsens. Later that year, Reverend Mather publishes “Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions.” In November of 1689, Samuel Parris is named the new minister of Salem and he moves from Boston to Salem to preside over the small town. It was in the early months of 1692, when a little girl by the name Elizabeth “Betty” Parris became ill. It was during this time that “witchcraft” began to take

As the Enlightenment began in Europe many of the witch hysterias died down, however the Puritans who had immigrated to America brought many of the old views and feelings to the colonies. In late 1691, a group of young Salem girls began to act strangely (Stewart 14). It began when Elizabeth and Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris, heard stories of magic from a slave named Tituba (Witch hunt 13). These girls began speaking nonsense and refused to pray; they were quickly declared bewitched (Cry Witch 7). When asked, they accused Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne as being witches (Stewart 14; Witch hunt 14).