Witch Mark – A practice that came from England in the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, looking for witch marks, or devil’s marks was also utilized during the Salem witch trials.The common belief was that a “witch teat,” or extra nipple on a witch’s body, permitted a … They used this false belief to accuse several innocent women of witchcraft. Setting the scene. Pressured by Parris to identify their tormentor, Betty and Abigail claimed to have been bewitched by Tituba and two other marginalized members of the community, neither of whom attended church regularly: Sarah Good, an irascible beggar, and Sarah Osborn (also spelled Osborne), an elderly bed-ridden woman who was scorned for her romantic involvement with an indentured servant. 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). In early 1692, during the depths of winter in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a group of young girls in the village of Salem began acting strangely. READ MORE: 5 Notable Women Hanged in the Salem Witch Trials. A fishing and farming settlement, Salem is originally named 'Naumkeag', meaning “fishing place,” by the Native Americans who lived there. 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. 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. After a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed bewitchment, other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. There is little doubt that some individuals did worship the devil and attempt to practice sorcery with harmful intent. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. 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. These trials were conducted on people that were either “seen” conducting strange activity or exhibiting strange behavior. In May 1692, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, ordered the establishment of a special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) on witchcraft cases for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties. The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Like Tituba, several accused “witches” confessed and named still others, and the trials soon began to overwhelm the local justice system. It started when two girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, began having hysterical fits. Presided over by Chief Justice William Stoughton, the court was made up of magistrates and jurors. Score 1 User: What happened after a few girls were accused of being witches? Something wicked was brewing in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Furthermore, this change of court and the throwing out of evidence ended the hysteria known as the Salem Witch Trials. In the winter of 1692, trouble came to the village of Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their initial accusations gave way to trials, hysteria, and a frenzy that resulted in further accusations, often between the differing factions. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft and 20 were killed during the hysteria. What Were the Salem Witch Trials? By the end of the Salem witch trials, 19 people had been hanged and 5 others had died in custody. During the Salem Witch Trials twenty innocent people were put to death. They said they were being pinched and poked by something invisible. A witch and her familiars, illustration from a discourse on witchcraft, 1621; in the British Library (MS. Add. Some scholars believe that they were of African heritage, while others think that they may have been of Caribbean Native American heritage.). They screamed, made odd sounds, threw things, contorted their bodies, and complained of biting and pinching sensations. The village itself had a noticeable social divide that was exacerbated by a rivalry between its two leading families—the well-heeled Porters, who had strong connections with Salem Town’s wealthy merchants, and the Putnams, who sought greater autonomy for the village and were the standard-bearers for the less-prosperous farm families. Salem Witch Trials from William A. Crafts Did the people really believe in witches? 32496, f. 53). Updates? This image is a fanciful representation of the Salem witch trials. The trials were known as the Salem Witch Trials. In January 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts became consumed by disturbing “fits” accompanied by seizures, violent contortions and bloodcurdling screams. The start up began in 1692 and lasted through 1693, not a very long time, but caused massive devastation in the Boston Bay Colony and throughout. (The hallucinogen LSD is a derivative of ergot.) The distraught parents, grasping at any ...read more, Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians in Europe, inspiring the iconic Halloween figure. It was believed that they employed demons to accomplish magical deeds, that they changed from human to animal form or from one human form to another, that animals acted as their “familiar spirits,” and that they rode through the air at night to secret meetings and orgies. Children were also accused of witchcraft. Other girls and young women began experiencing fits, among them Ann Putnam, Jr.; her mother; her cousin, Mary Walcott; and the Putnams’s servant, Mercy Lewis. Witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts, lithograph by George H. Walker, 1892. Corrections? The family home, the Gedney House, is still standing in Salem. These trials are often cited as an event of mass hysteria. The Salem Witch Trials took place in Salem in the Province of Massachusetts Bay between 1692-1693. The magistrates then had not only a confession but also what they accepted as evidence of the presence of more witches in the community, and hysteria mounted. Did you know? The witchcraft idea spread throughout Europe from the 1300s to the 1600s, and thousands of people who were accused of witchcraft were executed in Europe. Context & Origins of the Salem Witch Trials, Salem Witch Trials: Conclusion and Legacy, 5 Notable Women Hanged in the Salem Witch Trials. In January 1692, 9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams (the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village) began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. Fits and contortions. They spoke nonsense and seemed to be choking. On March 1 two magistrates from Salem Town, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, went to the village to conduct a public inquiry. The Salem Witch Trials began in January of 1692, after a group of girls began behaving strangely and a local doctor ruled that they were bewitched. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba, along with two other women–the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the poor, elderly Sarah Osborn–whom the girls accused of bewitching them. Watching his wife withstand the heated examination was bad enough, but suddenly the ...read more, “I was taken very ill again all over & felt a great pricking in ye soles of my feet, and after a while I saw apparently the shape of Margret Scott, who, as I was sitting in a chair by ye fire pulled me with ye chair, down backward to ye ground, and tormented and pinched me very ...read more, 1. Conant serves as the settlement’s governor. The Salem Witch Trials stands as one of the greatest WTF moments in all of American history. The villagers called these people who were accused of showing abnormal behavior, witches. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti-Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Suddenly, two girls got a strange illness. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a dark time in American history. Valais: France/Switzerland, 1428 – 1447 Often considered to be the first in Europe, the Valais trials began in the French speaking southern region of Valais and spread to German-speaking Wallis. By May 1693 everyone in custody under conviction or suspicion of witchcraft had been pardoned by Phips. Historians believe the accused witches were victims of mob mentality, mass hysteria and scapegoating. Accusations followed, often escalating to convictions and executions. As hysteria spread through the community and beyond into the rest of Massachusetts, a number of others were accused, including Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse–both regarded as upstanding members of church and community–and the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good. Probably stimulated by voodoo tales told to them by Tituba, Parris’s daughter Betty (age 9), his niece Abigail Williams (age 11), and their friend Ann Putnam, Jr. (about age 12), began indulging in fortune-telling. As part of the infamous “swimming test,” accused witches were dragged to the nearest body of water, stripped to their undergarments, bound and then tossed in to to see if they would sink or float. Historians and sociologists have examined this most complex episode in our history so that we may understand the issues of that era … In June of 1692, the special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to determine) sat in Salem to review these witchcraft cases. In Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, numerous innocent people were convicted on charges of making pacts with devils and demons and executed by hanging. Weegy: The Salem Witch trial began after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711. 1628: John Endicott and a group of settlers from the New England Company arrive with a patent from England that gives them legal rights to Naumkeag. More than two hundred people were accused. By 1693 the trials were dwindling in intensity and all those accused had been pardoned and released from prison. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's … They spoke nonsense and seemed to be choking. In an effort to explain by scientific means the strange afflictions suffered by those "bewitched" Salem residents in 1692, a study published in Science magazine in 1976 cited the fungus ergot (found in rye, wheat and other cereals), which toxicologists say can cause symptoms such as delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms. O wing to its brief but intense history as a place where people were accused of and punished for witchcraft, Salem, Mass.—a.k.a. With the Bill of Rights in place, interpretations of the First Amendment consistently ruled that slander and defamation were not protected by the Constitution. As the trials continued, accusations extended beyond Salem Village to surrounding communities. Nige Tassell explains how hysteria in the village of Salem, Massachusets, gave … 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. 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). Witch trouble! He brought to Salem Village his wife, their three children, a niece, and two slaves who were originally from Barbados—John Indian, a man, and Tituba, a woman.

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