In total, 19 men and women were hanged as witches in Salem Village in 1692. One other man, Giles Corey, was killed after being pressed underneath heavy stones when he was charged with witchcraft but refused to participate in a trial. In addition, hundreds of others were accused and locked in jail cells for months on end (four people died while waiting for trials), which created absolute pandemonium in the town.
The events that led up to the trials can be traced back to Samuel Parris' decision to come to preach in the town church. Invited by John Putnam, a village elder, Parris moved to the Salem Village with his wife, Elizabeth, daughter, Betty, niece, Abigail Williams, and slave, Tituba. In February of 1692, Betty became sick. While sources indicate her symptoms could have easily been caused by anything from stress to epilepsy, a number of factors led the community to suspect witchcraft. Two of those factors were Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, which had recently been published, and a suggestion made by William Griggs, the doctor who examined Betty.
Soon, Betty's friends—Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott—all started to show the same types of symptoms that Betty was suffering from. Many began to suspect that Parris' slave, Tituba, was involved, since it was known that she would tell the girls stories about witchcraft.
As the days went by, more and more girls began to join the afflicted group. Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren all came down with the same illness. The group of girls would assume strange frozen poses, contort their bodies, throw themselves on the ground, and do other peculiar things. Their actions fed the frenzy of fear and suspicion taking root in the town.
Soon after the group of "possessed" girls began to grow, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams began pointing fingers at people in the community—and Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn were accused of witchcraft. The three women were examined in the town meeting house on March 1. The town magistrates questioned the women in a way that suggested they believed them to be guilty. During the questioning, the afflicted girls would fall into their strange, contorted poses, and members of the community would share stories about eerie experiences they had had involving the three accused women.
However, the real witch-hunt began after Tituba confessed to being a witch, claiming that Satan made her do it. She told an elaborate story about signing her name in Satan's book and agreeing to do his work. She said she had tried to go to Parris for help but that Satan had made that impossible.
Soon, dozens more were accused, and the girls' acts—or "symptoms," as they would have the community believe—became more and more elaborate. The accused slowly began to confess to practicing witchcraft, presumably figuring that confessing and blaming their actions on the devil would get them out alive. When Governor Phips returned from a trip to England to find the jails bursting at the seams, he created the "Court of Oyer and Terminer" especially for the witch trials.
William Stoughton served as Chief Justice. He, along with five other judges, oversaw the proceedings. During the trials, ministers provided advice and counsel to the judges, since most of them had never dealt legally with the issue of witchcraft before. The judges admitted evidence into the hearings (such as gossip and hearsay) that would not be allowed in a courtroom today. Furthermore, the accused women were not allowed to have legal counsel, witnesses testifying on their behalf, or any form of appeal, while plaintiffs were allowed to speak on their own behalf, present evidence supporting their arguments, and question the accused witches.
The first person to be tried was a woman named Bridget Bishop. During her trial, Bishop was accused of turning into a cat in front of a witness, blamed for numerous instances of bad luck, and accused of torturing one villager while he was in his bed at night. Also, two women who had confessed to being witches stated that Bishop was a witch, too. Bishop was convicted and hanged on June 10, 1692. During her trial, Nathaniel Saltonstall, a judge, withdrew from the court out of horror at the way the trial was being conducted.
One example illustrating the crookedness associated with the proceedings is the trial of Rebecca Nurse. Nurse, who was a well-respected woman in the community, was presented with a "not guilty" verdict at the end of her hearing. However, Chief Justice Stoughton would have none of it and commanded the jury to reconvene and spend some time thinking about a certain statement Nurse had made that Stoughton felt was a confession of guilt. The second time around, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, and Nurse was hanged on July 19.
As the town's zeal for the witch trials slowly faded, as zeal usually does, people in the community began to voice concerns that perhaps not everyone who had been accused was guilty. Increase Mather published a tract called "Cases of Conscience," in which he stated that "it were better that 10 suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned." After Governor Phips read this and other literature on the subject, he made the decision to require actual evidence and ban second-hand stories and gossip. After this decision was put into effect, 28 of the remaining 33 accused witches were found "not guilty."
Soon after the events, Samuel Sewall, a judge, publicly apologized to the community, and many of the jurors admitted to making wrong decisions. Thomas Green replaced Parris as the town reverend and slowly began rebuilding the community.
The Salem Witch Trials exemplify what happens when emotions such as fear and anger drive the decision-making process. And revisiting this historic tale reminds us to be grateful for a justice system built on reason, truth, and concrete evidence.
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