Salem witch trial - men vs. woman accused

Parsons, too, was acquitted. Eventually, continuing witchcraft rumors forced the Parsons family to resettle in Boston. Prior to Salem, most witchcraft trials in New England resulted in acquittal. Disborough remained imprisoned for almost a year until she was acquitted. Soon other girls reported similar feelings.

Some threw fits, crying out that they saw terrifying specters. Some have suggested that the girls were faking their symptoms. His play depicts Abigail — who was, in real life, a girl of 11 — as a manipulative year-old carrying on an affair with a married man. To get his wife out of the way, Abigail makes witchcraft accusations.

Nothing in the historical record suggests an affair. Other Salem stories blame Tituba, an enslaved woman in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris , for teaching witchcraft to the local girls.

They were also about a justice system that escalated local grievances to capital offenses and targeted a subjugated minority. Women were both the victims and the accused in this terrible American history, casualties of a society created and controlled by powerful men. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. He was hanged anyway. Others refused to participate in trials or accusations—and paid the price. When he asked a local woman for medical help, she told him that his ailment was likely due to witchcraft.

Wilkins recalled that Willard had looked at him strangely and decided he had caused the ailment. The Putnams, the same family that harbored a grudge against Minister Burroughs, accused Willard of having killed their baby years before, when she had died at just a few months of age. Willard was apparently her occasional babysitter. These longstanding rivalries all led to accusations of witchcraft. The trial Of Giles Corey. This stubborn refusal to stand trial—Corey did not wish to forfeit his estate to the government if convicted—horrified Salem Village; instead of waiting for him to enter a plea they decided to press him between two stones until he died.

For days, he was tortured by the heavy weights. She gave her last testimony before the court in early June , and no record exists of her life after the trials. After her parents died suddenly in , Ann Jr. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth was an orphan who worked as a maid in the household of her aunt, Rachel Griggs, and her husband, William Griggs, the doctor who first attended the afflicted girls in the Parris household.

Elizabeth joined Betty, Abigail and Ann Jr. Known for her tendency to go into trances in the courtroom, she claimed frequently to be tormented by the specters of the accused. Compared with the Parrises and Putnams, Hubbard had little family or economic support, and faced an uncertain future as an orphaned domestic servant.

Historian Carol Karlsen has argued that Hubbard and some of the other accusers in similar circumstances may have wanted to "focus the communities' concern on their difficulties. A witchcraft trial where Mary Walcott is shown as a witness. Perhaps predictably, Mary Walcott joined the core group of accusers by March , and went on to see numerous visions and suffer apparent afflictions at the hands of accused witches. Other times, she sat in the courtroom and knitted calmly while other afflicted girls had fits around her.

Sarah Wardwell Brought to trial on January 10, and found guilty. Elizabeth Johnson Jr Brought to trial in January, and found guilty.

Dorcas Hoar Brought to trial on September 9, and found guilty. She was sentenced to death but never executed. Roger Toothaker Died in jail in Boston on June 16, John Alden Jr. Edward Bishop Jr. Other victims include two dogs who were shot or killed after being suspected of witchcraft. Most of the Salem Witch Trials victims were women but men were accused and executed too.

Although some of the early victims were poor social outcasts from Salem Village, the accusations slowly spread to all types of people from all types of backgrounds, according to the book Death in Salem: The Private Lives Behind the Witch Hunt :. Everyone knew that witchcraft was largely a female perversity, but the reasoning stopped there.

The over one hundred and fifty people singled out for social and legal ostracism over the course of included every age, social echelon, and background: rich and poor, young and old, feeble and sharp-witted. The logic seems to have been that physical contact with an actual witch would draw the evil spirits back out of the victim.

The ulterior reasons for their persecution sometimes surfaced at the trial. Often it was little more than a bad reputation or malicious gossip, repackaged and embroidered over decades. A human frailty or eccentricity might be trotted out as evidence. Due to the large number of accused witches, the prisoners were kept in multiple jails in Salem, Ipswich and Boston. According to the book, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials , the accused witches were considered dangerous prisoners and were kept in dungeons underneath the jails away from the regular prisoners:.

These were perpetually dark, bitterly cold, and so damp that water ran down the walls. They reeked of unwashed human bodies and excrement. They enclosed as much agony as anywhere human beings could have lived. The stone dungeons of Salem Town prison were discovered in the s in St. Certainly they were a breeding ground for disease…But accused witches were worse off than the other unfortunates [other prisoners.

The dungeons forever changed people and the ones who were lucky enough to survive the prison or escape the gallows often suffered for the rest of their lives. Interior of the old dungeon, old witch jail, Salem, Mass, circa Such is the case with Dorcas Good, the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good who was accused of witchcraft in March of and spent seven to eight months in jail before being released, according to the book The Salem Witch Trials Reader:. While in prison, the accused were repeatedly humiliated by being forced to undergo physical examinations of their bodies.

During the examinations the prisoners, who were mostly elderly, were stripped naked in front of a group of people and their bodies were poked and prodded and any suspicious marks or moles found were pricked with needles.

Upham describes his disgust over this treatment of the prisoners:. The results of the examinations were reduced to written reports, going into details, and, among other evidences in the trials, spread before the court and jury.

There they were questioned by a judge in front of a jury, which decided whether or not to indict the accused on charges of witchcraft. The trials were then held in the Salem courthouse which was located in the center of Washington Street about feet south of Lynde Street, opposite of where the Masonic Temple now stands. This courthouse was torn down in but a plaque dedicated to the courthouse can still be seen today on the wall of the Masonic Temple on Washington Street.

The victims were hanged by the neck by a rope tied to a tree. Contrary to popular belief, none of the victims were burned at the stake.

The reason is because English law only allowed death by burning to be used against men who committed high treason and only after they had been hanged until almost dead, quartered and drawn.

The English considered it an unacceptable death for women since it involved nudity. Burning at the stake was more popular in countries with a strong Catholic church because it did not involve the shedding of blood, which was not allowed in the Roman Catholic doctrine, and it ensured that the victim would not have a body to take with them to the after life.

Upham for the Peabody Historical Society in As convicted witches, they were not allowed a Christian burial in consecrated ground. Relatives of several victims: Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor and George Jacobs, reportedly retrieved the bodies of their loved one and gave them a Christian burial on the family property. It is not known what happened to the unclaimed bodies, or if there were any unclaimed bodies, but if there are they are most likely still buried in shallow graves at the execution site.

Almost immediately after the Salem Witch Trials came to an end, the residents of Salem began to feel ashamed of what happened during the witch hunt. They still believed in witches and the Devil, but they had doubts that so many people could have been guilty of the crime and they feared that many innocent people had been put to death. The colony also been to suffer from frequent droughts, crop failures, smallpox outbreaks, Native-American attacks and other disasters and the colonists worried that the mistakes made during the Salem Witch Trials had angered God.

On December 17, , Governor Stoughton issued a proclamation in hopes of making amends with God. The proclamation suggested that there should be:. The colony held the day of prayer on January 15, , which was known as the Day of Official Humiliation. On October 17, , at the urging of the surviving convicted witches and their families, the colony passed a bill clearing some of the names of the convicted witches.

Not every victim was named in the bill though because some families of the victims did not want their family member listed. The bill states:. An act to remove the attainders of George Burroughs and others for Witchcraft. For as much in the year of Our Lord, one thousand six hundred and ninety-two several towns within the Province were infested with a horrible witchcraft or possessions of devils. The influence and energy of the evil spirit so great at that time acting in and upon those who were the principal accusers and witnesses proceeding so far as to cause a prosecution to be had of persons of known and good reputation which caused a great dissatisfaction and a stop to be put thereunto until their majesties pleasure should be known therein; and upon a representation thereof accordingly made, her late Majesty, Queen Mary, the Second of Blessed Memory, by her Royal letter given at her court at Whitehall the fifteenth of April, , was graciously pleased to approve the care and circumspection therein; and to will and require that in all proceedings against persons accused for witchcraft, or being possessed by the Devil, the greatest moderation and all due circumspection be used so far as the same may be without impediment to the ordinary course of justice.

And some of the principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious conversations.

Upon the humble petition and suit of several of said persons and of the children of others of them whose parents were executed. Be it declared and enacted by His Excellency, the Governor, Council and Representatives authority of the same, That the several convictions, in General Court assembled, and by the judgments and attainders against the said George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willard, Giles Corey, Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Mary Easty, Sarah Wildes, Abigail Hobbs,Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Martha Carrier, Abigail Faulkner, Anne Foster, Rebecca Eames, Mary Post, Mary Lacey, Mary Bradbury, Dorcas Hoar, and any of them be and are hereby reversed made and declared to be null and void to all intents, constitutionalism and purposes whatsoever as if no such convictions, judgments and attainders had ever been had or given, and that no penalties or forfeitures of goods or chattels be by the said judgments and attainders or either of them had or incurred.

Any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding. And that no sheriff, constable, goaler or other officer shall be liable to any prosecution in the law for anything they then legally did in the execution of their respective offices. Officials distributed the money in Salem in January and February of On October 31, , the state amended the apology, clearing the names of the remaining victims:.

According to the Salem Award Foundation website, there are roughly 25 million people around the world who are descended from the Salem Witch Trials victims and the other participants in the trials.

Sources: Norton, Mary Beth. Vintage Books, Hill, Francis. The Salem Witch Trials Reader. DaCapo Press, Hearn, Daniel Allen. Roach, Marilynne K. Taylor Trade Publishing, Tantor Media Inc, Upham, Charles W. II, Wiggin and Lunt, Nevins, Winfield S. Witchcraft in Salem Village in Salem Press Company, Edited by Benjamin F.