(photo © kiwidutch)
Between 1692 and 1693, in Salem (Massachusetts, USA) and surrounding districts there began a series of court hearings of people accused of practicing witchcraft. Set in an era of inadequate governance, Puritan religious fervor and a battle over scarcity of land, many were falsely accused, more then two hundred and fifty people were imprisoned and twenty lost their lives. Finally the colony realised that the accusations were a mistake and the families of those convicted were compensated, but the events live on in history as a reminder that power in the wrong hands, over-religious zeal, personal jealousies, revenge and paranoia result in terrible injustice and damage to the lives of innocents.
Christians of the middle ages, in general and between 1300 and 1700 in particular, held strong beliefs that witchcraft was an evil amongst them and needed to be eradicated. The hunt for anyone supposedly a witch and assumed Devil worshiper was rampant in Europe and thousands of people (mainly women) were executed during these witch hunts.
Local events bought these beliefs and hunts to the new colony in Salem Massachusetts , America. In 1689 William and Mary of England declared war on France within the American colonies and the ravages of this war created a land shortage in Salem. Rivalries between land owning families and families of sea faring wealth flared up and Salem’s first ordained minister Samuel Parris, added fuel to the fire as a controversial figure, widely disliked because of his greed and rigid beliefs.
(photo © kiwidutch)
(photo © kiwidutch)
(photo © kiwidutch)
In January 1692, Elizabeth, Reverend Parris’s nine year old daughter and his eleven year old niece Abigail Williams started having “fits”, screaming rages, contortions, uttered strange sounds and threw objects. Another local girl, Ann Putnam aged eleven, experienced the same symptoms and a local doctor prescribed them as being under the influence of witchcraft.
This in turn spurred the hunt for those who had supposedly “afflicted” them, and in February, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls ” confessed” that those responsible for their actions were Tituba (the Parris family slave from the Caribbean), Sarah Good, a homeless woman and Sarah Osborne, an elderly woman of poor circumstances.Both Good and Osborne instantly proclaimed their innocence, but Tituba confessed to the allegations and implicated others. All three women were jailed.
(photo © kiwidutch)
Allegations flowed around the community in the following months, dozens of people were bought in for questioning, even loyal church members were accused, Magistrates questioned the four year old daughter of Sarah Good, and the poor child’s timid answers were taken as a confession.
The first case bought to court was that of Bridget Bishop, a woman of alleged promiscuity and habit of gossiping. She denied the accusations against her but the court charged her guilty and she was hanged on June 10 on Gallows Hill.
(photo © kiwidutch)
Five days later Minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter imploring the court to disallow testimony of dreams and visions. His request was largely ignored and five more people were hanged in July, five in August and another eight in September.
Eventually Governor Phipps, responded to Mather’s request and prohibited further arrests after this own wife was accused of witchcraft. The Governor released many of the accused and dissolved the court and replaced it with a Superior Court of Judicature which condemned only three out of fifty six defendants.
Phipps eventually pardoned all who were imprisoned on witchcraft charges by May in 1693. Sadly the tragedy had been already occurred; nearly 200 had been accused of witch craft, several died in prison, an elderly farmer had been pressed to death with heavy stones and nineteen had been hanged on Gallows Hill, all having been wrongly accused of practicing the “Devil’s Magic”
After the trials and executions, many involved publicly in the witch hunting confessed their error and guilt. The General Court ordered a day of fasting and reflection for January 14, 1697 for the tragedy of Salem. In 1702, the trials were declared unlawful and in 1711, the colony passed a bill restoring the rights and reputations of those accused with £600 restitution was granted to their heirs. but, it was sadly not until 1957, more than 250 years after the witch hunt, that Massachusetts apologized formally for the events of 1692.
(photo © kiwidutch)
Psychologist Linnda Caporael, in 1976 attributed the actions of those accused of witchcraft to the possible consumption of the fungus “ergot” which can be found in cereal grasses such as rye and wheat. Rye was a staple grain of Salem village and eating ergot-contaminated foods may lead to muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions and hallucinations, all symptoms exhibited by those under suspicion of witchcraft.
Personally, I find that one of the bigger tragedy’s of Salem is that flaw in human nature whereby some people find “refuge” in the accusation of others to avoid death or prison before they themselves could be accused. I know from stories of people who lived though the events of the Second World War in The Netherlands that some Dutch did this, informing on neighbours who were hiding persons wanted by the Germans, betraying some of their closest friends or even in some cases family members, and the informing on, of others during the “KGB” years in the former Soviet controlled countries is infamous.
I wish that after four hundred years of such tragedies that we would have learned our lesson, but sadly it seem that it is a weakness of human nature that haunts the deepest recesses of even the most decent of us and we will only know if we can flight it when the test of true pressure is applied.
I can only hope that should such an atmosphere of wide paranoia, jealousy and revenge were ever to come to pass in my lifetime that, knowing myself that I was innocent, that I am strong enough to hold fast to absolute truth, even in the face of death and not to implicate others also innocent.
