Salem witch trials
The Salem witch trials (February 1692–May 1693) were a series of investigations and persecutions that caused 19 convicted “witches” to be hanged and many other suspects to be imprisoned in Salem Village, Massachusetts.
History
The witch trials of Salem were a series of prosecutions and hearings of people accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts, between 1692 and 1693 centered about Salem Village, now in the township of Danvers, but then part of Salem. Ten girls, aged nine to seventeen years, two of them house servants, met during the winter of 1691-1692 in the home of Samuel Parris, pastor of Salem Village church, and after learning palmistry and various "magic" tricks from Parris's West Indian slave, Tituba, and influenced doubtless by current talk about witches, accused Tituba and two old women of bewitching them. The excitement spread rapidly, many more were accused, and, within four months, hundreds were arrested, and many were tried before commissioners of oyer and terminer (appointed on the 27th of May 1692, including Samuel Sewall, q.v., of Boston, and three inhabitants of Salem, one being Jonathan Corwin); nineteen were hanged, [1] and one was pressed to death in September for refusing to plead when he was accused.
All these trials were conducted in accordance with the English law of the time; there had been an execution for witchcraft at Charlestown in 1648; there was a case in Boston in 1655; in 1680 a woman of Newbury was condemned to death for witchcraft but was reprieved by Governor Simon Bradstreet; in England and Scotland there were many executions long after the Salem delusion died out. The reaction came suddenly in Salem, and in May 1693 Governor William Phips ordered the release from prison of all then held on the charge of witchcraft.
External links
Encyclopedias
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Salem witch trials
- Encyclopedia.com: The Salem Witch Trials
- Encyclopedia.com: Salem Witch Trials and Executions
- Encyclopedia.com: Aftermath of the Salem Trials
References
- ↑ There is nothing but tradition to identify the place of execution with what is now called Gallows Hill, between Salem and Peabody.
