Remembering 1692 - Witch Week, Day 2

The Hysteria of 1692

Imagine:
• choosing the unknown wilderness of a relatively new territory over the deplorable living conditions of another country for a chance of practicing a faith without being persecuted
• having never-ending property disputes with your neighbor
• following a faith which believes your fate is predetermined by God and spending your life trying to figure it out by living a severe, pious life to please your Maker
• being a woman in a rigid patriarchal society who is expected to tend to the house and children in virtual, submissive silence
• having little to no education and explaining the weird and unknown through superstitions believed by almost everyone around you
• enduring one of the worst droughts ever which produced very meager crops for the residents of Salem Village—many of whom were farmers
• being interrogated, tried, and convicted for a crime you know you didn’t commit and no one will come forward to defend you for fear of being implicated
• believing the devil and evil witches were very real malignant characters lurking in your small town biding their time to turn the unsuspecting into one of their wicked followers
• standing in your innocence beneath the gallows staring into the eyes of your virtuous Christian “friends and neighbors” who eagerly await your death as a means to rid the town from the devil’s evil clutches

It all started on a cold, dreary winter day. Tituba, a slave from Barbados working for Salem Village’s minister, entertained the Reverend Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and her eleven-year-old cousin, Abigail. While Elizabeth’s parents spent the harsh Massachusetts’ winter visiting members of the parish, Tituba recounted intriguing stories of voodoo to the young girls. Containing titillating details, the group soon grew to about a dozen children and young women who were completely captivated by Tituba’s tales, which covered subjects and experiences considered taboo by the Puritan belief system.

While there is no evidence, it is believed that Tituba demonstrated her skills in voodoo and hypnosis on her audience because Elizabeth and Abigail developed post-hypnotic reactions such as staring blindly into space followed by fits of seizures. The local doctor couldn’t diagnose the girls’ symptoms and attributed them to being cast under a witch’s spell.

Reverend Parris badgered the girls demanding to know who inflicted this hysteria upon them and they reluctantly named Tituba along with two of the village’s least popular women. The women were questioned repeatedly and kept proclaiming their innocence. Tituba, figuring she’d just tell the magistrates what they wanted to hear, eventually “confessed” to being a witch having been tormented by the other two women along with a strange man from Boston and two other unidentifiable women from the community.

With the idea that witchcraft was spreading like wildfire throughout their tiny community, the magistrates and villagers alike became suspicious of everyone. The girls began naming new women and the accusations expanded from the poor and lowly parishioners of Salem Village to men and women of means including a former minister of the village and a wealthy merchant. The youngest to be jailed was four; the eldest, 71, was hanged.

Wide-spread panic turned to finger pointing where neighbors with land disputes or jealous tendencies came to “realize” that the reason others were acting strangely or un-neighborly must have been because they were witches. Those who dared defend the witches cast suspicion on themselves and often ended up in jail as well.

The girls became celebrities of sorts and other towns invited them to visit to weed out the evil there too. Eventually, the girls’ accusations grew absurd when they named prominent people, including the governor’s wife. The governor who had tried to stay clear of the proceedings interceded and disbanded the court which examined and sentenced the accused. He also suspended the executions of those remaining in jail at the zealous hands of the Lt. Governor who insisted they were guilty and had every intention of carrying out their hangings.

The facts:
• An unsteady political climate influenced the towns in America as the change in English sovereignty over the decades impacted how government was handled on this side of the pond.
• 1692 saw one of the worst droughts in Massachusetts’ history until that point. Naïve in their understanding of nature, the people easily made the connection that somehow God was displeased with them or the devil was interfering.
• 13 young women and girls accused hundreds of people of torturing them to join the devil’s forces.
• 19 men and women were hanged; 1 was pressed to death to ‘press the truth from him.’ Giles Cory’s final words were “More weight.”
• Those who “confessed” being witches were not executed because they recognized the evil of their ways and God would ultimately have to forgive them.
• After the trials ended, Tituba claimed that Reverend Parris beat her into confessing her witch cohorts and that her accusations were purely a result of his actions. Parris refused to bail Tituba from jail until she recanted the accusation. She refused and eventually a wealthy Virginian purchased her.
• None of those executed were convicted of their crimes with actual evidence. The afflicted girls claimed the witches’ specters were assaulting them. (A specter was supposedly a witch’s ghost or spirit sent forth by the devil to attack the girls.) The admissibility of spectral evidence was banned by an executive order, which the Salem Village magistrates directly disobeyed.
• One judge and the jurors apologized to the victims and their families for the proceedings and outcomes.
• Only one of the thirteen original “afflicted” girls apologized publicly.
• In addition to the initial group of girls, other villagers began accusing their neighbors. Motives ranged from turning attention away from themselves and feeling as though they played an important part in this event to getting revenge for “wrongs” committed against them or their families.

The result:
As with most driving forces behind any major change, the tragedy in Salem inspired the creation of our “innocent until proven guilty” system.

Sources:
The Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692 (Old Saltbox Publishing)
Salem Witch Trials, Documentary (The History Channel)