The year of 1692 identified a significant event in history in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. The Salem Witch Trials revealed series of prosecutions of people being accused of witchcraft, which resulted in the executions of twenty innocent people. Out of the twenty people, fourteen of them were women were hung to death and the others died in prison. It all began with several girls that experimented with magic, which the Puritans believed they were collaborating with the Devil. Based on the Puritan beliefs, the meaning of witchcraft was the Devil’s magic. The group of young girls affirmed to be controlled by the devil and accused other women in the town of witchcraft. In American history, these trials affect the modern idea about American …show more content…
But significantly, after twenty years later, the government apologizes to the families of those convicted because it is approved that there were not enough evidence in executing the people. “The colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted” (Boyer and Nissenbaum 302). For this reason, the colony passed a legislative bill bringing back the rights and good names of the accused people of witchcraft and agreed to give six hundred pounds as a compensation to their families later in the years. “The witch trials [...] and triggered a distrust of government” (“The Salem Witch Trials, Scholarly Articles). The government felt sorry for killing innocent people so the rewarded the families that had members involved in the executions. Also, it lost the trust from the public because of being unfair and killing innocent …show more content…
In the courts, the judges only believed the witnesses, which sometimes are the accusers, and insubstantial evidence brought from the witnesses. As a matter of fact, this is very dangerous because the authorities could abuse the victims until they confessed. For instance, if the accused one recited the Bible or the Lord’s Prayer to the judges in the court, then they were not a witch. In other words, the court judges were biased because they only trust the confession the accused ones make, which is unfairly prejudiced for the innocent people. “Rather than try people in the order they were arrested, the court started with the accused with the strongest cases against them” (“The Salem Witch Trials, scholarly articles). This was the concept in how the court charged the cases of each victim. The judges only listened to the girls that lies and just kill everyone that was accused, making the trials unfair. The trials were biased because it all started when a slave, Tituba, was accused of witchcraft. As a slave, she could not defend herself. In fact, many of the accused witches were people who have different religious beliefs from the Puritans or the town dislike the person. Thus, making it easier to have them convicted of
During the Salem witch trials many women were accused of practicing witchcraft. The accusation of the women who were thought to be witches was the result of many deaths in Salem, Massachusetts. The trials began with two young girls, Elizabeth “Betty” Parris and her cousin Abagail Williams, who began having violent contortions and random outbursts of screaming. The girls were thought to have been under an evil hand or suffering from a witch’s curse. The girls began giving the names of the witches that were harming them beginning with the Parris family slave Tituba.
As we suspected, the majority of female defendants were accused of inflicting their sorceries on only female victims. Out of twenty cases (the gender of the victims was unclear in one of our selected cases, so the population is reduced for this figure), nine female defendants had only female victims. Five were accused of attacking only men, and the other six were accused of affecting members of both gender. Because there were so few values for this particular variable, we did not find it relevant to graph or chart this information. We did, however, feel it necessary to create a frequency chart for this set of data, as it directly addresses one of our hypotheses.
In January 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, innocent citizens began to be accused of witchcraft. Two young girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams hid under furniture and contorted their bodies into unusual shapes. They screamed and cried out that the spirits of innocent citizens in the town of Salem were torturing them by stabbing them and trying to convince them to sign the Devil’s book. They were thought to have been under witchcraft’s spell, causing the young girls to accuse many people of witchcraft such as their own slave Tituba. More and more people of the town became afflicted with the same symptoms as Betty and Abigail, in the end causing over 200 people to be accused of witchcraft and all found guilty.
In 1692, witchcraft trials in Massachusetts were probably the most famous trials of colonial America. The events surrounding the outbreaks of witchcraft in Salem are probably the best-documented witch trials in American history. In New England, in the 50 years leading up to the Salem trials, dozens of people were executed for witchcraft. Trials continued to crop up, and according to one source, a member of a mob killed a suspected witch outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in the late 1781’s. The victims of the witchcraft prosecutions were almost all women that were elderly or perceived as a drain on the community.
In Salem, Massachusetts, Puritans were strong believers in the Bible. The Bible states, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The Puritans beliefs led to them accusing 20 innocent people of being a witch, this resulted in their deaths in 1692. Even though the Puritans couldn’t see it at the time, their accusations were really based off jealousy, lies, and Salem being divided into two parts. One cause of the Salem witch trial hysteria was jealousy.
They act out in court and convince the judges that the people they are accusing are witches by screaming, fainting, claiming to see the devil with the accused and acting terrified of the ‘witches’. This results in speculation and resistance against the courts. The story of the Salem witch trials is told in
Nearly anyone from the New England has heard of the famous Salem Witch Trials. A year of persecution, leading to the accusation of nearly 200 citizens of all ages. No one was safe; men, women, children, even pets stood trial and 20 were hung for the supposed crime of witchcraft (Blumberg). 1692 was a year of witch hunting. Most today blame the trials on hysteria, or perhaps a bad case of paranoia.
In 1692, A town in Massachusetts by the name of Salem Village found itself in one most documented cases of mass hysteria in history. This saga started with three girls: Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Parris, and Ann Putnam a neighborhood friend. Abigail Williams, the niece of the town’s minister, began to display weird and questionable behavior. The town’s physician,William Greggs, was called to determine the cause of this sporadic behavior. The town’s physician determined that the three girls were under “the Devil’s influence” and they had been bewitched.
any innocent people in the colonial times who were accused of witchcraft didn't even partake in any of the activities that were associated with witchcraft, were still labeled as witches, and harshly punished or sentenced to death. The people of salem frowned upon witchcraft. the people had come to the conclusion that the devil had come to their town in 1692. Most of the cases of witchcraft were girls were acting strange and doing weird activities with women in the woods believed to be witches.the townspeople thought this was strange and took action.
Between February 1692 and May 1693, there were a series of hearings where people were being accused of witchcraft. The outcome of the hearings ended with 20 people being executed, but more than 200 people were accused of performing witchcraft. The hearings and prosecutions are very well known as the Salem witch trials. The trials took place in colonial Massachusetts. Nineteen accused witches were convicted and hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692.
These trials consisted of torturing women until they confessed they were witches, so they could then be gruesomely executed in hopes their soul could be saved. ” Women played a prominent role in one of New England’s most
Most all people who accused others for being witches were young girls. Many people were put to death because of these people accusing them. After the trials were done they were very deeply regretting their decisions when they found the women that were accusing were lying and found guilty. On February 29, the girls blamed three women for cursing them: Tituba, a slave; Sarah Good, a homeless woman; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly woman. Not until 1957, 250 years later, did Massachusetts apologize for what they the Witch Trials did.
During the hysteria of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, many people were accused of practicing witchcraft. Therefore, their reputation, was ruined. Other people committed many sins in order to keep their reputation clean in town. For instance, some characters had to lie, fight, and accuse other people of witchcraft which could get the individual out of trouble and keep their hands clean. when a person got accused of being a witch, the person’s reputation would get ruined and the person would go to jail or be hanged.
Introduction The aim of this research is to investigate the extent to which Puritanism is responsible for the accusations of witchcraft brought upon approximately 120 people during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and the reason why these accusations persisted for eight months. The inhabitants of Salem were Puritans who believed strongly in Satan and his power. It was believed that Satan could give a person the power to hurt others in return for their loyalty, which was to be signed in their blood in Satan’s black book.
Not many people know much about what actually happened in the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe someone would think that it was just about witchcraft and crazy people being hanged, but it is a lot more than that. The Salem Witch Trials only occurred between 1692 and 1693, but a lot of damage had been done. The idea of the Salem Witch Trials came from Europe during the “witchcraft craze” from the 1300s-1600s. In Europe, many of the accused witches were executed by hanging.