In the book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, Rosalyn Schanzer discusses an outbreak of witch accusations in the little town of Salem, Massachusetts in late 1692. People were accusing friends, enemies, and even family members of being witches and plotting evil schemes with the devil. No one was safe anymore. If a person were to be accused, they were stuck in a stinky, grubby jail where they were pelted with never-ending questions. But it didn’t really matter what they said or did, their fate was sealed. One can conclude that the witch accusations were caused by revenge, boredom, and a pandemic-like spreading of symptoms. First of all, revenge is one of the top reasons for the witch trials. For example, the Nurses and Putnams, two very rich families, had gotten in a malicious legal battle …show more content…
Betty Parris and Abigail Williams were some of the few people that might have actually been significantly sick. “Mrs. Parris had been worried sick about her daughter Betty’s fits and absolutely refused to keep using the child to find witches (122).” Conceivably, the disease could have spread, causing a convulsion throughout Salem Village. Parris and Williams were most likely suffering from delirium because they were dehydrated. The water supply of Salem, MA in the late 1600s was pretty low, because of the 600 residents and the growing amount of farmers. Mr. and Mrs. Parris were rapt about Betty’s condition, so they “Sent Betty off… to live with Stephen Sewall, Parris’s distant cousin. Most of Betty’s symptoms stopped practically right away, but not all of them (122).” in March 1692. There, she was probably able to get a sustainable amount of water to regain the restitution of her body and mind, Abigail wasn’t as lucky. “She never did fully recover from the fits she had suffered and was no older than 17 when she died
With In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Mary Beth Norton becomes another participant in the search for the rationale behind what remains perhaps the most irrational collective failure of discretion that America has ever seen. The Salem Witch Trials were a series of hearings held in Massachusetts. As Norton writes, the unrest began in February 1692, when two young girls in Salem Village had sudden, severe fits of hysteria which doctors could not explain with any earthly diagnosis. As more young girls in the village began to experience similar quasi-epileptic fits, the girls and their relatives began to accuse others in the village of bringing about the fits through "witchcraft." The ensuing sequence of events was
Abigail Williams is the source of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. Abigail is first accused of bewitching Betty Parris in the woods one night. She quickly disputes the accusation by saying they: Ruth Putnam, Tituba, Betty Parris, Mary Warren, and Abigail herself, were only dancing despite it also being highly looked down upon. By starting out with this single lie, her story snowballs and eventually leads to the downfall of Salem. By associating herself with Betty Parris and Ruth Putnam, both of which are sick while Abigail is well, Abigail is submitting herself to a fight she can’t win unless she lies.
Living in Salem in the summer and spring of 1692 would’ve been an extremely hectic experience, especially if you were a married woman with another woman who wanted your man. Many people were put to death in the months between June and September, and had it not been for a mass hanging, it might have continued for who knows how long. The accusers of the Witch Trials were mainly jealous women who were out for the man(or land) of an accused woman, but that was not always the case. Some men(boys, really) accused others of being witches for the reason that a.) they wanted their land, or b.)
Salem Witch Trials During the spring of 1692 a group of girls in Salem Village claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several women to be performing witchcraft.(History) Also a young 9 year old Elizabeth and a 11 year old Abigail in January in 1692 started having fits. They took this issue to a local doctor who diagnosed them with bewitchment. (History)
Alternative Explanations of Witch Behaviors During the Salem Witch Trials By: Chloe Lindner In 1692, a group of girls were accused of performing witchcraft in Salem Village, Massachusetts. After the first accusations were made, more than 200 men, women, and children were convicted. The colonists believed the strange behavior of the accused to be the result of demonic possession and other supernatural forces.
Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, is a Short, breakneck paced book discussing what happened, and possibly why it happened, in the tragedy of 1692. Betty and Abigail, wife and niece of Samuel of Parris, fell ill experienced numerous convulsions. A doctor’s unvarnished diagnosis was that they were bewitched! A deluge of accused puritans surged into Salem Village and neighboring town.
In the play called The Crucible by Miller talks about people being accused of being witches. In a small town in Massachusetts people were getting accused of being witches. Many people were not a witch but they the people did not believe them. They ended up killing the all the people who was accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch Trial of 1692 was caused by lying girls, jealous people, and people who more power than the others.
The Salem Witch Trials, which happened in 1690’s in Massachusetts, was a moment in history where hundreds were accused of witchcraft and others were violently killed. People have argued that it was ergot poisoning or economic greed or jealousy. The salem witch trials hysteria was caused by ergot poisoning, revenge, and jealousy. Ergot poisoning started off the whole salem witch trials. In the video it states that ergot poisoning gave them twitching and most symptoms that those girls had.
One thing that might have caused the witch trials is profit, “ Mary Walcott ,Anns step cousin ,named an astonishing 69 witches”(page 56). This almost proves that she might have been accusing people for money/profit. “Abigail Williams, fingered 41 different witches for attacking her; Ann Putnam Jr. accused 53;her servant Mercy Lewis named 54; and a girl named Mary Walcott who was Ann’s step-cousin, named an astonishing 69 witches”(page 56). This means they were fervently,maliciously, wanted to abolish some of these people,and that most of the accusers stated accused more than 40 people. “Not all witches are human beings.
The Salem Witch Trials were a terrible event in human history that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The Trials started with a few people being accused of witchcraft and did not take long to transform into mass hysteria among the town. There are many theories for what caused the Witch Trials. Some people would argue that the girls led by Abigail Williams caused the Salem Witch Trials, or that the “ignorant” judge failed to see through their lies. However, the true reason why the Witch Trials took place is the society that people lived in and a parasitic fungus called Ergot.
The witch trials had a big impact not only in the past but also today, but how did it begin? As a group of girls begin to act strange people start to question what is wrong with them.
Finding nothing physically wrong, the doctors suggested the symptoms had been caused by witchcraft” (UXL 12). Having been immersed in a deeply-religious, fear-stricken atmosphere, Abigail and Betty lived in a constant state of terror. Horror was inflicted upon them through biblical testaments and Reverend Parris’s church sermons, permitting their development of paranoid mentalities. Although they sought a pastime that would ease their apprehension, the innocence of storytelling only intensified, worsening their frames of mind. It was only a matter of time until Abigail and Betty fell victim to their predominant weakness: fear.
All of the girls in attendance seemed to be having a great time, at-least that's what it looked like to Reverend Parris who was watching from behind the bushes. A few days following their little act in the woods one of the girls, Betty Parris, was terminally ill. The doctorhttps://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png could find no cause of the illness so he claimed her sickness "unnatural", "He bid me tell you, that you might look to unnatural things for the cause of it", Susanna reiterated (Miller 9). Parris now becoming embittered questioned one of the girls, "Abigail... What did you do with her in the forest?"
How two little girls (Abigail and Betty) where the first to suffer from fits of hysterical outbreaks and how many accusers came forward and described how they or their animals had been bewitched. It mentions the court cases and how there were more woman than men accused of practicing witch craft. It also states how historians believe the girls were faking their fits from the start. Also mentions how religious Salem was at the time which influenced the trials. •
Imagine being a wealthy 45-year-old woman in 1692 being accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch trials were caused by jealousy, fear, and lying. People believed that the devil was real and that one of his tricks was to enter a normal person 's body and turn that person into a witch. This caused many deaths and became a serious problem in 1692. First of all, jealousy was one of the causes of the Salem witch trials.