By late February , when traditional medicines and prayers failed to cure the girls, the reverend called upon a local doctor, William Griggs. He was the first to suggest the girls may be under the evil influence of witchcraft. Little is known about Tituba besides her role in the witch trials. She was an enslaved woman believed to have been from Central America, captured as a child from Barbados, and brought to Massachusetts in by Reverend Parris. Tituba eventually confessed to using witchcraft.
She crafted a tale detailing how the devil had come to her and asked her to do his bidding. According to her testimony , she had seen four women and a man, including Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good, asking her to hurt the children. Her testimony added fuel to the fire, making the witch hunt spiral out of control. Now that Tituba had confirmed that satanic work was afoot—and that there were other witches around—there was no stopping until they were all found.
Bridget Bishop, a woman considered to have questionable morals, was the first to be tried and executed during the Salem witch trials. Bishop was known to rebel against the puritanical values of that time.
She stayed out for long hours, had people in her home late at night, and hosted drinking and gambling parties frequently. After her second husband died, Bishop—who had been married three times—was accused of bewitching him to death, though she was later acquitted due to a lack of evidence.
Unfortunately for Bishop, that allegation of witchcraft would not be her last. The Salem witch trials would mark her second time being accused of being a witch. As she did when she was accused of bewitching her second husband, Bishop once again claimed innocence during her trial.
She went as far as to say that she did not even know what a witch was. The death warrant, signed on June 8, , ordered for her death to take place by hanging on Friday, June 10, , between 8 a. It was carried out as such by Sheriff George Corwin. During the trials, two dogs were killed based on suspicions of witchcraft. One dog was shot after a girl suffering from convulsions accused the dog of trying to bewitch her. The second slain dog was actually thought to be a victim of witchcraft whose tormentors fled Salem before they could be tried in court.
They were also used for identifying witches in Salem, using the Witch Cake test. By the end of the trials in , 24 people had died, some in jail but most by hanging. Eventually, after seeming to realize how unfair the trials were to the accused, the court refused to hear any more charges of witchcraft. All of the accused were finally pardoned in The Salem Village hangings were the last executions of accused witches in the United States. Text adapted from the National Geographic book Witches!
All rights reserved. Personality Quizzes. Funny Fill-In. Amazing Animals. Weird But True! Children were especially vulnerable to the disease and it was spreading to epidemic proportion in the years before the trials. Having an angry witch killing your children made sense.
Some of the attitudes in the Salem witch trials are still seen today. One of the most popular points of view was that if you were against the trials, then you were, in fact, an advocate for the witches. This obviously meant that you must also be a witch.
These extremes are also seen today as people take one side on an issue and anyone who disagrees becomes the enemy. This is proof that history does indeed repeat itself. Her father had just been appointed as the new minister for Salem, but a mysterious illness took hold of her after moving.
She would have violent thrashing fits, hide under the furniture, often contort her body in pain. She decided to blame her slave. The rest is history. One of the ways that people looked to prove that someone was a witch was to find moles or freckles on the body. This was the place that the animal familiars would feed so that the evil spirits could be maintained.
People accused of witchcraft would be stripped and their skin searched for any blemishes. If there were any, even if they had always been there, then that person would be considered a witch. Because of this, many people who were being accused of witchcraft were simply admitting to it since a confession would typically help them avoid the death penalty.
The Salem witch trials would have probably gone on indefinitely if it were for the actions of Governor Phips. He declared that the trials must stop because there was too great a possibility that innocent people were being put to death.
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