Category: History

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When the witch hunt started in Salem Village in February 1692, the Massachusetts colonists were waiting for Rev. Increase Mather to return home from England with a new governor, Sir William Phips, and joint monarchs William & Mary’s new charter. In the interim, four magistrates held examinations (hearings) to see if any of the accused should be held for trial. The jails in Salem, Boston, Ipswich, and elsewhere were filled with accused witches when Governor Phips arrived in May 1692. In short order, he established the special Court of Oyer and Terminer to handle the witchcraft cases, before heading northward to handle military issues with the Native Americans.

Led by Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, the Salem court had an imposing job set before them: Discover witches during unruly public meetings filled with afflicted accusers, scared or disbelieving townspeople, and bewildering stories of possession, strange occurrences, unexplained deaths, animal familiars, black Sabbaths, and the like.

Following the Rules?

In December 1641, the Massachusetts Bay Colony published the Body of Liberties. These 100 rules, which were based on both English law and Biblical law, were intended to be the foundation of the colony’s court system.

Under rule 94, Capital Laws, number 2 it says:

“If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death.”

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 had a much larger definition: “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” But the Salem judges specifically were looking for Sarah Good’s yellow bird or Bridget Bishop’s cat.

So, let’s look at some of the other legal points and see how they pertained to the Salem witch trials.

26. Any man that findeth himself unfit to plead his own cause in any Court, shall have the liberty to employ any man against whom the Court doth not except, to help him provided he give him no fee or reward for his pains. This shall not except the party himself from answering such questions in person as the Court shall think meet to demand of him.

On 9 September 1692, sisters Sarah (Towne) Cloyce and Mary (Towne) Estey petitioned the court to allow testimony on their behalf, “seeing we are neither able to plead our own cause, nor is council allowed to those in our condition” (Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, p. 620). These two eloquent women were fit to plead their cases, but clearly were not allowed to in the Salem court. They had no defense attorney and the judges were acting as prosecutors.

45. No man shall be forced by torture to confess any crime against himself nor any other unless it be in some capital case where he is first fully convicted by clear and sufficient evidence to be guilty. After which, if the cause be of that nature, that it is very apparent that there be other conspirators or confederates with him, then he may be tortured, yet not with such tortures as be barbarous and inhumane.

According to accused witch John Proctor, 18-year-old Richard Carrier and his 16-year-old brother Andrew Carrier, “would not confess anything till they tied them neck and heels till the blood was ready to come out of their noses” (Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, 1700). The Carrier brothers had not even been indicted, much less been charged guilty before being tortured.

46. For bodily punishments we allow amongst us none that are inhumane, barbarous, or cruel.

It goes without saying that peine forte et dure, or being pressed to death like Giles Corey, is “inhumane, barbarous, or cruel.” Once the rocks were placed on his prone form, even if the 70-year-old Corey changed his mind and started talking, he’d probably die from the internal injuries anyway. It took him hours to die.

47. No man shall be put to death without the testimony of two or three witnesses, or that which is equivalent thereunto.

Since witchcraft meant being in league with the Devil, it’s surprising that the justices did not rely on the opinion of several prominent ministers who were against using spectral evidence—visions seen only by the afflicted accusers—as the main reason to charge a person. Nor did the justices find conflict in accepting the words, visions, and bodily contortions of the afflicted accusers that one could say were possessed by the Devil themselves. The afflicted accusers often supported each other’s testimonies or mimicked each other during the trials. The people in the court house became witnesses of the afflicted accusers.

Confessed witches sometimes claimed to have seen other accused witches at witch meetings. Since the court was using confessors to find more witches, the confessors were spared until a later date (that never came). In most circumstances, confessing to a crime was as good as or better than having two witnesses. Yet none of the confessors were hanged before Governor Phips stopped the trials.

94 Capital 11. If any man rise up by false witness, wittingly and of purpose to take away any man’s life, he shall be put to death.

After the trials were over, we don’t hear much backlash against the accusers or the judges and jury. Some disappear from the records, while others, such as Judge Stoughton, continued to be prominent members of society. However, Judge Samuel Sewall, numerous jurymen, and accuser Ann Putnam Jr. publicly asked for forgiveness for their part in the trials.

reposted from Genealogy Ink

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Professor emeritus of English at State University of New York at Binghamton, Bernard Rosenthal is the author of the classic Salem Story: Reading the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and general editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, which includes all the extant legal documents newly transcribed, in chronological order, with notes.

WitchesMass Bay: In Salem Story, you essentially peel back the onion, and tell people to read the primary sources. With all the books and movies that have covered the subject, what one thing do people keep repeating about the Salem witch hunt that is inaccurate, untrue, or has no 17th-century corroborating evidence? (Your favorite pet peeve!)

Bernard Rosenthal: Over and over again, scholars and others go back to the idea that the Salem witch hunt was all started by village quarrels. If I were to rewrite Salem Story I would start by showing how that idea has been taken apart. The evidence just doesn’t support it. Fortunately, some recent scholarship has dismantled parts of the village quarrels idea. I proposed to Cambridge University Press a revised edition of Salem Story with a new first chapter that addressed this, but for a lot of reasons it didn’t work out.

WitchesMassBay: What made you decide to tackle the huge editing project that became Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt?

Bernard Rosenthal: Tackling Records, like a lot of other things, just sort of happened. I found some errors in the standard work, poked around, and the next thing you know 20 years went by. I had made a mistake in Salem Story based on an incorrect transcription in the source I was using and gradually, after looking at other manuscripts, I came to the conclusion that a new edition was needed. It proved a lot more complicated than I had anticipated and took a lot more time—20 years I think. I chose a wonderful group to work with me on this—and without them the book would not have been possible for me alone—but working with a group also involved heavy work of administration, group dynamics, as well as pure scholarship.

WitchesMassBay: One of your causes is social injustice and fair trials. Do you find something about the Salem witch hunt that we as a society or our court systems still need to learn?

Bernard Rosenthal: Yes, but I think this answer is going to surprise you. I think what we need to learn from Salem is how a community can do something awful, but be courageous enough to realize and acknowledge it. Our modern criminal justice system is based on an adversarial system, and institutions that have little interest in justice. Our prisons have too many inmates who do not belong there but remain locked up because the state’s legal team was better than the defendant’s legal team. The state has enormous power against which its victims can do little.

I am working now on something called the Headstart case, and am doing what I can to get out the word of the injustice done to two people. One is now out of prison, but with a criminal record. The other remains in prison. Neither committed the crime for which they went to jail, and in fact the “crime” never happened. Just like the witchcraft claims. You can see my Facebook page, Free Joseph Allen, and you can get an excellent account of it all on the web at the National Center for Reason and Justice.

There are other cases on that website of innocent people incarcerated, and not by a long stretch inclusive of them all. The Puritans, for all their faults, really wanted to get it right, and when they saw they had failed they did what they could for the survivors and for families of the victims. I don’t present them as an ideal, and I don’t want a government without due process. But due process needs serious fixing, and a good place to begin is to look at how the Puritans had the courage to stay with the witchcraft matter and to do what they could to remedy the mistakes. You will not find that in our contemporary criminal justice system, at least nothing analogous to what the Puritans did. But it makes us feel superior to say that they were crazy and we are wise.

Note: Joseph Allen was released from prison 23 December 2021.

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Kindness Rocks Project, Artist Row, Salem

The Salem of today is a vibrant city—upbeat, artsy, multicultural, progressive. That vibrancy comes from people who are willing to make their world a little better. Take, for example, Caroline Emmerton (1866-1942) who not only preserved the House of the Seven Gables and other historic Salem buildings, she used the income generated by the museum to support a settlement society that provided immigrants with medical care, education, job skills, and recreational opportunities.

But she was not alone. All around the city, from its maritime heyday to its manufacturing boom and the lulls in between, Salemites worked together to create a better society. The Marine Society at Salem (1766) offered relief to disabled and aged members and their families. The Salem Athenaeum (1810) provided books and conversation to its members years before Captain John Bertram’s family donated its mansion for the Salem Public Library (1889). The Salem Lyceum Society (1830) provided educational lectures and entertainment, including the first public telephone transmission between Alexander Graham Bell in Salem and Thomas Watson in Boston (1877). The Essex Institute (1848) encouraged the study of local history, genealogy, and art, while the Peabody Academy of Science (1867) explored the maritime history of New England, Pacific and Japanese ethnology, and the natural history of Essex county.

Yet one thing they didn’t do? Preserve the remnants of the Salem witch trials.

When people visit Salem today, they expect to see evidence of the 1692 witch trials. But where is the court house? The documents? The tangible objects that remind us of the victims, the accusers, the judges?*

Before there was such a thing as the tourist industry, people came to Salem to see “the witches.” In 1766, future U.S. president John Adams (1735-1826) visited “Witchcraft Hill” and mentioned in his journal the locust trees planted in memory of the witch-hunt victims. In 1831, Charles W. Upham started lecturing on the trials years before he published his Salem Witchcraft book (1867).

Click to enlarge article from The Pharmaceutical Era, 1898

Druggist George P. Farrington (1808-1885), who operated his pharmacy in Judge Jonathan Corwin’s old house (known as the Witch House), gave tours and charged admission. Abner C. Goodell (1831-1914), who collected works on witchcraft from all over the world, lectured and gave private tours of his home, which previously was the old Salem county jail before the new one was built around the corner in 1813. (The 1684 structure was rebuilt in 1763, with the frame and original timbers.) In 1935, his son Alfred P. Goodell (1877-1954) opened the Old Witch Jail and Dungeon after discovering an original 1692 bill for “keeping witches” in his home. Shortly after his death, the city of Salem tore down the historic building.

Why?

Salem is praised for its architecture, even for its doorways. Yet the city only has a few First Period houses (1626-1725) remaining, unlike Ipswich which boasts 59. Probably no one missed Bridget Bishop’s home and orchard, or remembrances of her sharp tongue, but why demolish Philip English’s mansion? Was it an effort to erase history?

Even today, people question why we’re so interested in the past, in understanding the events of 1692, when they wish to forget.

The Salem witch-hunt has much to teach us as individuals and as a society.

Sign at 10 Federal Street

It has nothing to do with Halloween and the macabre. Some of the accused may have dabbled in fortunetelling, folk-healing, and the like, but they were not witches who made pacts with the devil, performed Satanic rites, or shapeshifted to harm their neighbors. They were ordinary people with flaws, just like you and me.

* The Salem court house was torn down in 1760. The existing witch trial documents are scattered through various libraries and archives. The Peabody Essex Museum owns numerous objects of witch-hunt victims, most of which are not on display.