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Inside the Witch Trials: Salem | Fear In A New World
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- [00:00]
Kate Lister
Hi, I'm your host, Kate Lister. If you would like Betwixt the Sheets ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every single week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe. Thanks for listening to Betwixt the Sheets. To get all History Hit podcasts, ad free, early access and bonus episodes, head over to historyhit.com subscribe. Or you can sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click. To make switching to the new Boost Mobile risk free, we're offering a 30 day money back guarantee. So why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile? Because you have nothing to lose. Boost Mobile is offering a 30 day money back guarantee. No, I asked. Why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile? Wouldn't because you love wasting money as a way to punish yourself because your mother never showed you enough love as a child. Whoa, easy there. Yeah. Applies to online activations. Requires port in and auto pay. Customers activating in stores may be charged non refundable activation fees.
- [01:15]
Marion Gibson
Ever wonder what makes pandas so special?
- [01:17]
Kate Lister
Join us on Amazing Wildlife to find out.
- [01:22]
Marion Gibson
Giant pandas and their habitat are unique and beautiful and extraordinary representation of the natural world. And if you get that opportunity to sit and watch a panda eat bamboo, you will be mesmerized.
- [01:36]
Kate Lister
Listen to Amazing Wildlife on America's number.
- [01:39]
Marion Gibson
One podcast network, iHeart.
- [01:41]
Kate Lister
Open your free iHeart app and search Amazing Wildlife and start listening. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How are you doing? Well, I'm doing just fine, thank you very much for asking. I'm glad that we're all fine and here together. But to make sure that you stay fine and I stay fine and everyone else stays fine, I have to give you the fair dues warning. So here it is. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. And actually, in all seriousness, we are getting quite tasty today. We are discussing the witch trials. And if that is not your cup of tea, then this is your opportunity to get out now while you still can. For the rest of you, on with the show, the early modern period was a time of huge upheaval. Radical ideas were spreading like wildfire. People were led to believe they were at spiritual war with the devil. The stakes couldn't have been higher as fear and paranoia grew, a violent breaking point was inevitable. What became known as the Witch trials soon followed. Over the course of this limited series, I'll be taking you directly into the isolated communities where this fear was felt the most. Further still, we'll enter into the courtrooms at the heart of three significant witch trials to find out what it was like to be caught up in the middle of all this mayhem. From Pendle in Lancashire, where a nine year old sent her home family to their deaths after accusing them of being.
- [03:19]
Marion Gibson
Witches, it's Janet who really signs the death warrant for her own people.
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Kate Lister
To the west fords of Iceland, where it was mostly men, not women, who were burnt at the stake.
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Marion Gibson
All of a sudden the devil was all around and this caused a hysterical fear.
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Kate Lister
And to Salem, Massachusetts, where colonialism, racism and fear and unknown created a perfect storm that is still felt today.
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Marion Gibson
The Salem Witch trials, they have this really long legacy and it's a legacy of persecution and mistrust.
- [03:54]
Kate Lister
Join me Kate Lister, as we go inside. The witch Trials, Part 3. Salem, Massachusetts. The winters in Salem are long and hostile. Some days it's so gloomy that it feels like the sun barely rises at all. Now, in 1691, just a few decades after the Puritan settlers first arrived in the area, the families that live here still wrestle with this environment. Uncertainty and anxiety underpin everything from the crops that barely grow to the threat of the native people who live beyond the fringes of their village. Native people whose land they've taken and whose lives they're suspicious of. In this long winter in the spiritual heart of Salem, at the house of Reverend Samuel Paris, his daughter Elizabeth and niece Abigail attempt their own form of folk magic. They crack an egg white into a bowl of water, believing it will reveal their future husbands to them. However, on this day, the so called Venus glass reveals the spectre of a coffin. The girls recoil in horror. Reverend John Hale will later write that this one small event led to a diabolical molestation. Life in Salem carries on, but in the months that follow, the girls begin acting strangely. They have fits where their bodies move in unnatural ways, making unnatural sounds, barking like dogs. Reverend Hale wrote that their mouths stopped, their throats choked and their limbs were wracked and tormented. What began as an innocent game between bored children sparked a sequence of events resulting in the deaths of 20 people and ruining the lives of countless more. At the heart of it are accusations made by children and the chilling testimony of their slave, Tituba. What happened in Salem to allow this to happen? And why is this a history that keeps repeating itself. Joining me is author and historian Marion Gibson. To take us back to Salem to find out firstly, what was this village, just a 30 minute drive by today's standards from the bustling port of Boston, like at this time.
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Marion Gibson
So today it's called Danvers, then it was called Salem Village, so Salem Town, which is the modern little town of Salem that people might know. And then there's a village called Danvers on the outskirts and that is Salem Village where all this kicks off. So you know, the big ministers of the new colony, they're all based in Boston. This is where the local government is. This is the center of what will become the new colony and finally the state of Massachusetts. So they're sort of close to that center of power, but at the same time they're also sat on the edge of this huge continent with as far as they can see, nothing in it but hostile peoples who, you know, in their ignorance, the Puritan stigmatizes devil worshipers. So they're kind of central, but they're also very peripheral. And I think that gives them a real sense of fear about their surroundings.
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Kate Lister
When we say they're Puritans, there'll be people listening that they know they've heard that word before. But can you tell me what a Puritan is and why that makes this group of people, no offense, 20 puritans out there, but why? It makes them particularly highly strung and perfectly susceptible for somebody going, she's a witch.
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Marion Gibson
They're a really interesting group of people actually. They're basically a rebellious group within the Church of England. So it starts off within the Anglican Church in England, the Church of England that people will know about now. And these are people who want to reform it and they want to reform it in quite a violent way. So quite often they are saying, let's go back to fundament. So they are fundamentalists in that sense and they're saying, let's get rid of all the church decoration. This is distracting us from gold. You know, we should be having this personal relationship with Gold and thinking about our faith and our sins and having a personal relationship with him rather than going through a minister. So they're, they're pretty rebellious, they are pretty fanatical and quite radical people. And that makes them really interesting and in some ways really quite modern. But in other ways they're really frightening because as religious fundamentalists, they're continually looking for enemies of God. And of course witches fall under that heading.
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Kate Lister
Is it true that Puritans were very, very anti fun, anti pleasure, like what did you do for fun if you were a Puritan? I mean, it can't have all been miserable, honestly.
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Marion Gibson
I think it was, yes. What you did for fun was reflect on yourself and read the Bible and pray. That is almost, it is a little bit of a caricature, but it is actually one of the ones that's closest to the truth. You know, it's a real kernel of truth here. So no dancing, no drinking, very little celebration. You can't have celebrations in the church, you can't even get married in the church because that's seen as too festive and not godly enough. You know, that's just two people celebrating their love and joy and we can't have that because it's not a sacrament. It's not, you know, part of Gold's plan. So they do tend to strip away everything that makes life. I, you know, in my terms. In your terms too fun. They are quite problematic.
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Kate Lister
Is it the idea that pleasure, any kind of pleasure, is a weakness, is that and that everything has to be kind of difficult and you have to fight for everything? Is that the sort of the basis of this?
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Marion Gibson
I think that's part of it, yes. These are people who like a good fight, absolutely self doubt, but they're also very, very focused on God. So, you know, there are two criteria really. Yeah, you have to work, you have to work at it. They're very keen on the work ethic, but it has to be about God. And if they don't think it's about God, then oh well, yeah, that could be about the devil. That's a bad thing.
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Kate Lister
Therefore, these Puritans sound like a fabulous bunch. How overjoyed the Native Americans must have been to meet their new neighbours. As you can imagine, the two communities clashed. Despite early attempts to live peacefully alongside one another, the relationship between Native Americans and the newly arrived Puritans was one marked by cultural misunderstanding, mistrust and conflict, particularly given the Puritans were taking Native American land. Add on to that that the Puritans saw the Native American religious practices as pagan and satanic and already you have an environment that's twitching with suspicion and the threat of malevolent forces. It's fair to say that the Puritans were out of their depth in a number of ways and they were already beginning to set themselves apart from the other colonists in Boston. Is there any sense that in Boston they were a bit more forward thinking and sort of, you know, like a bit more urbane, but out in Salem there was a little bit like they're out in the sticks.
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Marion Gibson
That kind of feeling that's interesting. Some of them, I mean, some of the people in Boston were just as prejudiced about witches as the people at Salem. But Boston also had a big merchant community, and it also had people who were rather more outward looking. And some of those, as the trials went on, got very critical of the local religious government. You know, they were disappointed, too, that they'd gone all the way to the new world to do all this new and interesting stuff. You know, it's colonialism, so it's not good from that point of view, but it's trade. It's, you know, opening up the big world. They're thinking about exploration and making money and all the kind of things that they want to do. And they see these puritan fundamentals as holding them back in a lot of ways.
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Kate Lister
Like the New World. They wanted new stuff and to do things in a new way. And we're still messing around with this witchy nonsense.
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Marion Gibson
Yes, it's horrible, isn't it? It's one of the things that we exported there. You know, they're all well found. Yeah, exactly. They meant to found a new world, a better world. They really did want this kind of wonderful godly utopia where everything would be fine, everybody would be good, and it would all be fantastic and God would be pleased with them. And, you know, what do they do that? One of the first things they do is they start holding witch tr Charles it is deeply disappointing, isn't it?
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Kate Lister
And it was during the long, hard winter of 1691-1692 that this utopia took a violent turn towards, well, dystopia. This cauldron, if you'll forgive the pun of puritanism. Fear about a world they couldn't control, and a suspicion of people they didn't understand manifested itself in dark and dangerous ways. Not for the first time. It's children who play a pivotal role in the course of the witch trial. Back to Marion.
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Marion Gibson
Two girls who live in the house of the minister of Salem village, Samuel Paris. His daughter Betty, who is 9, and his niece Abigail Williams, who is 11. And they start having fits and they start screaming and saying their bodies hurt and they're contorting and everybody around them is really frightened. You know, often when you get that kind of thing in history, you know, this is a period of huge child mortality. So the people around them must have been really fright. What is this disease? What is happening to these girls? But as time went on, once the. They called in the local physician and he and the People around Abigail and Betty, particularly their father and uncle Samuel Paris, start to think that they are in fact bewitched. So it's not a natural disease, it's the devil. It's the devil afflicting them. Maybe they start to think they're possessed. Maybe they start to think they're bewitched. They explore all these kind of ideas and Abigail and Betty start pointing out women in the community and saying, yes, we are bewitched and that person is the witch.
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Kate Lister
All right, now this is the million dollar question. This is the one that's been raked over by so many historians. What do you think was going on in that house?
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Marion Gibson
I struggle to come to a decision about it. It's not a unique case. I mean, there are lots of other cases where really quite young people do this sort of thing. I think it' hard not to suspect that they were faking it to a fairly large extent. And I do suspect that. I think. I mean, given what we've said about the community already, I think people can probably imagine it's not a nice place to be a child. And if you're growing up in this kind of joyless religious fundamentalist atmosphere and everything that you want to do is stigmatized as being wrong. And you're also really terrified that out there in the woods around, you know, there are these big wild animals that there are people who don't like you and may very well want to come and kill you in the night because you've stolen their land. You know, there's new diseases. There may be famine coming next winter if there's too much snow or too much rain. I think they were probably very frightened and miserable young girls, and maybe they thought that one of the ways that they could make themselves feel better was to be a sort of religious malta figure, you know, to have something happen to them that made other people go, oh, you know, we must take care of them. Let's give them some attention. They must be very godly girls, you know, we must praise them and look after them. So I wonder if it is to do with attention seeking and trying to fit in with what they believed a very religious community wanted them to do. And they may also have believed themselves to be ill. It would be very, very easy if you were that frightened and that miserable to convince yourself of it. Yes, it might be a psychosomatic condition or it might have started with a real disease. Maybe they did have a really bad fever or they'd, you know, they'd eaten something disagreed with them and they were pained and they were upset. It could be any of those things.
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Kate Lister
As we've seen in the previous two episodes of this limited series, at the heart of all these destructive witch trials has been a man driven by ambition and a perceived religious calling, and Salem was no exception. Samuel Parris, as Marion mentioned, was the father and uncle of the two girls who supposed possession first raised the alarm of witches in Salem. It doesn't seem like it's a coincidence that this is happening in. Was it the ministers household? Like it's not happening with Bert the baker or down the road with the shoemaker. It's in the minister's house that they're suddenly being possessed by demonic forces.
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Marion Gibson
Yes, I. You know, I think their uncle and father, although he expressed his horror, was probably in many ways quite pleased because it showed, didn't it, that his was the godly house. You know, the children in his house were so godly that the devil himself had come round to attack them. And his position in the community was quite a difficult. He's quite a contentious man. He had fallings out with other people.
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Kate Lister
He was a bit of a jerk, wasn't he?
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Marion Gibson
A bit of a jerk is a quite nice summary of it. Yeah. Yeah. Not everybody liked him, and for good reason, I think. And so he'd found that they weren't willing to pay him exactly the salary that they'd agreed. They weren't giving him some of the perks and benefits that had been agreed. He said, you know, I think he needs to prove himself a godly man. And one of the ways that you can do that is, of course, by saying, oh, well, you know, I'm so godly devil that has come after my family, and I'm so godly that I know who the witches are in this community. Let me point them out.
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Kate Lister
As with all the witch trials we've looked at in this limited series, in Salem, the finger of blame is pointed at those at the bottom of society, the people who are least powerful and don't have the agency to do anything about it. In the case of little Betty and Abigail, they don't have to look too far.
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Marion Gibson
They pick on somebody else in the house. And that somebody else is a woman called something like Tituba. That's her name. She's a Native American person, and she probably comes from South America. She's certainly a servant, but it's likely she's also a slave as well. Her position in the society is really unclear, but there's some evidence of somebody with a very similar name being a child slave in Barbados, where Samuel Paris was once based. So it seems very likely that he bought this young woman, this child Tituba. She was called something like Tatiba or Tata Bay then. And then he shipped her north to Massachusetts with him. All the dates work out. This child slave is being held on an estate near the Paris estate on Barbados. And it seems really, really likely that's our woman. So she's been on a really long journey already. Now she's in her 30s and she's being held in this religious fundamentalist household where she does a lot of the domestic work. Yeah, she talks about washing the furniture in the room, she talks about doing cleaning and other tasks for the family. And she seems to have been some kind of nurse to the children, too. So they turn on somebody who's very close to them.
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Kate Lister
I hadn't quite put two and two together when I was looking into this, is that they must have actually been quite close. Those children must have grown up with Tituba in the house. This is somebody that they've known all of their life. And this is the person that they go, yeah, it was. It was her.
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Marion Gibson
Yeah, I'm afraid so. Which again, is a horrible thing, isn't it? And I think they pick on her partly because she's a person of another race. You know, she looks different to them. And they probably suspect, and Samuel Paris probably suspects, being the sort of man that he was, that she has some kind of non Christian religion, whether she's been born into that religion or she's kept any, any part of it with her during the course of her life, or whether she's converted to Christianity more or less by force and, you know, she's as good a Christian as they are, there's still room for that. Suspic. If you're the sort of person who is inclined to think other people might be pagans or devil worshippers or something you don't approve of. So I think they pick on her because of racial and religious reasons. But it's a pretty disgusting thing, isn't it?
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Kate Lister
And I would imagine if you are a child that has got so carried away with this thing that now you're being demanded to name somebody, you're probably going to name the weakest person that you can think of, because Tituba is the most. She doesn't have any power, does she, at all? To say, no, no, she doesn't.
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Marion Gibson
No, she doesn't. If she's an enslaved person, she has almost no legal status and she's got nowhere else to go. If she's come from somewhere else anyway. You know, she doesn't belong to the Native American people, even of that region. So she's just got nowhere. She is the most powerless person. Absolutely.
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Kate Lister
And what does Tituba do? I. No idea what I would do in this situation. If somebody turned around and said, you're a witch, I mean, it must have been terrifying. But what did Tituba do?
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Marion Gibson
She tries to resist to start with. And this is true of the other women who were accused as well later on. They often try to resist initially by saying what you know, what you think. You kind of hope you would say, I'm not a witch. You got this wrong. But of course, as time goes on, they very likely subject her to extensive questioning, all sorts of bullying. We know from some of the later cases that the suspects are questioned in rooms full of people, almost all of whom are hostile to them, which, you know, is a horrible dynamic for people to have to deal with. And we know from earlier cases in England that they were very keen on keeping people awake for long periods of time, keeping them moving up and down. It's horrible, isn't it? That's what we now call torture. They didn't think of it as torture. Torture was illegal. But they put people under tremendous physical and psychological pressure. And sleep deprivation does break down your resistance. It makes you more likely to agree with people who are suggesting things to you. So if they're saying, now, you are a witch, aren't you? You're going to tell me that you're a witch, aren't you? You've been a witch for years now. When did you first become a witch? If people are bullying you in that sort of way, quite likely to agree. And you're also likely to start hallucinating. So eventually you're in a sort of more or less purely imaginary state, very weakened. And unfortunately, Tituba does break down in the end and starts to admit, yes, I am a witch. She's asked over and over again, did you hurt the children? Did you hurt the children? All she has to do in the end is say, yes, yes, I did hurt the children. And then it all flows from there.
- [22:43]
Kate Lister
The long winter in Salem is starting to thaw, with the first flowers of spring pushing up through the muddy ground. The date is March 1, 1692, and Tituba is standing before a crammed meeting house in Salem, full of local authorities and anxious villagers. The same meeting house where, for the last three years, she has knelt in prayer with the Paris family. Now she must answer to the very serious charge of witchcraft. John Hawthorne, the Salem town justice, interrogates Tituba. At first, she denies hurting Elizabeth Paris and Abigail Williams. As with the first suspects, Hawthorne asks Tituba who she's employed to hurt the girls. This time, her answer shocks the hushed room.
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Marion Gibson
The devil came to me and bid me serve him.
- [23:37]
Kate Lister
It's a sobering moment as the village's worst fears are confirmed. And it's only the beginning. I'll be back after this short break. To make switching to the new Boost Mobile risk free, we're offering a 30 day money back guarantee. So why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile? Because you have nothing to lose. Boost Mobile is offering a 30 day money back guarantee. No, I asked why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile? Oh, wouldn't because you love wasting money as a way to punish yourself because your mother never showed you enough love as a child. Whoa, easy there. Yeah. Applies to online activations. Requires port in and auto pay customers. Activating in stores may be charged non refundable activation fees.
- [24:21]
Marion Gibson
Ever wonder what makes pandas so special?
- [24:23]
Kate Lister
Join us on Amazing Wildlife to find out.
- [24:27]
Marion Gibson
Giant pandas and their habitat are unique and beautiful and extraordinary representation of the natural world. And if you get that opportunity to sit and watch a panda eat bamboo, you will be mesmerized.
- [24:42]
Kate Lister
Listen to amazing wildlife on America's number.
- [24:44]
Marion Gibson
One podcast network, iHeart.
- [24:46]
Kate Lister
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- [25:32]
Marion Gibson
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- [26:29]
Kate Lister
John Hawthorne is relentless in his question of Tituba. No fewer than 39 questions in total are put to her, and she doesn't shy away from a single one of them. She lists terrifying creatures that she's seen, from a great black dog to a yellow bird and an animal that had wings and two legs and the head like a woman. She's the first person at Salem to mention flight, that she flew in the air upon a pole. The people gathered in the meeting house are stunned, stunned and chilled into silence and hanging on her every word. Tituba doesn't stop there. She accuses both Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne of being witches, too. And the three of them are sent to a jailhouse in Boston where they will await their trial. And in what is perhaps her most telling statement, Tituba says that her master, Samuel Paris, the holiest man in Salem, beat her into these confessions. With her clear and chilling confession, Tituba turbocharges the fear and panic around witchcraft in this isolated community, and many will pay for it with their lives.
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Marion Gibson
So she starts confessing that she's had this traffic with the devil. You know, the devil has come to her and tempted her and she's become a witch and she's given him her. Her soul and her body and. And so on and so on and so on. And once she started, she's also asked to name other people as well. It's horrible.
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Kate Lister
And she does, doesn't she? She named again two quite vulnerable people in the community.
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Marion Gibson
She does. And these are Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good. And Sarah Good is a particularly vulnerable person, as you say. She's essentially homeless. So she's drifting round in the community. She's sleeping in people barns, and they've been throwing her out for some time. You know, this being not a particularly sympathetic community to anybody in need, actually, despite their supposed Christian principles. So she's seen as a beggar, as a homeless person, as somebody who's problematic. Sarah Osborne, again, is a bit of a community outsider, too. She's married to somebody who the community tends to disapprove of. And she's. She's either elderly or real. There's probably something going on with her. These are kind of weak people, and they're people on the margins of society, like Tituba herself. So she names them, and the pool of suspects widens.
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Kate Lister
Now the levels of hysteria really start to escalate, with other girls in Salem joining in and making similar accusations.
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Marion Gibson
In the end, there's quite a broad group of, particularly girls and young women, although some other people as well. Mercy Lewis, Mary Warren, a whole bunch of girls get involved. It really is weird. I mean, it must have been terrifying to experience when you saw these young women screaming and writhing and pointing at people and saying, she's a witch. And, you know, she sent her animal familiar, you know, her demonic spirit creature to attack me, and I can see her ghost or spirit attacking me in the night. It's just terrifying, just terrifying. And it spreads, of course, as, as. As those people start to make more accusations, too.
- [29:45]
Kate Lister
Others are drawn in as evidence starts to be gathered. Terrifyingly, the burden of proof becomes flimsier and flimsier. In the first episode of this miniseries, we heard how, under the witchcraft act of 1604, children were allowed to provide evidence in witch trials such as the one we covered in Pendle. Now, in Salem, things get even wilder with something called spectral evidence being deemed valid.
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Marion Gibson
So spectral evidence is another thing that they import from England, but it's kind of frowned on under English law. And that's because what spectral evidence is is not saying, I saw the real body of Tituba or Sarah Osborne or whoever it is come and attack me, but I saw a specter of them. I saw something like a ghost or a spirit projection of theirs come and attack me. And that proves that they're a witch. And of course, when somebody's saying that about themselves, they don't need other people to see that. They can just point to empty air and say, I can see her. I can see her. Or I can see her spectral animal coming to. To attack me. That really just opens everything up, because anybody can say anything, and the legal profession doesn't really know what to do. Yes, you're right. There are standards of evidence. But when you started to say spectral evidence is part of that chain of accepted evidence, you really are stuffed children.
- [31:13]
Kate Lister
Saying this stuff like, yes, kids come out with all kinds of mad crap. But then, not only that. Like, they could say, titular is in jail by this point. Isn't she, like, locked up under lock and key? But they could say, yeah, but her spirit still came out and attacked me. As the panic in Salem kept spreading, the accusations kept on mounting. And shockingly, the number of people who confess to witchcraft increased, too. The reason, though, is down to yet another peculiarity of Salem's legal system.
- [31:42]
Marion Gibson
So this is a relatively unique thing. The legal systems that they're basing everything on. If you confess, you're guilty. You know, that seems fair, doesn't it, really? Within the context of the times, if you confess to being a witch, it is accepted that you know what you were doing and you are guilty. So, yes, okay. But at Salem, they get cold feet about executing people who confess because they say, well, you know, this is our neighbor, and we're Christians, aren't we? And if somebody's confessed and they say how sorry they are and they really repent, well, we could save them, couldn't we? We don't really want to execute people. So if they'll just admit that they've done this awful thing, that they are sinners, we could consider reclaiming them. We could give them away back, and that means they don't get executed. And it's. It's just this mad legal misstep. Because obviously, you know, you and I, looking at it here, are saying, immediately, yeah, but everybody will confess, and then they'll name other people, and then they'll confess. And soon, soon 200 to 300 people will be in jail, which is, of course, what happens. But at the time, they were just not thinking straight about it, and they were thinking, well, we can reclaim all of these witches and reintegrate them into the community.
- [33:00]
Kate Lister
The other thing that I didn't realize until quite recently is how small this community is. So, like, how many people were accused in total?
- [33:07]
Marion Gibson
In the end, it's really unclear. I mean, there's a huge pile of documents from this case, and it ranges across at least eight or nine different communities. So it spreads beyond Salem across Massachusetts. There's a whole range of document collections, and we think they're still not complete.
- [33:26]
Kate Lister
And there was only about 500 people in Salem Village, is that right? 500?
- [33:33]
Marion Gibson
Yeah.
- [33:33]
Kate Lister
It's like a school. It's smaller than a school. The amount of people that are in here. And when you think that they had 200 people in jail.
- [33:41]
Marion Gibson
Yes. These are scattered communities, too. So, you know, you're dealing with little hamlets, really. And yet they managed to find all of these people within their community that they suspect. It's just this awful picture of a tiny group of people feeling like they're under siege from the world, but yet completely untrusting of each other.
- [34:02]
Kate Lister
This frenzied behavior caused a trauma and a shock that hasn't been forgotten. And as much as we'd like to distance ourselves from the horrors of those events, ultimately they are behaviors that we've repeated since. Fast Forward to the 1950s and the Arthur Miller play the Crucible, which tells the story of Salem as a metaphor for a different kind of moral panic. Instead of witchcraft infecting American communities, it was communism.
- [34:29]
Marion Gibson
Arthur Miller and a lot of the people in his community, which is a community of playwrights and filmmakers and artists, are facing accusation that they are communists or have at some time been members of the Communist Party. And he fears, and he's right. In the end, he's going to be called in front of the committee that's investigating this, the House Un American Activities Committee.
- [34:52]
Kate Lister
Mad when I read that Communism is.
- [34:53]
Marion Gibson
Like un American, right?
- [34:56]
Kate Lister
Yes, un American activity.
- [34:58]
Marion Gibson
They do. And he thinks that, well, I'm going to get accused of this. And he starts thinking, hang on a minute, isn't this a bit like some of the American history that I know about the Salem witch trials? So he goes to Salem, he does a bit of research. He doesn't get everything right in the Crucible, his portrayal of the Salem witch trials, but he does use it as this really powerful metaphor for what's going on in his own time. The witch hunts against Communists.
- [35:25]
Kate Lister
What was going on? Because it was led by a guy called McCarthy. And people in the UK might have heard or wherever, but they might have heard about McCarthyism. But just give us a sense of the paranoia and why Communists?
- [35:41]
Marion Gibson
So this is Senator Joseph McCarthy. So he's a senator, he's a member of the U.S. senate, he's an elected representative for the American community. So he's a really powerful figure. And he gets this idea which a lot of Americans of his time also have, that their state, you know, their democratic, capitalist, industrialist state, as they see it, is being undermined by subversives who are communists. And they blame the Soviet Union, as it then was, for this. And they think, oh, this is foreign interference in our politics, in our military. You know, they also blame immigrants. They blame Jewish people as well, although that's one of the things they don't talk about quite as much. So the idea of the Jewish Communist. I know, you know, when you start to peel it back, you see all sorts of other persecution, discrimination going on here. And you know, Arthur Miller is a Jewish man, so he's particularly likely to be drawn into this. They blame them for this. So anybody who has socialist ideas, always kind of vaguely left leaning, really starts to get Suspected by Joseph McCarthy and he sets up this House on American Activities Committee, the House being the Senate, which he represents, and starts investigating people and Very quickly, it does become very much like the Salem witch trials, because hundreds of people are called in front of the committee, and they come from the arts, they come from the army, they come from all walks of American life. They're other politicians. They're just people who are being drawn in because somebody has named them to the committee and said, oh, you know, I think he's a bit of a lefty. We should definitely have a look at him. Or there's somebody the committee wanted to have a go at in the first place and has now found some reason to question them.
- [37:24]
Kate Lister
And you really do get a sense in his crucible, he gets those girls in Salem, the one that was screaming and shrieking and pointing fingers. That is very much within this McCarthy regime. Not that they had teenage girls doing this, but this kind of just like hysterical point. And the evidence that was being used against people, it wasn't spectral, but it's not far off.
- [37:47]
Marion Gibson
It's not far off. No, I mean, it's really about reputation. So it's very difficult, actually to prove that somebody is a member of a really quite secretive political party. You know, unless they. Unless they've had a tattoo or they've got a card on them saying that they're a member of the party, it's really hard to find evidence against them. And then you also face the question of, well, okay, so if they are, you know, this has been decided by the American state, this is a bad thing. But what have they done? Well, you know, you can't prove they're a spy because they're probably not. What harm have they actually done in the community? So it does become very much this process driven by reputation and finger pointing and somebody saying, oh, I saw him at a meeting. You know, I saw her reading this book. It's that kind of level of evidence we're dealing with, and it's not a million miles from spectral evidence at all.
- [38:41]
Kate Lister
And what happened to the people that were being accused of this, the people that were being dragged in? And it was, you know, stuff like when you're at university, you once picked up a book by Marx. That kind of crap, wasn't it? Like, what happens to them? Do they get let off if they confess?
- [38:56]
Marion Gibson
No, not really. I mean, it's not anything like the severe sanctions that we saw in the 17th century, obviously, but they essentially lose their. They lose their reputation, they lose their career. They're no longer employed. So say they're a screenwriter, they can't get work anymore anymore. Everything is taken from them. They're Forced to write under a pseudonym, if they're allowed to write at all. Say they're a journalist. Nobody's commissioning pieces from them anymore. Say they're an actor. Nobody will cast them. Say they're in the army. They will very likely be drummed out of the army and lose their career. So people lose their income, their livelihood, their personal reputation, their friends. Sometimes, you know, their families will fall apart. It is a really horrible thing to have happened to them.
- [39:41]
Kate Lister
And sadly, the McCarthy trials are just one example of a history that keeps repeating itself.
- [39:47]
Marion Gibson
I really thought, I'm a historian, right? I'd thought, oh, this is all in the past. You know, we really struggle to. To understand the witch trials of the early modern period, blah, blah, except that suddenly now we don't, because people are once again using the term witch hunting, contemporary politics, and they're throwing around the idea of the witch. And you realize around the world, too, people are literally being accused of witchcraft. You know, it's happening in southern Africa. It's happening in parts of India and the Indian subcontinent. It's happening in Indonesia. You realize this isn't a dead issue at all. I think Salem and the Salem witch trials, they have this really long legacy, and it's a legacy of persecution and mistrust. And it's about people hating each other for no particular reason, scapegoating each other and subjecting each other to what are essentially a kind of witch trial over and over again. It's really a horrifying legacy.
- [40:39]
Kate Lister
Still, we keep being drawn back to the mass hysteria of Salem, to revisit this dark and disturbing period in America's history. And it's worth emphasizing what a brief moment in their history this was. A mere 10 months had passed between the first winter's afternoon when Abigail and Betty played their innocent game of Venus glass, the chaos Tituba's examination caused and all the accusations, arrests, and trials that followed. Yet the human cost was significant.
- [41:09]
Marion Gibson
Ultimately, 19 people are hanged, and one person is particularly horribly pressed to death under a big weight of stones. And that's because he not only refuses to admit that he is a witch, but he also says, I'm not even going to enter a plea in this court. I'm not going to say either I am guilty or I'm not guilty, and the legal punishment for that is astonishing that you oppressed to death under a heap of stuff. So, yeah, some people were incredibly courageous or stubborn or both, and they did stand out against this. So the people who were executed were absolutely, as you say, people who just wouldn't admit that they were witches because they weren't witches and they thought the truth was more important than surviving this experience. You know, they were good Christians. Their faith meant that they did not want to lie and so they didn't not lie and they did not accuse their neighbours. They did the right thing, but that ultimately led to them being executed by hanging.
- [42:21]
Kate Lister
By the autumn of 1692, Salem and the surrounding area was gripped by a paradise, paranoia and fear. With approximately 150 witches having been arrested, the authorities struggled to cope with the caseload. All the while, Tituba sat in a Boston prison cell awaiting her trial. A place where doors were covered with iron spikes and passageways were described as being like the dark valley of the shadow of death. Another hard winter was starting to grip the northeast of America, with Puritan families once again doing their best to survive the brutal conditions. It wasn't Until May of 1693, after 15 months in prison, that Tituba faced a grand jury in Salem again. How strange it must have been for her to be back in that community, weighing up her case. Once more, the jury came to the decision not to indict her for witchcraft. On the back of her charges, the word ignoramus was written, meaning that the court found no truth in the charges. Her case was dismissed. By this time, the hysteria had largely passed and a sense of reason seemed to have returned to Salem. And while Tituba was the first to confess her witchcraft in Salem, she was the last suspect to be released for it. I'll be back back after this short break. Thanks for listening to Betwixt the Sheets. To get all history hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes, head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you could sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click.
- [44:05]
Marion Gibson
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- [44:08]
Kate Lister
Join us on Amazing Wildlife to find out.
- [44:12]
Marion Gibson
Giant pandas and their habitat are unique and beautiful and extraordinary representation of the natural world. And if you get that opportunity to sit and watch a panda eat bamboo, you will be mesmerized.
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Kate Lister
Listen to Amazing Wildlife on America's number.
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Marion Gibson
One podcast network, iHeart.
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Kate Lister
Open your free iHeart app and search Amazing Wildlife and start listening.
- [44:49]
Marion Gibson
She's actually quite lucky under the circumstances. And I do say under the circumstances, because obviously this woman's life is already an extremely difficult one. She does survive the trials because going back to what we talked about earlier, she confessed, didn't she?
- [45:07]
Kate Lister
Yeah.
- [45:08]
Marion Gibson
So she'd done what the community wanted and they wanted to save her, actually. And so because she confessed, and she continued to confess and to hold to her confession, and she'd named other people, she ends up spending about a year, over a year in jail. And at the end of that, it appears that she's freed. The evidence we have for that, there's a bill for the people who are in jail, you know, the charges for keeping them in jail for that period of time. There's this list, and there she is on the list and her debt is crossed out. So it appears very likely that she was freed. Nobody says that she died in jail. Unfortunately, Sarah Osborne, who we were talking about earlier as perhaps being quite a frail person, did die in jail. Some people did, but Tituba did not. And we think she was freedom. I don't know what happened to her afterwards. That's another thing I would very much like to know. But she did survive the witch trial.
- [46:08]
Kate Lister
With the witch trial hysteria dying down in Salem and sense seeming to have been regained, some reflection was allowed. In 1694, Samuel Paris, the central figure of the Salem Witch Trials, apologized to the people of Salem for the role he played in them. It was an apology he delivered in a sermon titled Meditations for Peace. However, he still placed the blame with the devil, saying that we ourselves were not capable to understand nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the powers of darkness and the Prince of the Air. His apology wasn't accepted by his congregation, many of whom were directly affected by the witch trials. In the face of continued opposition from local people, Paris was forced to leave salem altogether in 1697. Over a decade passed, and in 1711, the Massachusetts General Court sought to revise convictions and offered compensation to the victims of the Salem Witch Trials. Tituba was not one of them. Thank you for listening and thank you to Professor Marion Gibson for joining me. If you want to find out more about Marian's work, she's the author of a history in 13 trials. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us@betwixtistoryhit.com We've got episodes on President sex lives and women gladiators all coming your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets, the history of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound to make switching to the new Boost Mobile risk free. We're offering a 30 day money back guarantee. So why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile? Because you have nothing to lose. Boost Mobile is offering a 30 day money back guarantee. No, I asked why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile? Oh, wouldn't because you love wasting money as a way to punish yourself because your mother never showed you enough love as a child. Child. Whoa, easy there. Yeah. Applies to online activations. Requires port in and auto pay. Customers activating in stores may be charged non refundable activation fees. Professionals spend nearly half the work week on written communication, so focus is important. With Grammarly as your AI writing partner, focus and quickly get through work with relevant real time suggestions and it works across 500,000 apps and websites so you can sound more confident and persuasive wherever you write, right? 93% of professionals report that Grammarly helps.
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Marion Gibson
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Kate Lister
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Marion Gibson
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