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- [00:05]
John Hopkins
It's a Bitter Winter in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. The village is quiet, with folk wrapped up inside to fend off the icy cold. In the parsonage, a fire crackles in the hearth of a small downstairs room. It's the only heat in this dark little house, and right now its warm glow bathes the faces of the two pale young girls standing at the table beside it. This is the home of the very strict Puritan minister of Salem Village, Reverend Samuel Parris. This morning he's out attending to his flock, and in his absence, his 9 year old daughter Betty and her 11 year old cousin, Abigail Williams are up to something they know they shouldn't be. They're practicing a spot of fortune telling, speaking in whispers. They're on high alert to any sound indicating the Reverend's return. Because what they're doing, seeking knowledge outside of God's will, is deemed so sinful that it's akin to talking to the devil. But for the girls, this is important one. While they may both be very young, their future is already more or less set in stone. They'll be expected to marry and have children just like most women of the village. And one of the few glimmers of excitement in that future is the uncertainty of what kind of husband they might get. Will he be handsome? Rich? Kind? That's what the girls, giggling and jostling each other, are hoping to find out. This morning, with the Reverend Paris out in the village and Betty's mother tucked up in her sick bed upstairs, the two girls are unsupervised, save for the Caribbean slave woman Tituba, who's preparing lunch in the kitchen now, whispering in nervous excitement. Betty places a glass of water on the table while Abigail cracks an egg and carefully separates the yolk before dropping the white into the water. The girls lean in, their eyes wide in the flickering firelight. They watch as the albumen swirls and twists in the glass. Rumor has it that the white will form into shapes to show them what their future holds. Is that a house? A coin? A tiny horse? But then Abigail sees something that makes her recoil in fear. Something she's seen before when her own parents were lowered into the ground. A coffin. Screaming, the girls rush from the room, clattering past Tituba, who's come hurrying to see what all the commotion is about. In the ominous silence, Tituba sets about cleaning up the message, suspicious of what the girls have been doing. No good can come of this. And she is right to be concerned, because this incident will launch an outbreak of Unsettling symptoms spreading like wildfire through the village. What follows will change all of their lives forever. For more than two centuries, between the late 1400s and early 1700s, a terror of witches gripped Europe. From Scotland to Spain, thousands of people were accused, tortured and executed, finding themselves the victims of mistrust, religious extremism, vindictiveness and panic. In what is now Germany, entire villages were wiped out. In England, self proclaimed witchfinders roamed the countryside, rooting out supposed servants of the devil. By the end of the 17th century, as Europe was emerging from the apocalyptic wars of religion which claimed the lives of millions, new, more sceptical governments reasserted their control and witch fever began to die down. But just as the hysteria was fading in Europe, it crossed the Atlantic. And in 1692, in New England, it took hold of a small Puritan settlement in Massachusetts. What happened in Salem was not the largest witch hunt in history, but it's possibly the most infamous. But how did the actions of a group of young Girls lead to 22 executions and over 200 more accusations of witchcraft? Why did Salem believe the devil had arrived on its doorstep? And how did a family grudge, a minister's intransigence, and a rising tide of fear lead this small town to tear itself apart? I'm John Hopkins from from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of the Salem witch trials in 1692. Massachusetts is not yet America and its people not yet Americans. They are Englishmen and women in exile, settlers on the frontier of a vast and untamed continent. Their world is small, isolated towns, simple wooded homes, and a relentless struggle against the hostile wilderness that surrounds them. Winters are harsh, supplies are scarce, and the constant threat of conflict with Native Americans ever present. This is New England, home to the strict Protestants who left old England with a dream of a new, pure society. The Puritans, as they are known, believe they are God's chosen people. To them, faith is not just a belief system, but the very foundation of their existence. A force that shapes laws, families, and every aspect of life. Theirs is a world where every failed crop, every sickness, every attack is not just a test of faith, but a sign of the devil at work. Kathleen Howe is an award winning historian and novelist and author of the Penguin Book of Witches.
- [06:46]
Kathleen Howe
The Puritans occupied a worldview that was absolute to their mind. Either you accepted the word of God as they understood it to be, or you were of the devil. You were devilish. There is this sense of a godly community besieged on all sides by devils. In the wilderness. So there is this sense of isolation. There's a sense of religious extremism.
- [07:21]
John Hopkins
The deeply puritan village of Salem may be small, but tensions here run high. Land disputes and family rivalries abound. And arguments leading to bloodshed among neighbors are not uncommon. Recently, something new has been added to the unhappy mix in the form of a new minister. Reverend Samuel Parris. A fire and brimstone kind of preacher. His church is bare and austere, his sermons long and thunderous. But the community is already divided in its support of him.
- [07:56]
Kathleen Howe
Samuel Paris had had trouble making his way. He kind of made himself irritating to the congregation. He had demanded that they give him the deed to the parsonage where he was living. Like he wanted them to just give him a house to keep, not to just stay in. While he was working there, he had demanded they pay for more firewood for him. In general, he felt like he wasn't getting enough respect, he wasn't getting enough pay, he wasn't getting enough privilege.
- [08:23]
John Hopkins
With his harsh sermons stoking tensions in the already fractured village, the place is ripe for suspicion and paranoia to creep in. And when it does, Paris is quick to add fuel to the fire. In January 1692, just days after trying to foretell her future, young Betty Paris falls strangely ill. At first, she's just withdrawn, maybe a little preoccupied. She is distracted during daily prayers and grows agitated with no obvious cause. But now her symptoms become more pronounced. Spasms, sudden outbursts, and the occasional scream overwhelm the child from out of nowhere. And when her cousin Abigail, who has lived with the family as a maid since her parents passed away, begins to exhibit similar behaviors, the worry really sets in. The girls go into convulsions. They scream, they bark like dogs. They hide under furniture and claim to see spectral figures attacking them. Abigail's condition is the more pronounced and dramatic, but over the following weeks, the episodes become more intense.
- [09:41]
Kathleen Howe
So at one point, Abigail in her fits, is running around in the kitchen, flapping her arms and saying, wish, wish, wish. And saying she's going to fly up the chimney, which to me Sounds like an 11 year old girl being silly. Being an 11 year old girl.
- [10:03]
John Hopkins
In a strict puritan household, the concept of childhood has no value. Child Children are merely small adults who must be harshly corrected. And yet, rather than see the girl's behavior as childish play acting, the austere Reverend Paris discerns something altogether darker. And he is not alone. In the middle of February, a local doctor visits the house. Having failed to identify any known illness, he declares the girls to be under an evil hand. In puritan New England, these words can mean only one thing. Witchcraft. The home of a minister is supposed to be a place of moral strength, not a battleground for the devil. And as a result of this terrifying diagnosis, all hell breaks loose. News of the girl's predicament travels quickly, reaching the ears of a neighbor, Mary Sibley, who is well practiced in the folk remedies from old England. She has an idea of how to identify exactly who is bewitching the girls. Without consulting the Reverend, she instructs his slave woman, Tituba, in the practice of making a special biscuit known as a witch cake.
- [11:26]
Kathleen Howe
To make a witchcake, you take urine from the afflicted girls, you mix it up with a rye meal, you bake it into a hard biscuit, and feed the biscuit to the dog. And there were a couple of ways that this folk magic practice was thought to function. So it was believed at that time that the act of bewitchment created a kind of sympathetic relationship between the witch and the victim. So the two modes of thought with the witchcake, one held that perhaps that would cause the bewitchment to travel out of the girl's bodies and be taken into the dog. The other rationale was that by using a bit of the girl's bodies, their urine, and then having it munched up by the dog, that would cause the witch to feel her body munched up, and she would therefore release the girls from bewitchment.
- [12:21]
John Hopkins
Sadly, the dog simply eats the cake and offers no further enlightenment. Rather than breaking the spell and curing the girls of their devilment, the witch cake simply serves to heighten local interest in the situation. Within a day of the diagnosis, a third girl starts exhibiting the same strange symptoms. 12 year old Ann Putnam Jr. Is a friend of Abigail and Betty's and the daughter of one of the more powerful Salem families who are big supporters of Reverend Paris. Anne also shows signs of possession and bewitchment. And it doesn't stop there. A fourth case now emerges. Elizabeth Hubbard, a 17 year old girl who lives with the doctor who first diagnosed the witchcraft. Though she's family to the doctor as an orphan, she lives in his house as a servant, attending to chores, cleaning, fetching water and preparing meals. Like the similarly orphaned Abigail, who is a servant in the Paris household, Elizabeth's life is one of quiet obedience, hard work, and little attention. Suddenly, she finds herself at the heart of the drama.
- [13:32]
Kathleen Howe
If you are a child and your whole job is to obey everyone, all the time. And all of a sudden all the big important grownups around you are saying, oh, don't worry, we're all going to pay attention to you and we're all going to pray for you. And you just sit down. I know you're, you are suffering. You're somehow in the grips of some sort of devilish distemper and all we want to do is help you. I mean, like, how rewarding of that behavior is that kind of attention?
- [14:02]
John Hopkins
As a young woman rather than a preteen girl, Elizabeth's sudden affliction carries more weight than the others. And when she claims to recognize the demons that torment her as manifestations of people from the village, the seeds of the terrible consequences to come are sown.
- [14:25]
Paul McGann
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- [14:57]
John Hopkins
Titanic Ship of Dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.
- [15:19]
Kathleen Howe
I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.
- [15:23]
John Hopkins
Titanic Ship of Dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts as more girls join the ranks of the afflicted. Racked by convulsions and haunted by spectral visitors who pinch and bite them. No one in the frightened community questions the diabolical cause and if witches are at work, they must be rooted out and destroyed. As February nears its end, the girls fits are common knowledge. They are interrupting sermons and causing them to fall to the ground in the streets. It's too much for a quiet, God fearing community to bear. Someone must be to blame and the girls find themselves under increasing pressure to talk. People want names. It's Betty who breaks first. Her father, the Reverend may have publicly denounced Mary Sibley's use of the witch cake to identify the culprit, but he is still determined to find out who is tormenting his daughter. Betty, perhaps swayed by the furora around her, now fully believes that she has been cursed. Her sleep is disturbed, her strength sapped and her days filled with anxiety. She confesses to her father about the divination trick with the egg and the glass. His resulting fury finally pushes her to make the first accusation. Cornered and afraid, she has no choice but to point the finger at someone, anyone, who could have done this to her. The person she names is Tituba. The enslaved woman, low in status, different in appearance and unusual in culture, fits the bill perfectly. Besides, she's not even a churchgoer. She still holds to her Barbadian belief system, steeped in folklore and superstition. Abigail is quick to throw her weight behind Betty's claim, as are Ann Putnam Jr. And Elizabeth Hubbard. But though Tituba's fate is now sealed, the girls go on to accuse two other women from the village. Sarah Good is a homeless woman with a four year old daughter in tow and a baby on the way.
- [17:47]
Kathleen Howe
Sarah Goode is a beggar. She has not been seen at meeting for want of clothes, which that doesn't mean that she didn't have a cute outfit to wear. It meant that she's dressed in rags that were considered indecent to wear to church. She probably has some sort of mental illness because she is considered to be kind of quarrelsome, difficult. She begs from door to door.
- [18:14]
John Hopkins
An outsider with no one to protect her. Sarah Good is perhaps as obvious a target as Tituba. Her ragged appearance makes her seem frightful and she often snaps at the children when they rush up to mock her. The third woman they name, Sarah Osborne, just like the other two, doesn't meet the expectations of Puritan life. Though elderly and frail, her distant, odd manner makes her a suspicious character in the village. Not only that, she has a scandal. She was originally married to a wealthy landowner related to the powerful Putnam family. She inherited his land when he died. But before their two young sons were old enough to inherit, she married again and ceded the land to her new husband, a former indentured servant. The idea that a woman of her standing could marry so low was bad enough, but to squander the family land like that was unforgivable. With a long standing resentment simmering between Sarah Osborn and the Putnam family, it's hardly a surprise that when it comes to accusing witches, hers is one of the first names to fall from Ann Putnam Jr's lips. Though all different, the three women have one thing in common. They are outsiders.
- [19:41]
Kathleen Howe
Though there was certainly a sense that early on, the accusations are extended to women who are vulnerable to those accusations, to women who are out of step with their culture, who pose a threat in some way to their culture, and who are not in an economic or social position to really capably defend themselves.
- [20:02]
John Hopkins
The question now is what Reverend Paris should do about these fevered allegations. With the help of the Putnam family, he turns to the civil court of nearby Salem Town, the more cosmopolitan urban center to which Salem Village is an outlying farming community. Unlike Reverend Paris, who only has the power to preach about right and wrong, the magistrates from Salem Town, John Hathorn and Jonathan Corwin, hold the authority to actually investigate and prosecute crimes, including the felony of witchcraft. Hathorn is a wealthy landowner and staunch Puritan who sees himself as a defender of the faith. And Corwin comes from a powerful mercantile family closely connected to the region's elite. As far as Paris and the Putnams are concerned, they are the perfect choices to lead the inquiry. On February 29, 1692, they receive formal complaints about the three women from Salem Village. Arrest warrants are issued, and the very next day, Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne are taken into custody and brought before the magistrates in the Salem meeting house for question. Hathorne has made a long career of being a ruthless prosecutor, and from the start, his interrogations are aggressive, demanding that the women confess. Sarah Good, with her reputation for being quarrelsome, vehemently denies the charges. She points instead to Sarah Osborn. But when Osborn also pleads her innocence, Hathorne's attentions turn to Tituba.
- [21:51]
Kathleen Howe
Tituba is questioned two times, and first she denies it, and then they question her the next day. And there's some evidence suggesting that she was beaten in between. And in her confession the next day, a couple of important things happen. She's coerced to confess. She says that there is a conspiracy of witches in the town.
- [22:16]
John Hopkins
Tituba's confession is extraordinary. She admits to seeing and speaking with the devil, who she says threatened to hurt her unless she harmed the children. But she goes further, claiming there is a network of witches in Salem, at least four or five, one of whom is a man. While she can't name them specifically, she identifies Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn as being the ones who are using their spirits to torment the girls.
- [22:44]
Kathleen Howe
So we have Paris fanning this sort of paranoia. We have an isolated frontier community. We have adolescents living in a tremendously hierarchical and high pressure environment. And then we have a woman with no social power whatsoever who's completely vulnerable, an enslaved worker threatened into saying, yes, the accusations are true. I didn't want to be a witch, but they made me one. And I don't know how many witches there are. Which introduces the idea of a conspiracy of undefined concourtions.
- [23:24]
John Hopkins
Tituba's admission confirms everyone's worst fears. Witches are real. They're working together and they are right here in Salem. Good. And Osborn's denials mean nothing to Hathorn. They, along with Tituba, are interrogated for a full week before being thrown into prison to await trial. But with the idea of a conspiracy now taking root, the witch hunt is only just beginning. More children start showing the same symptoms as Betty, Abigail, Anne Jr. And Elizabeth. And when they start naming new suspects, their allegations now carry a lot more weight. One of those now named is Martha Corey. She and her second husband Giles have been full church members in Salem for some time. But Martha is still an outsider to many and one of the more scandalous women in Salem. Known for her sharp tongue and strong will. Martha upset the community when during her first marriage, she gave birth to a baby boy whose skin tone more closely resembled that of a native American than of her white skinned husband. In Salem, adultery is scandalous enough, but to commit it with a non white man is an outrage of an entirely different order. She was kicked out of her marital home, leaving her legitimate son with her former husband. Despite later remarrying to another long standing Salem farmer and landowner, Giles Corey, and becoming a church member, she remains the subject of much gossip. To make matters worse, she's been heard dismissing the girl's fits as nonsense and mocking the idea of witch trials. That alone is enough to pick her out as the next person. Anne Putnam Jr. Indicts. By mid March, Martha Corey is arrested. Her husband Giles will also be accused within the month. Then there is Rebecca Nurse. At 71 years old, she is a much loved pillar of the community. A pious elderly woman with a large family. But she has also been locked in a long standing dispute with the Putnam family over land. As such, it's unsurprising that Anne Jr. Now points the finger at her too. Next to fall under suspicion is Bridget Bishop. Unlike Nurse, she has always stood apart from Salem's strict puritan norms. Twice married, she often wears a bright red bodice rather than the sombre blacks of the other women. She owns a tavern and holds drinking parties late into the night. What's more, she has been suspected of witchcraft before. By late April, the jail cells are full, but more suspects are being arrested daily, including the former Salem minister, George Burroughs. The sheer scale of the crisis is threatening to overwhelm the local magistrates. Salem needs a fast Track legal process to see these people brought to trial. In May 1692, Governor William Phips establishes the court of Oyer and Termina, meaning to hear and determine. Presiding is Chief Justice William Stoughton, another staunch Puritan, he is deeply convinced of the Devil's power. He is Harvard educated and studied theology in England. Now he is Lieutenant Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a hugely respected political figure. Alongside his magistrates he will be guided by a body of jurors, predominantly landowners from Salem and its environs. But these are no ordinary trials. Evidence is scarce, relying almost entirely on the so called victim's testimony. And the girls who also sit in to watch every trial, make absolutely sure there is no doubt in the judges minds.
- [27:32]
Kathleen Howe
They would examine the afflicted girls. They would take a statement from an afflicted girl who would say, oh goody, so and so sends her shape in at the. Her shape in the window at the night to torture me. And so then that witch would be summoned and the judges would say, this girl says that you send your shape in at night to torture her. What do you say to that? She would say oh, I don't know anything about that. That wasn't me, I didn't do that. But then in the course of her speaking, the group of afflicted girls would respond. Their bodies would shake. They might scream, they might say that they saw a yellow bird sitting on a rafter. They might say that they feel like they're being pricked hens.
- [28:14]
John Hopkins
The girls repeat the performance at every examination, sometimes collapsing in apparent agony and claiming to see witches familiars like a bird, a dog or a wolf. Or spectral versions of the defendants themselves who choke, prick and stab them. The courts, absorbed by these dramatic scenes, accept this so called spectral evidence as fact. The first to stand trial under this new system is Bridget Bishop. Sure enough, when she is brought out, the girls begin their routine, collapsing in fits when Bridget speaks. They claim her words cause them physical pain. Even so, when the judges press her for a confession, Bridget defiantly denies any wrongdoing. But then comes the damning testimony of her neighbors. They claim she's cursed their crops, killed their livestock, even appeared as a ghostly specter in the night.
- [29:14]
Kathleen Howe
Witches come along and make butter not come together, they make beer go bad, they make a cow stop giving milk. You know, they make a pot fall and break like it is so small, it is so domestic, it is so about food or health or family. It's meager the kinds of crimes that witches are accused of committing. And it's because of the difficulty of scratching out an existence for most people in the 1690s.
- [29:48]
John Hopkins
But in Salem's cauldron of fear, these otherwise small acts take on new significance. They are the life changing curses of an agent of the devil. When a search of Bishop's home reveals handmade fabric dolls, a kind of effigy known as a poppet, the case is sealed. Whether the dolls were planted, as Bridget swears they were, is irrelevant. The court has all the evidence it needs. The verdict is swift. Bridget Bishop is found guilty of witchcraft, and on June 10, 1692, she is taken to Gallows hill and hanged. She becomes the first to be officially executed in the Salem witch trials. She will by no means be the last. As the trials get into full swing, neighbors turn on each other, drawing on distant memories of past disagreements to add weight to the afflicted girl's wild claims.
- [30:53]
Kathleen Howe
If years later, Sarah Goode were on trial as a witch and I were brought up to testify, I would say 10 years ago, Sarah Goode came to my house and asked me for bread, and I sent her away, and she said I was gonna regret it. And later that day, I broke a trencher.
- [31:09]
John Hopkins
These personal testimonies and old grievances now count as vital evidence against the accused. But at the same time, some defendants are so well loved that their friends and neighbors refuse to watch on without standing up and testifying to their good nature. Rebecca Nurse is one such case.
- [31:41]
Paul McGann
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- [32:09]
John Hopkins
It'S June 29, 1692. The Meeting House in Salem is packed to the rafters. The whole village has turned out to see what will become of old Rebecca Nurse. One of her neighbors presses inside, waiting nervously to learn her friend's fate. Though it's uncomfortably hot in here, there's a cold malevolence, too, A silent baying for blood that's become all too common in Salem since these trials began. The girls are all gathered in their usual place in the makeshift courthouse. Looking at them now, Rebecca Nurses neighbor sees something hard beneath their youthful expressions. Not fear, but a hint of the power they hold. Murmurs swell and then die as Rebecca Nurse is led in, Heavy shackles weighing down her frail limbs. Her simple dress hanging loose on her thin frame, she is a grandmother, a woman of God, a matron among them. She doesn't belong here. And though many in the room are here to support her, the girls react immediately. Ann Putnam screams as though burned. Abigail screams that the devil is beside her. Another girl wails that Rebecca's specter is pinching her. A ripple of doubt and uncertainty washes through the crowd. Standing before the judges, Rebecca pleads her innocence, her voice clear and strong despite her age and terror. And then, one by one, others step forward. Some condemn her, but many have come in her defense. More than 39 of them, the neighbor included, have signed a petition swearing to her good nature. And for once, the groundswell of support seems to be giving the jury pause for thought. They retire to deliberate, and by the time they return, Rebecca looks fit to drop. Even the afflicted girls have fallen into silent anticipation. And then comes the verdict. Rebecca Nurse is declared not guilty. For one glorious moment, the tension breaks. Sense has prevailed. Relief washes over the neighbor, over everyone who supported Rebecca, over everyone except the girls. Their screams fill the silence as they double down on their fits, collapsing in convulsions, clawing at their skin, grabbing their throats, claiming they see Satan himself smiling. As the room erupts in chaos, the mood among the magistrates shifts. This is worse than anything they've seen so far. So now William Stoughton, the chief justice, addresses the jury, telling them they may reconsider. A hush falls. The jurors whisper among themselves before turning back to Stoughton. This time, their verdict is shouted. Guilty as she is condemned to hang. The old woman's protestations are swallowed by the noise of the crowd. Her neighbor stares on helplessly. She spoke out and prayed that reason would prevail. But now, as they lead Rebecca away, she says nothing, because if she dares speak out, she could be next. On the 3rd of July, Rebecca Nurse is led into the meeting house again, this time for her public excommunication. A woman of strongly held beliefs, she is certain that going to her judgment before God after being cast out of the church, will mean eternal damnation to her. It's a fate worse than death. A little over two weeks later, she and four other convicted women, the beggar, Sarah Good included, are carted through the town past jeering crowds, all the way to the execution site. Even in her final moments, Rebecca Nurse remains composed. I am innocent as the child unborn, she says, as the noose is prepared, but must go to what I am called, Sarah Good, whose baby has by now been born, but tragically did not survive remains defiant to the last. When Stoughton calls on her to admit her guilt before she's hanged, she sneers at him.
- [37:08]
Kathleen Howe
She says, I'm no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink.
- [37:20]
John Hopkins
And somewhat prescient those words are, because William Stoughton will go on to die of a haemorrhage a few years later. But not before more are hanged by his hand in Salem. For the so called witches, there's none of the mercy of a quick death. Without proper gallows, they hang for minutes, slowly strangled by their own weight. After the execution, Rebecca Nurse's family secretly retrieve her body from the shallow grave where she has been dumped, burying her instead on their family land. It is her conviction and execution which sends the biggest shock waves through the village. If a pious, God fearing woman like her isn't safe, no one is. Where will it all end? The summer of 1692 sees the trials wear on. But though the alleged victims still command the courtroom, falling into fits and claiming to see the specters of the defendants, doubt is creeping in.
- [38:23]
Kathleen Howe
There's this sense after Rebecca Nurse's hanging that some people can't even believe that it's happened, that they actually really did it. It's sort of after that point that the accusations really start to that I will shoot out of control.
- [38:40]
John Hopkins
Now, rather than just outsiders and outcasts, the accused are prominent, affluent and respected members of the community. In August, the court sends John Proctor, a wealthy and outspoken critic of the trial and notable enemy of the Putnam family, to the gallows. He hangs with three other men, including the preacher George Burroughs, who stuns those in attendance by reciting the Lord's Prayer just before his death, something that had been considered impossible for a witch. People begin to question. If the trials can so easily threaten those with influence and resources, then perhaps this is not a righteous purge after all. Perhaps it is something rather more political, more about removing rivals, opponents or enemies than about battling the devil. In Salem, some prominent families have by now fled in fright or disgrace, while whispers of injustice grow louder. But though public confidence in the process is beginning to crumble, the trials have not yet run their course. And they're about to claim their next victim in the most excruciating way. It's September 19, 1692. In a scrubby field opposite the jail, a young man in his 20s strains as he carries a heavy rock towards where a small group stand in a half circle, watching solemnly as a most macabre spectacle Unfolds. Flat on his back on the dry, bare ground is a farmer in his early 80s, Giles Corey. His arms are splayed and across his chest lies a rough plank of wood. On top of the splintering board is a pile of heavy rocks. Because Giles has been accused of witchcraft and for 48 hours now, Sheriff Corwin has been demanding a plea from him. Every time Giles refuses, another weighty stone is added to the board, the aim of this awful torture to literally press the plea from the suspect. Now Sheriff Corwin stands angrily leering down at his suspect. With a frustrated nod, he tells the young man to add the rock to the pile. It lands with a sickening thud. The youth winces at the impact, the wheeze of the old man's frail lungs as he struggles to draw a breath. He can see, they can all see, that Giles Corey can't take much more. His skin is pale gray, his lips vivid blue. Sheriff Corwin leers over him to once again demand a plea. And as Giles opens his mouth, the young man silently prays for him to just give him what he wants to get this terrible ordeal over with. But instead, the old farmer's eyes flash with fire and all he says is more wait. Corwin bares his teeth, livid. They all know the way this is going. If Giles is tried, he'll be found guilty and his considerable estate will be seized. But if he doesn't plead at all, he can't be tried in the first place. Giles knows he's going to die either way, but this defiance of his is the only chance he has to ensure his sons will inherit his estate. It's an intolerable prospect for the Sheriff, who has been getting fat recently off the property of those tried for witchcraft. He wants Giles land and he'll do whatever it takes to get the plea that will guarantee it. As the young man prepares himself for the grim task of adding another rock, he's surprised to see Corwin raise a hand to stop him. Perhaps the Sheriff has had enough. But no. Sneering with menace, Corwin slowly raises a foot, then steps up onto the board. Standing astride the rock pile, he sways, shifting his weight deliberately, again, demanding a plea. There is a collective gasp from the small group of onlookers. Someone utters a prayer and the young man looks away. Unable to bear witness to this cruelty any longer. Brutal as his killing is, Giles Corey dies with no conviction of witchcraft to his name. His estate is shared among his sons and spared from the grasping hands of Sheriff Corwin and the state. Importantly, his defiance leaves a sour taste in the mouths of his accusers.
- [43:55]
Kathleen Howe
Everyone in his community would have known who Giles Corey was. He defied the court's ability or authority to charge him, so he refused to enter a plea. He refused to recognize the court's authority over him.
- [44:13]
John Hopkins
After the hanging of the much loved Rebecca Nurse. The pressing of Giles Corey is a watershed moment in terms of the villagers attitude to the trials. And yet the gallows are still claiming victims. Three days after the pressing, on September 22, seven women and one man are hanged on Gallows Hill. Among them is Giles Corey's wife, Martha, who had refused to attend the previous trials, called the girls liars and spoke out against the whole notion of witchcraft. Now Martha dies alongside Mary Eastie, sister of Rebecca Nurse, who begged the court to see reason. With them are six other innocent souls. With their execution, the Salem death toll rises to 22. 19 hanged, two perishing in prison and one crushed to death by stones. More than 200 souls have been accused, their lives shattered beyond repair, betrayed by neighbors and abandoned by friends. Many are still awaiting trial and some have already been found guilty and are nearing execution. But the scale of the death toll and the extent of allegations are becoming too unwieldy for the wider community to stomach. Among those growing uneasy with the trials are Increase and Cotton Mather, two of the most influential ministers in New England. Cotton, young and eager, is a defender of the court's work. In fact, he's even working on a book, Wonders of the Invisible World, in which he argues that witches are real and that spectral evidence can and should be admissible in court. But his father, Increase Mather, is far less certain. The sheer number of executions horrifies Mather Sr. This is no longer justice, but chaos. He publicly condemns the use of spectral evidence, saying it were better that 10 suspected witches should escape than that one innocent person should be condemned. He appeals to Governor Phips directly, urging him to put an end to the madness. The Governor has recently been away on a brutal military campaign in Quebec as part of King William's ongoing war against the French. Now, on his return, he finds his colony in the grip of chaos. His special court has executed dozens of people, often on nothing but the frenzied claims of children. But instead of purging Salem of evil, the process has left it hollowed, afraid and divided. Something has to change. And change it does, when finally suspicion reaches into the home of the governor himself.
- [47:21]
Kathleen Howe
Apparently, it is only after the accusations reached the governor's wife that they were finally stopped that they reached too high, their reach exceeded their grasp. But also because it seemed like it was just. It wasn't coming to any kind of conclusion. Like, it was. It was. It was no longer making sense. In a way, it was too expensive. It was affecting too many people. It was attracting too much attention. And so by that point, there were a couple hundred people in prison. I mean, like a substantial percentage of the population, and that's not counting the people who had already been put to death.
- [48:00]
John Hopkins
First. Phips halts the use of spectral evidence, acknowledging that it has led to miscarriages of justice. Without these intangible, unreliable allegations as evidence, the court has very little on which to convict. Cases quickly fall apart. Trials collapse. Then he disbands the court of Oya and Terminer, completely removing the authority of the judges, many of whom have been far too fervent in their pursuit of witches. In its place, the governor creates a new court to review the cases, effectively ensuring that no more innocent people are condemned. The executions are over, and the panic fades away. And yet, even as many are questioning the validity of the whole process, some still argue that they have done the right thing by the community of Salem.
- [48:55]
Kathleen Howe
So Cotton Mather publishes his account, Wonders of the Endless World, justifying what they have done, trying to claim that Satan came to Salem and that they dealt with it and that it was this horrible tragedy and travesty. But the community solved the problem. Well, a couple years after that, a skeptic named Robert Califf published More Wonders of the Invisible World, which was his takedown of Cotton Mather's account of the Salem witch trials. So very early on, there is a debate over the meaning of this crazy thing that had happened.
- [49:27]
John Hopkins
Caliph's book lays bare the cruelty and mistakes of the trials. But amid his criticism, he also calls for accountability, urging the people of Salem to learn from their mistakes. In the years that follow, some, like one of the magistrates, Samuel Sewell, publicly acknowledge their role in the trials. He writes a heartfelt apology, admitting that his judgments were wrong and that the trials were a grave injustice. Although he stops short of saying that witchcraft does not exist. Another significant apology comes from Ann Putnam.
- [50:14]
Kathleen Howe
Jr. Ann Putnam Jr. Winds up being the accuser who was the most fatal. She accused the most number of people who wound up being put to death than anyone else. She stands up in front of her congregation and says that she wants to lie in the dust for the part that she played in the witch trials. And at that time, when that happens, she is in her mid-20s and she's still unmarried. So it suggests that her life has kind of gone off the rails because of her involvement in this thing.
- [50:47]
John Hopkins
In 1702, the Massachusetts General Court declares the trials to be illegal and overturns the convictions of those sentenced in 1711. Nearly 20 years later, a formal act of restitution is passed to compensate some of the families of those affected. Both the apologies and the exonerations come too late to heal all the wounds. But the end of the trials at least marks the last ever execution for witchcraft on US soil. What will never be known for sure is why the girls making the allegations continued to do so, even as neighbor after innocent neighbor went to the gallows. Through a modern lens, we might see their actions as driven by a particularly vindictive adolescent herd mentality. But without sharing their genuinely held fear of the occult, a true understanding of their motivations is impossible. Even so, historians and psychologists now suggest the girls may have suffered from mass psychogenic illness, a subconscious response to the terror, stress and religious anxiety of Puritan New England. The Salem witch trials did not end with the final execution. They live on, woven into the fabric of history as a cautionary tale. In the 1950s, Arthur Miller's landmark play the Crucible immortalizes the hysteria, using it as an allegory for the hunting down of Communists, so called McCarthyism, at a time when accusations could destroy lives. Even the term witch hunt has become synonymous with obsessive judicial persecution, a reminder of how panic and power can override common sense, even legal processes. And though similar trials continued elsewhere in the world, the events of 1692 stand apart from all other witch hunts. Caught in a unique confluence of factors, Salem became a perfect storm of fear, faith and frontier violence, and lives on as a stark reminder of how fragile justice can be when paranoia takes hold.
- [53:17]
Kathleen Howe
The Salem Witch Trials is a historical anomaly that we somehow cannot let go. And the reason that we can't let it go is because it requires us, in America anyway, to question some of the assumptions that we like to hold about ourselves. It challenges our wide held belief that we exist to support religious freedom, for instance. It makes us question the fact that we nominally say that we are committed to helping disempowered people in our communities. You know, it is a moment where 19 people were put to death by the state following rigid and strict legal principles in a gross miscarriage of justice. And you know, it occurs at this origin point for the country where we live today.
- [54:16]
John Hopkins
Next time on Short History Hub, we'll bring you a short history of VE Day.
- [54:24]
Unknown
The generations who lived through that time. They saw things that we can only imagine now. And they learned things. They learned the importance of standing up for freedom and not backing down and really standing by democracy. They learned what racism leads to. They saw it. If you don't stand up to racism and bigotry, it ends in the concentration camps. They saw this. They knew that. But we have to remind ourselves of it every day. That's what VE day teaches us, I think, to stand up for democracy, to stand up against racism, and to stand together with our allies rather than constantly sowing discord amongst each other.
- [55:05]
John Hopkins
That's next time.
- [55:12]
Paul McGann
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