When were you taught about the Salem Witch Trials? 5th grade maybe?
While you were learning about the witch trials, I was living in Mexico, learning all about Porfirio Díaz and Benito Juarez.
All to say, there’s a reason I don’t know basic info — like this tidbit, that I discovered yesterday:
No witches (accused or actual) were burned at the stake
during the Salem Witch Trials.
Wait, what? You heard me. No stake-burning occurred.
For those of you who either didn’t grow up in the U.S. school system, or have forgotten everything you learned in it (it was the 70s, after all), here’s a refresher.
In the 1690s, Samuel Parris moved to Salem Village in Massachusetts Bay Colony to become the local pastor. The church was divided (as churches so often are, really) as to whether they liked or hated Parris’s Puritanical teachings.
At some point, Parris’s daughter (age 9) and niece (age 11) started having “fits” — screaming, facial contortions, and the like. A doctor diagnosed them as being possessed by demons (as girls so often are, really). The girls ratted out Tituba, the family’s house slave, who confessed that she had been dabbling in the occult and had taught the girls some witchcraft. Under questioning, Tituba outed others in the community as also being witchy.
Apparently, witchiness is communicable, because other Team Parris people started having “fits” of their own. These victims identified yet more witch-aggressors, who conveniently were folks who disliked Parris.
Community hysteria ensued, and over 200 people were accused of witchcraft.
A special court was convened to try the accused. During the trials, the accused were not allowed lawyers, and the victims were allowed to provide “spectral evidence” — that is, testimony of dreams of being attacked by specters or spirits.
Ultimately, 33 people were convicted. Nineteen were hung, one was pressed to death under heavy stones, and several died in prison while awaiting trial. Those who confessed were spared death, with the knowledge that God would see to them.
Over the next decade, several witnesses recanted their testimony, and the townspeople realized that perhaps they had gotten a bit carried away. In 1702, the General Court declared that the trials had been unlawful. In 1711, 22 of the 33 convicted were exonerated. And in 1957, 265 years after their convictions, the remaining 11 were exonerated (bet they were pissed that it took so long).
It is now thought that the “fits” may have resulted from the girls eating rye that was infected with fungus (or maybe they were just bored little liars, as so many of us were as pre-teens, really).
What can we learn from this? Well, religious fanaticism isn’t ideal. Nor are power-hungry people. Community hysteria should be avoided. Confessions may not be real. And maybe we should have more female judges? Just sayin’.
One final bit of info I didn’t know: Salem Village is now Danvers, Massachusetts. The place we now know as Salem was Salem Town, which was about 10 miles away from the Village.
And one really-this-time-it’s-final thing that spellcheck won’t shut up about: Massachusetts has two s‘s, then one s, then two t‘s.
Lucie, I had a fascination with this chapter in our collective history when I was younger — and interestingly, I realize how what I read and what I’ve seen portrayed (witches = rabid townspeople tinder) somehow conflated into thinking that burning at the stake was indeed a once-upon-a-pasttime. So thank you for the fact check and always-fun reading.
And really and truly check out We Ride Upon Sticks, about a (fictional) girls field hockey team from Danvers and the singular way they dabble in their shared history. You will love the writing and the absolutely immersive 80s-ness of it all.
xoS
Funny that you recommend that book. I picked it up about a month ago, started it, but then it got bumped by who-knows-what-else-I-picked-up-to-read. I’ll grab it again and finish it.
Glad to know I wasn’t the only one with the knowledge gap.
A little piece of history I’ve always had a fascination with while at the same time find absolutely terrifying. Mob mentality mixed with religious fervor and politics, in my opinion, make a dangerous combination. Burning at the stake dates all the way back to Babylon and has been used all over the world, but somehow got connected to this, perhaps because it was often a cure for heresy.
I had definitely assumed that witch = stake.
Truly, it was such a dangerous time. I got absolutely sucked in when I started reading more about it.