The Salem witch hysteria of 1692

The Salem witch hysteria of 1692 began in what one would think the holiest of homes in the town of Salem. Reverend Samuel Paris had been minister for two years with out controversy, but in the bleak winter of 1691 problems of immense proportions began to arise in his home. Paris lived with his wife, three children: eleven year old niece Abigail Williams and a Caribbean slave couple Tibuta and John Indian. The combination of the Reverend’s dogmatic, puritan, beliefs and the constant un-supervision of the girls brought about an event that killed many innocent bystanders.

The minister’s wife, Elizabeth, was constantly ill and the girls had little supervision. Many times they were left alone with their slave Tibuta. Tibuta would entertain the girls with stories of fortune telling, witch craft, and other forbidden subjects. Francis Hill, the author of Delusions of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials, informs that girls had little to feed their imaginations; Boys had hunting and other crafts, but young women had no outlets for their high spirits and mental creativity (6-7). This led to the minister’s nine year old daughter, Betty Paris and eleven year old niece, Abigail Williams, to turn to Tibuta’s voodoo like tales and tricks for amusement. Soon they started to invite their friends to join in. Over time, the girls started to exhibit strange behavior and the panic spread. The overview, “Salem Witchcraft Trials, 1692-1693”, explains that among the puritans, unexplainable afflictions were normally credited to the work of the devil. Most of the Salem inhabitants believed the young girls when they charged their slave, Tibuta and two other women with questionable respectability, of practicing witch craft (2). When Tibuta confessed her dealings with the devil she implicated the other women as well. On March seventh, all three were sent off to prison.

Unfortunately, the arrests didn’t stop the accusations. . The girls were now crying out against respectable women. Martha Corey, Dorcas Good, and Rebecca Nurse were the next to be charged and thrown in jail. The list grew and so did the hysteria. Some of the more influential of the accused were able to make escapes from jail to New York (Salem Village and the Witch Hysteria; Broadsheet III). The panic spread not only within the village but in neighboring towns as well. In the spring of 1692 two girls, Ann Putman and Mary Walcott, from Salem Village journeyed to the town of Andover and “discovered” over forty witches. The panic persisted for many months because several of the accused had been psychologically bullied into confession. As summer came to an end, the number of people in jail grew.

Salem Colony was in a vulnerable state. The original charter by which the puritans legally owned the land had been revoked by the King. Everyone questioned what the new charter and governor would bring. When the new governor arrived on May fourteenth, 1692, Sir William Phips found the colony in the mist of a witch problem. The courts were back loaded and Phips was counseled to set up a special emergency “Court of Oyer and Terminer” (Salem Village and the Witch Hysteria; Broadsheet IV). The court formally saw their first defendant in June of 1692. Through out the summer many prisoners were charged and hanged but the executions brought no end to the accusations The jails grew overcrowded. By the time the last twenty victims had been executed on September twenty-second, the public was fast becoming uninterested in the trials. There were several reasons why. Many of those who were executed in august had died calmly and forgave the accusers and the judges. The court officials had been aggravating the “witch” problem instead of alleviating it. The outbreak had been confined within Essex County and other ministers had begun to take a stand against the trials (Salem Witchcraft Trials 3). A petition from Andover was the first to call for discharge of the remaining prisoners and to denounce the accusing girls. On October twenty-ninth, with one hundred and fifty still in jail Governor Phips dismissed the Court of Oyer and Terminer (Salem Witchcraft Trials 3). Its end marked the end of the witch hunt. On November twenty-third and December sixteenth the General Court ordered the completion of the trials. “Fifty-two of the accused witches came to trial in January, 1963. Forty-nine were released immediately for lack of evidence (Salem Witchcraft Trials 3). The governor soon pardoned the others, and by May all the remaining prisoners had been released.

Many questions arose from the events that took place in Salem. The most common is how the hysteria could spread as it did. Many scientists have eluded that Ergot, a fungus grown on rye, could be the cause. There are two types of ergotism described by Linda Caporael in an Article for the journal Science--gangrenous and convulsive. She explains that, “As the name implies, gangrenous ergotism is characterized by dry gangrene of the extremities followed by the falling away of the affected portions of the body.” Convulsive ergotism is characterized by a number of symptoms. “These include crawling sensations in the skin, tingling in the fingers, vertigo, tinnitus aurium, headaches, disturbances in sensation, hallucination, painful muscular contractions leading to epileptiform convulsions, vomiting, and diarrhea. There are mental disturbances such as mania, melancholia, psychosis, and delirium” (5). All of these symptoms are alluded to in the Salem witchcraft records. Massachusetts weather made for some of the best growing conditions. Wild rye is a common grass along the Atlantic Coast and is a host plant for ergot. Early colonists were unsuccessful when using it as feed for their cattle and had reported “that it often made the cattle ill with unknown diseases” (Caporael 5). The weather patterns promoted heavy fungus infestations. Caporael explains further that “to some degree or another all rye was probably infected with ergot. It is a matter of the extent of the infection and the period of time over which the ergot is consumed rather than the mere existence of ergot that determines the potential for ergotism” (5). Effects of Ergotism on the trials would explain the erratic behavior, hallucinations, and accusations of deviltry that took place.

While a number of people were dissatisfied to see the trials end, most were happy to return to their work. Reverend Paris was blamed for the death of countless innocent friends and relatives. Eventually, the church voted to have his pay voided. No one had expected for this village to become such a significant and fearsome place to live. Salem Village is forever marked by the trials of 1962.

Work Citied

Caporael, Linda R. “Erogotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?”
Science, Vol. 192 (2 April 1976)

Hill, Frances. A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials.
New York, Doubleday: 1995

"Salem Witchcraft Trials, 1692-1693." DISCovering U.S. History. Gale Research, 1997. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group.
http://0-galenet.galegroup.com.librus.hccs.edu:80/servlet/HistRC/

Trask, Richard B. Salem Village and the Witch Hysteria.
New York, Jackdaw Publications, Division of Golden Owl Publishing co: 1975