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Salem, Mass., in the late 17th century was a terrifying place. In 1692, dozens of people, mostly women and girls, were accused of witchcraft, and at least 19 people were hanged. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stacy Schiff has delved into the remaining accounts and correspondence to piece together what was going on in Puritan Salem in her new book, The Witches:
Salem, 1692. Our conversation has been edited for length.
What did one have to do to be considered a witch in 17th-century New England?
Not much. Sometimes it was to be unaccountably strong or exceptionally smart. Sometimes it was a row with your neighbour. The people who were accused ranged from a homeless 5-year-old girl to a Harvardeducated minister.
There had been witch trials around New England. Why does Salem stand out?
Never before had there been this epidemic of accusations and trials. From a single confession you have a fever that broke out everywhere. By the time of the Salem trials there had been 100 witchcraft accusations in New England, but the conviction rate was very low. Generally, witchcraft was treated leniently by the courts.
Most of the accused were women. It was a great way to get rid of a wife or punish a mother.
It was definitely a way of retaliating for an earlier misdeed or getting back at your enemies. One of the first girls afflicted by witches accuses her parents. She is a girl who has been disruptive and she is happy to sell her stepmother down the river. The Salem story is a very adolescent story. It is getting back at parents.
In the eyes of many ministers, there were advantages to considering this a diabolical plague. You get a lot of evangelical mileage out of having this enemy in your midst.
That whole idea of disobedience and needing to prove that you could be obedient also affects the authorities. They were trying to prove to England that the colonies could regulate their own affairs. There were years of chaos in Massachusetts before the trials, and they wanted to show they didn’t need England meddling in their business.
There was also a class distinction at play.
If you look at who is put to death and who escapes, you see there is a socio-economic discrepancy. Often if you were rich and had a close friend in authority, you wouldn’t get arrested. This disparity between rich and poor comes out in some of the confessions. An Andover farmer said in his conversation with the devil he was promised all men would be made equal.
But the socio-economic distinction soon ended. The fourth person accused of witchcraft was an upright, pious, financially stable woman, Martha Corey. That is one of the things that startled us about Salem. There is a rampancy about who would be named next. Everyone believed witchcraft was real. There is a general fear that the person sitting next to you in church may be a witch.
You would think that churchgoing people wouldn’t be accused.
It was very divisive. A minister at the centre of the controversy, Samuel Parris, delivers a sermon where he says there are devils in Christ’s church. The suggestion is that some of his parishioners are witches.
Parris’s slave Tituba is the first to confess she is a witch. It is with that confession that grown men begin to see apparitions as they head home and find gleaming balls of fire in their beds, and everyone begins to see things at that point. You begin to see what terror does to the mind.
During the trials, there was writhing and interrupting in court and foaming at the mouth. At one point a woman levitates and girls show up with pins sticking out of their bodies. There are bite marks on their arms. There are a lot of inexplicable things. The only explanation at the time was witchcraft.
There were no defence lawyers, and once accused of witchery, you were doomed.
The justice was meant to advocate for both sides. But in this case the men in the witchcraft court were inclined to prosecute. They were interrogating in a very ruthless manner. Everyone is convinced at this time that they have something unprecedented and there is a diabolical plot to overturn the church.
The suspect therefore cannot say a word that is true. There was no crossexamination, no defence lawyer, no innocence until proven guilty. All the ideas we embrace today were not in play at that time.
At a certain point two things happened. People realize it is smarter to accuse than to wait to be accused. It is a way of protecting yourself. People also start to confess to save their lives. The confessors don’t hang. When you confess you name names, so there is a pileup of accusations.
What ended it?
It is impossible to say one thing ended it. It became difficult to believe that so many people were in league with the devil.
The accusations also began to affect people at a high level. A minister’s wife is named, a governor’s wife is named, and once the names hit that level of society, people began to question what was going on. They feel they may have accused innocent people and let the guilty go free. The jails can’t accommodate this many prisoners. Once the court has shut down, shame and regret descend. After this no one in Massachusetts will be hanged for witchcraft.
The whole Salem incident is nine months from beginning to end. We have no idea of the pressures these people were living under. At that particular moment, they feel they are under economic siege, spiritual siege. They could be attacked by Indians, the winter cold was brutal and there was a sense the colony was in political tatters.
What was the impact on the community?
There was a permanent erasing of all their records. The trial papers have gone missing. Correspondence has been edited. Diaries skip over the year 1692. Most of the witchcraft justices will go to their graves without speaking.
Young girls become orphans because they have accused their mothers of witchcraft. Parishioners whose families have been accused will sit before ministers who accused them. Trust has been compromised. It is in no one’s best interest to talk about it.
People who come out of prison were never the same because of the months spent in crowded cells. The emotional fallout must have been immense.