Witchcraft and the science of the bewitched
In the 14th century, witches were considered to be people who had surrendered their souls to Satan and could ‘‘bewitch’’, that is, cast an evil spell on innocent victims.
Being labelled a witch could be a death sentence and zealous citizens made it their business to search out and expose anyone rumoured to be a witch, male of female.
Witch-hunts were conducted from 1300 until the late 1700s, but perhaps the most high profile was that of 1692-1693, the Salem Witch Trials. Salem Village was a poor farming community in Massachusetts. In 1689 a merchant from Boston, Samuel Parris went to the village to pursue a career as a pastor; with him were his wife, three children, a niece and two slaves from Barbados, John and Tituba. Probably influenced by voodoo stories related by Tituba, Parris’ daughter, Betty and niece Abigail Williams, began fortune telling along with their friend Ann Putnam. The girls’ behaviour became increasingly strange, they experienced convulsions, fits and bouts of screaming.
Three years earlier, a Congregational minister from Boston, Cotton Mather published a book in which he described similar symptoms in a Boston family and concluded they were bewitched. The Salem Village doctor, William Griggs seized on Mather’s conclusions and declared the girls’ behaviour was evidence that innocent people such as the girls had been bewitched by witches in the community.
Worryingly, more people developed the symptoms which was taken as a sign that the process was continuing. The hunt was on to find the witches.
Sir William Phips, the Governor of Massachusetts convened a court presided by Judge William Stoughton. Stoughton agreed that supernatural evidence was admissible.
The innocent Betty and Abigail were the first two accusers at the trial. They declared that the slave girl Tituba was a witch. Undoubtedly under pressure, the lowly, impressionable Tituba confessed she had participated in witchcraft along with others in Salem.
This whipped up a frenzy in the village, six other accusers, including Ann Putnam, emerged and dozens more suspects were put on trial. On June 2, 1692 the hanging began and by 1693 nineteen people had been executed; five more died in prison. The court ordered one accused, octogenarian Giles Corey, to be laid flat and pressed between two heavy stones for two days; he died.
The hysteria reached fever pitch and accusations extended to Governor Phips’ wife. This caused the Governor to call an immediate halt to the trials and to withdraw the use of supernatural evidence. The legal proceedings were declared unlawful.
Betty, Abigail and Ann recovered and went on to lead full lives but never acknowledged falsely accusing dozens of people. Tituba was jailed but freed, probably because Samuel Parris paid for her release. The Salem Trials are now a textbook case for hysteria-driven persecution underpinned by woeful legal practice.
In 1976 microbiologist Linnda Caporael writing in the journal Science suggested that the convulsions and fits exhibited by the afflicted villagers were the result of ergot poisoning.
According to Caporael, ‘‘bewitchment’’ could be attributed to the ingestion of bread made from rye grains infected with a fungus, Claviceps purpurea, commonly known as ergot.
It contains alkaloid chemicals which have strong psychotic effects and can cause fits. The condition is called ergotism and these chemicals can also be passed from mother to child through lactation.
Caporael says it was the dependence on rye grain for bread along with the ideal climatic conditions for ergot in Massachusetts that point to ergotism as the culprit. Ergot is identified by purple or black grains present in the rye. These grains are easily removed by immersing the rye in brine, the ergot float to the surface.
It was the perfect storm of tainted rye, religious fanaticism, scientific ignorance, hysteria and an inadequate legal system that led to the senseless executions in Salem. Sadly, a fiasco with similar ingredients to the Salem Trials occurred in the 1950s when the fear of communism produced a political witch-hunt in which US Senator Joseph McCarthy hunted down communists.
A series of farcical Salem-style interrogations followed, resulting in many careers and lives being destroyed.