Her father had just been appointed as the new minister for Salem, but a mysterious illness took hold of her after moving. She would have violent thrashing fits, hide under the furniture, often contort her body in pain. She decided to blame her slave. The rest is history. One of the ways that people looked to prove that someone was a witch was to find moles or freckles on the body. This was the place that the animal familiars would feed so that the evil spirits could be maintained.
People accused of witchcraft would be stripped and their skin searched for any blemishes. If there were any, even if they had always been there, then that person would be considered a witch. Because of this, many people who were being accused of witchcraft were simply admitting to it since a confession would typically help them avoid the death penalty. The Salem witch trials would have probably gone on indefinitely if it were for the actions of Governor Phips.
He declared that the trials must stop because there was too great a possibility that innocent people were being put to death. Many people associated the punishment of witchcraft as being burned at the stake, but this never happened in Salem. People were either hung from the gallows or stoned to death.
Every woman who confessed to witchcraft lived. Every woman who denied being a witch was hanged. That is, perhaps, the most interesting fact of all from the Salem witch trials. Interesting Facts About. Share on Facebook. When asked who had done this to them, Betty and Abigail blamed three townswomen, including Tituba, a Native American slave who worked in the Parris household. Tituba was known to have played fortune-telling games , which were strictly forbidden by the Puritans.
The three women were thrown in jail to await trial for practicing witchcraft. During the trial, Tituba confessed to having seen the devil and also stated that there was a coven, or group, of witches in the Salem Village area.
Good and Osbourne insisted they were innocent. The punishment was hanging. As the weeks passed, other young girls claimed to have been infected by witchcraft too.
They accused other townspeople of torturing them, and a few of the so-called witches on trial even named others as witches.
Women were not the only ones believed to be witches—men and children were accused too. By the end of the trials in , 24 people had died, some in jail but most by hanging.
Bridget Bishop, a woman considered to have questionable morals, was the first to be tried and executed during the Salem witch trials. Bishop was known to rebel against the puritanical values of that time. She stayed out for long hours, had people in her home late at night, and hosted drinking and gambling parties frequently.
After her second husband died, Bishop—who had been married three times—was accused of bewitching him to death, though she was later acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Unfortunately for Bishop, that allegation of witchcraft would not be her last. The Salem witch trials would mark her second time being accused of being a witch. As she did when she was accused of bewitching her second husband, Bishop once again claimed innocence during her trial.
She went as far as to say that she did not even know what a witch was. The death warrant, signed on June 8, , ordered for her death to take place by hanging on Friday, June 10, , between 8 a. It was carried out as such by Sheriff George Corwin. During the trials, two dogs were killed based on suspicions of witchcraft.
One dog was shot after a girl suffering from convulsions accused the dog of trying to bewitch her. The second slain dog was actually thought to be a victim of witchcraft whose tormentors fled Salem before they could be tried in court.
They were also used for identifying witches in Salem, using the Witch Cake test. If a dog was fed a cake made with rye and the urine of an afflicted person, and it displayed the same symptoms as the victim, it indicated the presence of witchcraft.
The dog was also supposed to then point to the people who had bewitched the victim. Dorothy Good, the 4-year-old daughter of the previously accused Sarah Good, was the youngest to be accused of witchcraft.
According to the warrant for her apprehension, she was called for trial on March 23, , under suspicion of witchcraft after being accused by Edward Putnam. Ann Putnam testified that Good tried to choke and bite her, a claim that Mary Walcott corroborated. Under pressure from the authorities—and hoping she would get to see her mother if she complied— she confessed to the claims that Sarah was a witch and Dorothy had been witness to this fact.
Good was imprisoned from March 24, , to December 10, The Court of Oyer and Terminer was established in June because the witch trials were overwhelming the local jails and courts. It was shut down on October 29,
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