The Accusation and Punishment of Witches in Salem In the late 1600s in Salem, dozens of people were accused of practicing witchcraft and working with the Devil to torment people. It all started when a child grew ill for seemingly no reason, causing the people of Salem to believe a witch was among them. Children started accusing men and women of witchcraft, and those men and women would pay for their alleged crimes. They were thrown in disgusting jails, chained to the walls, drowned, lit on fire, and hanged for crimes they did not commit. People confessed to working with the Devil for the chance that they would be spared by the church. The accused witches were casted out of society and treated like animals. The witch-hunt of Salem was an outbreak of paranoia and hysteria that tons of innocent women and children paid for with their lives.
How Witches Were Accused Children were reportedly screaming for no reason, having seizures in church, and going into trances and no one understood
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He refused to say anything to the court about who was a witch. A plank was set on Corey’s chest and they places heavy rocks on it. After a day of this, Giles Corey pleaded with them for more weight so he would die instead of continuing to be tortured, and they considered it a suicide (Uschan). Aside from torture in prison, the majority of witches found guilty in Salem were hanged. 156 people were imprisoned, 19 were hanged, 5 died in jail, and 1 was pressed to death (Alexander, 2002). The aftermath of the Salem witch trials left many people feeling immense guilt for either accusing those they knew were innocent, or sending those innocent people to their deaths. Dominic Alexander put it best when he said, “Although the witch-hunts remain among the most horrific events of European history, one good emerged from all the misery: torture ceased to be a normal part of the judicial process” (2002, pg. 197).
In the book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, Rosalyn Schanzer discusses an outbreak of witch accusations in the little town of Salem, Massachusetts in late 1692. People were accusing friends, enemies, and even family members of being witches and plotting evil schemes with the devil. No one was safe anymore. If a person were to be accused, they were stuck in a stinky, grubby jail where they were pelted with never-ending questions.
Do you want to be hanged because you are practicing witchcraft? The Salem Witch Trial Hysteria happened in the year of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. The story is that the people of Salem, Massachusetts were Puritans. The Puritans thought that they were going to be like a “city upon a hill” which meant they thought that they were going to make it look like they were more perfect than everyone else and they were closer to God. They made it like this because they believed that every word in the Bible was the true word of God and was to be followed to the exact letter of every word.
Witches in the New World “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus, 20:18). In February of 1692 and lasting just over a year, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and 19 were executed, 14 of them women, in a small fishing village called Salem. Once branded with the deadly label of witch, one either confessed or named other witches in desperation to be ridden of the title.
Our reactions to such misfortunes are commonly motivated by impulses that are understood dimly or not at all, and those impulses commonly lead us, in the name of God, country, or community, to commit acts that seem right and fit at the time, cruel and illogical only in retrospect(TAHPDX). The Salem witch trials remains significant by the way society still reacts to crisis as
History is something that grows every day. Every second that passes turns into history. There are many periods of history that are thought to be special among people. These special times are caused by things that were important and caused an impact on people. The impact these things had on people usually affected the people’s way of life.
Throughout the winter of 1692, the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, was unaware of the upcoming events. Paranoia and fear fueled the wave of witch hysteria that swept through the quiet Salem village. An execution of the hanging of fourteen women and five men that were accused of being a witch was a result of the Salem witch trials. In addition, “one man was pressed to death by heavy weights for refusing to enter a plea; at least eight people died in prison, including one infant and one child; and more than one hundred and fifty individuals were jailed while awaiting trial” (Latner). The Salem witchcraft trials was caused by a number of religious factors.
Chaos broke out in 1692 among the Salem Village in the Massachusetts Colony. Several children began convulsing, shrieking, and having strange fits. The episodes were originally accredited to bewitchment from citizens in the colony. However, new studies were conducted and alternate explanations arose. Scientists discovered a fungus that can induce actions very similar to those described in the Salem Witch Trials.
Salem, Massachusetts, USA and occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned and even more accused; but not pursued by the authorities. 29 were convicted of witchcraft but only 19 were hanged. The best known trials were in the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
During the hysteria of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, many people were accused of practicing witchcraft. Therefore, their reputation, was ruined. Other people committed many sins in order to keep their reputation clean in town. For instance, some characters had to lie, fight, and accuse other people of witchcraft which could get the individual out of trouble and keep their hands clean. when a person got accused of being a witch, the person’s reputation would get ruined and the person would go to jail or be hanged.
Sadly, in even today's society people pay the price for something they didn’t do without proper evidence. Thirty-three men and women paid the ultimate price for being accused of witchcraft. The Salem Witch Trials are a famous mark on the history of the United States, which led to the conviction and execution of those accused of witchcraft in 1692 in Massachusetts. This time is history shows the human brutality and what extremes people will go to when face-to-face with fear. The terrifying Witch Trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan Era were never fully resolved, since then many theories have evolved over time for the cause of them.
The Salem Witch Trials started when the people were being accused of practicing witchcraft. Massachusetts were falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, and 19 of them were executed(Kiger ,2018) All of the accused were part of a family. They were forced to leave their families and go to jail. The Salem Witch Trials lefted a long lasting effect on the community.
The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been instigated by religious, social, geographic and even biological factors. During these trials, 134 people were condemned as witches and 19 were hanged. These statistics also include 5 more deaths that occurred prior to their execution date. It is interesting to look into the causes of this stain on American History, when as shown in document B, eight citizens were hanged in only one day.
In Witches: The Absolutely True Tale Of Disaster In Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer people in the town of Salem were Condemned for being witches. By the end of it all more than 200 people were accused and 20 were executed. Horridly they accused people from all ages, everyone from teenager to ancient was accused. But why? The Salem Witch Trials were caused by hysteria, popularity, and revenge.
The Salem witch trial was a time about accusing your fellow neighbor or being accused yourself, this all began in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. During this time many people were being accused of being a witch, a majority of the time it was because either someone truly believed that you were a witch and were reeking havoc or they were trying to find someone to take the blame if they were to being accused. So this leads us to question, what began the Salem Witch Trials? There were at least three causes of the Salem witch trials hysteria. These were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams story, Ergotism, and the acknowledgment of hysteria.
Not many people know much about what actually happened in the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe someone would think that it was just about witchcraft and crazy people being hanged, but it is a lot more than that. The Salem Witch Trials only occurred between 1692 and 1693, but a lot of damage had been done. The idea of the Salem Witch Trials came from Europe during the “witchcraft craze” from the 1300s-1600s. In Europe, many of the accused witches were executed by hanging.