The most famous case of witch hunts took place between 1692 and 1693 in the USA and took more than 150 people to jail, of which 25 died.
– (Horacio Gama/)
1. The Salem region was a British colony, riven by Indian raids and plagued by petty crime and land disputes. There, the Puritans established a government in which the Church ran everything. The population considered the woman submissive to the man
– (Horacio Gama/)
two. In February 1692, during an exceptionally cold winter, Betty Parris, the 9-year-old daughter of the Salem minister, came down with a strange illness. She was writhing in pain, screaming, suffering from a fever and complaining to the village doctor that she felt like she was being bitten. Today, science tries to explain the disease as a combination of asthma, child abuse and epilepsy. Another thesis: the girl would have ingested a fungus present in the bread. But at the time, nobody knew what it was.
– (Horacio Gama/)
3. Six other girls, including a cousin of Betty’s, also developed symptoms. They writhed in grotesque poses and reported feeling bites and pinches in their bodies. Physician William Griggs suggested that the origin of the problem was supernatural. The family became obsessed with the hypothesis
– (Horacio Gama/)
4. At that time, a book was very successful. Written by Cotton Mather, Memorable Provisions described the case of a Boston laundress suspected of witchcraft. And the behavior of a victim of the alleged witch resembled that of Betty. It was just what was needed to start a wave of panic.
– (Horacio Gama/)
5. The first suspect was the slave Tituba (it is not known for sure whether she was of African or Central American origin), who told the girls legends of witches and voodoo folklore from her country. The children accused other women as authors of the “spell”. To try to escape the gallows, Tituba confessed to being a witch and flying with several witchcraft companions.
– (Horacio Gama/)
6. Other accused followed Tituba’s example and began to confess that they were tormenting the girls at the behest of the devil. Governor William Phips created a court to try cases of witchcraft, made up of five judges. The defendants were not entitled to have witnesses on their behalf
– (Horacio Gama/)
7. The first to be judged was Bridget Bishop. With few friends and full of conflicts with neighbors, she was the perfect accused. In addition to being reported by confessed «witches», a witness said he saw Bridget stealing eggs and turning into a cat. The penalty was death by hanging.
8. More than 150 suspects were arrested. There were 20 executions – including a man crushed by rocks. Two dogs were also sentenced to death, accused of being accomplices of the Salem witches. Even a 4-year-old girl, Sarah Good, was accused by the children. The little girl spent eight months in jail
– (Horacio Gama/)
9. George Burroughs, a church minister, was hanged as a leader of the witches and for bewitching soldiers in a failed campaign against the Indians. Historians claim that the judges endeavored at the trial to shift “blame for their own inadequate frontier defense” as they led the unsuccessful war. Many of the cases boiled down to this: personal vendettas that, aggravated by a certain amount of fantasy, generated accusations of “the work of the Devil”. The last trials took place in April 1693. Most convictions were revised between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. Today, the case is considered an example of collective hysteria