Position:Home>History> Question about history: Salem witch trials?

Sure - the theory is that some young girls were possibly having affairs with men in the community and wanted to be rid of their wives so they cried witch, but the main prevailing theory is that the bread was moldy and make people act strangely!.!.!. ( as if hexed by a witch)

whatever the reason, a number of men and women were executed for being witches in the late 1600's!. Most were hung, one was pressed to death!. They ranged from young to old!. male, female, married, single etc!. The community lived in fear of being the next to be pointed at by the child accusers!. So called witches were made to admit that they were witches under torture, or it was believed they could free themselves if witches, (obviously if they didnt, they had already died)

Today there is a memorial area in the Salem Cemetery for each person who was killed!. It is quite spooky and surreal!.

names of some of the victims: giles corey, rebecca nurse, john proctor
other names: cotton mather and Nathanial Hawthornes grandfather - John!? were judges in the trialsWww@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

The Salem witch trials began when a group of teenage girls and children began to behave strangely!. They had been experimenting with divination, to find out who they would marry, with the help of a West Indian slave called Tituba!. The girls began to exhibit signs of possession, adopting strange postures, making strange noises, lying rigid in bed for hours etc!.

The adults around them began to talk of possession, and to encourage the girls to name people who they might have thought had bewitched them!. As a result of thegirls accusations, many people were tried, and 20 altogether were executed, nineteent by hanging and one by being pressed to death under stones for refusing to plead!. Another four died of disease in prison!.

Witch trials tended to arise at times of great tension in communities, wars, epedemics of disease and bad harvests were all triggers for witch-hunts, and Salem in the 1690s was in a very perilous condition, caught up in a war with the French and their Indian allies, often subject o Indian attacks, suffering epedemics of disease, and a new governor having been just appointed who had gone off to fight the Indians!. All thse things made the adults of Salem unusally ready to listen to accusations of witchcraft from a group of young girls!.

Eventually, the voices of doubters began to make themselves heard, and the governor called a halt to the trials!. He later issued a general pardon!. One of the ringleaders of the accusers, Ann Putnam, confessed in 1706 that she had been under a "delusion of Satan"!.

The Salem witch trials were by far the biggest ever held in new England, only 16 people had been executed for witchcraft since the colony was founded up until the time of the Salem trials!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

I'm learning about these in my school too!.

The salem witch trials were pretty much a bunch of bored girls who decided to start calling innocent people witches!. The main accuser, Abigail Williams, was a 15 year old girl in the villiage of Salem, and the other girls who accused people were her age and younger!. There are many theorys about why the trials happen, but popular ones include mass hysteria as well as jelously about Salem town (Salem village was where it happened, and it was a lot more poor)!. They think it might have started with a slave named Tituba, from Barbados, due to interest about her ability to do voodou!.

My explanation is sort of all over the place, but just understand that it was a pretty bad period in time in which about 10 girls pointed fingers and people hung for no reason!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

---

---

According to Wikipedia: The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties of colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693!. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authoritiesWww@QuestionHome@Com

---

---