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It’s January of 1692 and there’s something very wrong with 9 year old Betty Parris. Her father, the Reverend Samuel Parris, rushes to her bedside. Betty screams. Her body writhes under the blankets, twisting and contorting into grotesque shapes. She grunts, she moans, she snorts, and shrieks. She grabs a candle from the bedside table and hurls it across the room uttering a shrill scream as if defending herself from some invisible apparition. Soon, Betty’s 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams is similarly afflicted. The girls are tormented, tortured, terrified, but, by what? Parris calls in a doctor who takes one look at their bizarre behavior and quickly makes up his mind. This is the devil’s work. When accusations and confessions of witchcraft follow soon after, the snowball begins its descent, growing and growing as it rolls into one of the most haunting events in American history. But what caused the madness of the Salem Witch Trials? There were no witches in Salem. How did the peculiar outbursts of a 9 year old girl lead to the deaths of 25 innocent people and 2 dogs? Was it conspiracy? Insanity? Unchecked patriarchy? Religion gone wrong? Was it food poisoning? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix, where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I touched on the Salem Witch trials briefly back in episode 8 about mass hysteria and again in episode 29 about witches but I’ve had a few people reach out to me asking for an episode dedicated exclusively to it. And, while the story of the Salem witch trials isn’t actually about witches, it’s pretty dang spooky. It is Spooktober on History Fix after all, all month long. By the way, if you haven’t listened to episode 29 about witches, that was from Spooktober last year, you really really should. It’s probably one of my favorite episodes and it really explains how this whole witch paranoia, witch hunting thing got started in Europe around the time of the protestant reformation. There were a lot of factors involved but what really set it all off was the Catholic church being threatened for the first time since it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire in 381. So we’re talking about an over a thousand year uninterrupted reign of dominance in Europe. And now people are starting to become dissatisfied. I meannnn, look at Rodrigo Borgia from a few weeks ago who would become Pope Alexander VI in 1492. The man was FAR from a saint and everyone knew it. So they start to go, you know, “this guy sucks. He’s super corrupt and abusive. Why are we listening to him? He doesn’t even practice what he preaches. This is a scam. The Catholic church is a scam.” And so begins the protestant reformation. And also so begins the witch hunts and burnings and hangings all over Europe, but mostly in countries, like Germany, where we see the Catholic and protestant churches butting heads the most. The churches used witch hunts to appear strong and necessary during uncertain times like “look, there is real evil in the world. The devil is here and he has these women, these witches working for him, and they are doing his bidding and only we can protect you from them. You need us.” And this led to a frenzy of fear that resulted in the deaths of up to 80,000 innocent people, mostly women.
The Salem witch trials took place in 1692 and that was actually quite late for witch trials but a lot of the same factors came into play here in sort of a microcosm. Like, all of what was happening in Europe a century or so earlier but in a petri dish. So set the stage here. It gets a little confusing because if you were to visit Salem, Massachusetts, that’s not actually where this all went down. At the time, in 1692 there was a place called Salem Town, that’s Salem Massechusetts, and then nearby there was another place called Salem Village. Salem Village, today, is called Danvers, Massachusetts and that’s where this all went down. So if you want to do like a Salem witch trials tour or something, make sure you go to Danvers, not Salem. I mean you can go to Salem too because some of the trials happened there but Danvers is where this started, Salem Village. But let’s go back even farther. Because this was all part of the Massachusetts Bay colony which was an English colony. So we know Spain was all over the Caribbean, South America, Central America, Mexico. Let’s recap the early English colonies real quick starting with the failed Roanoke colony of 1587. That was the first attempt, didn’t take (that’s episodes 27 and 28). Next comes Jamestown, in Virginia started in 1607. This one barely made it, they were eating people, that’s how much it almost didn’t make it, but it survived and became the first permanent English colony. That’s episode 24. After that, we have the Plymouth colony of Thanksgiving fame. This one was established in 1620 in southeastern Massachusetts (episode 36). So we’re working our way up the coast, North Carolina, Virginia, now we’re in Massachusetts. Must of liked it despite way harsher winters, because the next group goes there too, establishing the Massachusetts Bay colony.
The particular group that would later found Salem village arrived in 1626 at Naumkeag (nom-key-ag) which was a traditional Native American fishing site. They’re like “cool, looks nice, we’ll take it, y’all go fish somewhere else,” This was like an outpost of the Massachusetts Bay colony. The group who settled here were mostly Puritans looking for religious freedom and to establish, basically a utopia for other Puritans in the colonies. They were called puritans because they hoped to purify the Church of England which was protestant started by Henry VIII so he could divorce his wife and marry his mistress, they hoped to purify it by getting rid of all leftover remnants of Catholic influences and religious practices which were still lingering. So they arrived in Naumkeag and they renamed it Salem which comes from Jerusalem. So they arrive, they kick the indigenous residents out, they set up shop, hoping to form this utopian puritan paradise.
But over the next few decades, unsurprisingly, things do not go well. There was a Civil War back in England in the mid 1600s in which the crown was overthrown by parliament and the king, Charles I was beheaded, he’s in the same tomb as Henry VIII by the way I have a mini fix about that. After that, Oliver Cromwell ruled for a time as Lord Protector of England. They didn’t have a king for 11 years. But then they sort of found a happy medium. They brought the monarchs back, they just didn’t have absolute power like they used to have, parliament played a much larger political role. Which like, yeah, let’s not let one guy make all of the decisions for the whole country. That’s crazy. So poor beheaded Charles’ son, Charles II is placed on the throne. “They’re like woops, nevermind, sorry we murdered your dad.” Then there’s another little scuffle in 1689 when Catholic king James II is replaced by William and Mary. And all of this political turmoil back in England is affecting the Massachusetts Bay colony. It’s messing with their charter, it’s stripping the constitutional authority of their rulers, and it’s changing up the dynamics of the colony itself. It’s becoming less and less a puritan colony. It’s becoming a colony of merchants who want to sell cash crops and trade goods and whatnot. And for the puritans who remain, whose only focus is religion, that’s kind of scary.
But there’s a lot of other scary things happening too. Remember the Native Americans they kicked out? Yeah, they’re not happy about that. So there are a lot of conflicts between colonists and indigenous people, a lot of violence. In 1675 we have King Phillip’s war. I talked about this in episode 36 about Thanksgiving. This was an incredibly violent conflict between indigenous people and the descendents of those who settled the Plymouth colony. The folks who sat down for that first Thanksgiving? Yeah, their grandchildren are now massacring each other. It was incredibly traumatic for both sides. So, just keep in mind that quite a few of the people involved in the Salem Witch trials had watched loved ones be brutally murdered, mothers, fathers, children, during King Phillip’s war. We’re talking serious trauma that we now know greatly affects mental health. On top of that there are small pox epidemics happening. There is terrible weather, super dry summers leading to crop failure, super cold winters making everything suck. And then when William and Mary take the throne in 1689, they start a war with France which has colonies to the north. So if you’re a British colonist living in the northeast you now have Native Americans and the French attacking you. And this drove many of them out of their settlements to the north, as like refuges, and many of them went to Salem village.
This put a lot of pressure on Salem village. There were limited resources to begin with, now all of these outsiders are flooding in and some of them aren’t even puritans. They’re diluting the puritanism of the colony and they’re using up the resources and they’re eating the cats and dogs. I’m just kidding. That was joke. And if you didn’t get it, you didn’t watch the most recent US presidential debate. No, they were not eating the cats and dogs, but they were making people uncomfortable. They were creating competition for resources, and stirring up fears, threatening religion, in an already incredibly traumatized community. And this is the petri dish. This is the microcosm of almost exactly what was happening in Europe at the time of the witch hunts of yesteryear. This is a recipe for witch hunts. On top of that, there’s this rivalry between Salem Village which was a pretty rural farming community and neighboring Salem Town which was larger and more affluent. There’s competition there and just within Salem Village itself the people are just arguing all the time. There’s a lot of tension. They’re arguing over property lines, where livestock were allowed to graze, privileges within the church, they are gossipy and just mean to each other. They are not very neighborly. They have a lot of enemies and they’re very selfishly motivated. And I think that’s just sort of what happens when you put humans in these sorts of dire situations. Past trauma, competition for resources, impending doom from disease, possible famine, and nearby fighting, violence, and a loss of control as the colony’s Puritan leadership is threatened by political changes over in England. They start picking each other apart, tearing each other down. There’s a ton of division.
And then we have to look at what life as a Puritan was like, what Puritans believed, how they lived. Super, super strict expectations for how people should be, a lot of judgment, the constant threat of being ostracized by the community for the slightest infraction. This is an incredibly patriarchal society. Women had very few rights. They were not supposed to voice their opinions. They were seen and not heard, docile servants to their fathers and then their husbands. And in this sect of Christianity, there was a firm belief, verging on paranoia, that the devil was at work and that the devil could use people to do his bidding. And while men and women were viewed as equal in the eyes of God, they were not equal in the eyes of the devil. Puritans believed that the devil could more easily persuade and use women to do his bidding because they were weak and impressionable. Puritan women themselves knew that they were more prone to the devil’s temptation. They were taught to fear this. They were taught to question themselves constantly, were they acting for the devil? Had he gotten to them? Were they doing his bidding without even realizing it? Serious gaslighting. And Native Americans were definitely associated with the devil. They weren’t Christian. They were godless in the eyes of the colonists and that aligned them with the devil. And these bloody conflicts with nearby Native American groups, King Phillip’s war just over a decade before, this had to have felt like the devil pressing in. And the Puritan leaders struggled to protect their flocks.
And it’s this world in which we find Betty Parris, writhing and screaming and throwing things. Betty Parris, the daughter of the first ever ordained minister in Salem Village, Samuel Parris who was himself a very controversial figure. Back in 1672, Salem Village had decided to appoint their own minister, separate from Salem Town. They went through three quite quickly, James Bayley, George Burroughs who we’ll come back to because he’ll become one of the 25 victims believe it or not, and Deodat Lawson. None of them stuck around. Probably because the people of Salem Village just kind of sucked. They were mean, right? Then along comes Samuel Parris and the people are firmly divided over him. Some of them love him, some of them hate him. He divided the town further and he intentionally stirred up more drama, pointing out minor infractions within the congregation and making people suffer humiliating public punishment for them. He’s a bit of a bully hiding beneath the guise of a holy man of God. And, interestingly, it’s his daughter and his niece who start the witch hunt.
But it wasn’t just those two, soon after 12 year old Ann Putnam also started having these quote “fits.” Ann was a Putnam and the Putnams basically ran Salem village. They owned most of the land and they had the most money. They were the it family in Salem Village, very influential. 17 year old Elizabeth Hubbard soon joined in. Elizabeth was an orphan who worked as a maid in the house of her aunt and uncle. Her uncle, William Griggs, also happened to be the doctor who first suggested witchcraft. I know this is a small town but I’m finding these connections quite interesting. So we now have 4 afflicted girls and the doctor, the uncle of the fourth girl, is suggesting witchcraft. And the minister, the father of the first girl and the uncle of the second is like “duh, of course.” These girls, ages 9, 11, 12, and 17 are brought before the magistrates, Jonathan Corwin and Jonathan Hathorne and questioned intensely. You know, “who is doing this to you? Is someone in the village doing this? Who is it? Is it so and so? Give us a name.” I’m sure the questioning is very suggestive and not at all factoring in that these are little girls in an incredibly patriarchal society, who have not been allowed to even speak publicly before, being completely intimidated by men in positions of power. And so they come up with three names, because they were forced to. The first is Tituba. Tituba was enslaved by Samuel Parris, Betty’s father, the minister. She was an indigenous woman, likely from the Arawak community in what is today Venezuela. Parris had brought her back to Massachusetts from a trip to Barbados in 1680. Another they accused was Sarah Good. She was a homeless beggar which made her prime pickings for witchcraft accusations. Her father had been a prosperous tavern owner but he committed suicide and left no will. So she was just forced to live on the streets begging for food because women had no rights or means of supporting themselves. And the third was Sarah Osborne. People just didn’t really like Sarah Osborne. She didn’t regularly attend church which rubbed them the wrong way. She had remarried an indentured servant which was so not cool. And the town disapproved of her trying to control her son’s inheritance from her previous marriage. They were basically all up in her personal business and they didn’t like it.
So these ladies are hauled in before the magistrates now and interrogated for several days. And, you know, they’re not following modern interrogation practices. They are being treated very harshly, they are trying to force confessions. Which they manage to do in the case of Tituba. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne maintain their innocence throughout the whole ordeal but Tituba confesses. She says that the devil came to her and bid her serve him. She described black dogs, red cats, yellow birds, which like, what is this Brown Bear Brown Bear? She also described a tall man with white hair who wanted her to sign his book. She said she had signed the book and so had Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne and seven other witches who were trying to destroy the Puritans in Salem Village. And this confession was a mic drip for the magistrates. This confirmed for them that witches were at work in Salem. But of course it was a forced confession and therefore completely made up. Tituba just told them what they wanted to hear because, otherwise, they were going to kill her.
But this launched the village into a full blown witch hunt frenzy which began to spiral out of control. More girls became afflicted by these invisible spectors. 16 year old Mary Wallcott was the daughter of Captain Jonathan Wallcott who led the Salem Village militia. She was also related to the Putnam family by marriage. Ann Putnam was her step-cousin. She also lived next door to Betty Parris. So she predictably joins right in making accusations. Mercy Lewis was 19 years old. She was an orphan who had witnessed the deaths of her parents in a Native American raid a few years before and now worked as a servant in the Putnam household. And Mary Warren was 20 years old. She worked as a servant in the household of John and Elizabeth Proctor who I’ll come back to. And as more and more girls joined in, screaming, and shrieking, and writhing, and claiming that they were being pricked and prodded by invisible tormentors, the accusations started to fly.
Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne, the first three accused were being held in jail. But more and more names started emerge: Martha Corey, who had been openly skeptical about how credible the girl’s accusations were and soon found herself accused. Dorothy Good, the 4 year old daughter of Sarah Good who was interrogated by grown ass men and forced to testify against her mother, she was imprisoned for 8 months, yes the 4 year old. Elderly sisters Rebecca Nurse, Mary Esty, and Sarah Cloyce, Elizabeth Proctor who employed one of the girls, Mary Warren, as a servant, and later her husband John Proctor when he stood up for his wife. Giles Corey, husband of Martha Corey when he stood up for his wife. Now, I want to pause to point out that, while the original three women accused were enslaved, or poor, or social outcasts, these people are not. Some of them are upstanding members of the community. Martha and Giles Corey and Rebecca Nurse were all fully covenanted members of the church. If they were being accused of witchcraft, truly no one was safe. William and Deliverance Hobbs and their teenage daughter Abigail are accused and arrested, Bridget Bishop, who had been acquitted of witchcraft charges 12 years earlier making her an easy target, George Burroughs who used to be the dag on minister of Salem Village before Parris, Mary Warren, yeah, one of the girls, John and Elizabeth Proctor’s servant. She started out acting all nuts accusing people and apparently after John Proctor who was openly critical of all this threatened to beat her if she didn’t stop being so whack she was like “eh, okay it’s all fake,” and then they accused her and threw her in jail too! Later she hops back to the other side, accusing and testifying against the Proctors. Girl is nutty. More and more names pour out and some of these people are confessing. And you may be asking, well why would they do that? Why would so many of them confess? Well they’re being tortured, first of all, these are forced confessions, but also there's a chance some of them were led to believe that they really truly had done the devil’s bidding, had allowed the devil to control them and force them to do things and that maybe they didn’t even remember it. That was very much within the realm of Puritan beliefs, especially for women, who were thought to be weaker and more easily tempted by the devil. And then of course there was the fact that they were not executing people who confessed. Because everyone knew the punishment for practicing witchcraft or consorting with the devil was death. But if they confessed, they would live. And so many confessed and then accused others, brought forth more and more names as accomplices and this just pushed the snowball further and further down the hill.
They’re rounding all these people up over the course of a few months, interrogating them, throwing them in jail. This is quickly becoming a huge problem, apparently half the village has been working for the devil, nevermind the 7 witches Tituba initially informed them of. In May, the governor of the colony, William Phips, ordered a special court to convene to try all of these accused witches, a total of 62 now being held awaiting trial. Meanwhile, before she can be tried, Sarah Osborne, one of the original 3, dies in jail. The first casualty. And the magistrates, the court, the judge, they’ve never seen anything like this, they’re reaching out to ministers all over the colony seeking advice, seeking council and one of them who inserts himself quite boldly is Cotton Mather. Mather was a very influential Puritan minister from Boston who wrote all sorts of books about witches and whatnot just sort of stoking the Puritan devil paranoia further. But he actually cautions the court a bit writing quote “[D]o not lay more stress on pure spectral evidence than it will bear ... It is very certain that the Devils have sometimes represented the Shapes of persons not only innocent, but also very virtuous. Though I believe that the just God then ordinarily provides a way for the speedy vindication of the persons thus abused,” end quote. As if he freaking knows anything. But what he’s getting at here is that there is some disagreement about how credible spectral evidence is. So these girls, these afflicted girls are claiming to see these people, like spectors, ghosts sort of, of these real life people appearing only to them and doing these horrible things. But are the people they’re seeing really to blame, or is it trickery? History Professor Kathleen M. Brown says in an article for Penn Today quote “If somebody says in court, ‘I saw John Proctor and he was flying through the sky, and he flew to so-and-so’s window at night,’ this would be entered into the courtroom as spectral evidence that John Proctor is in league with the devil and is a witch, [Questioners began to wonder] if the devil can make somebody fly, could the devil make you think that you saw them flying?” end quote. Meaning John would have had nothing at all to do with it. The devil just made the spector look like John. Cause devils are dirty tricksters like that. So even Cotton Mather is cautioning them, you know, be careful relying too much on spectral evidence. It can be misleading.
But they don’t really listen. These witches are coming out of the woodwork, they gotta do something. Bridget Bishop is the first to be tried in June of 1692. She’s the one who had been accused of witchcraft 12 years earlier and acquitted so I guess they felt they had a pretty strong case against her. She was a repeat offender in their eyes. Evidence against Bridget included not living a Puritan lifestyle, wearing black clothing and quote “odd costumes,” and having a quote “immoral” lifestyle. She was indicted, tried, and convicted in one day and was the first to be executed by hanging a week later. After Bridget’s execution, the court took a 20 day break. They write to all the ministers again to get advice quote “upon the state of things as they then stood,” end quote. They’re like, whoa this is getting real, we just killed somebody, are we doing this right? Mather writes them back this huge long 8 point bulletin I won’t read to you because you’ll literally fall asleep but he basically gives them the go ahead to carry on, concluding quote “Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the government, the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the direction given in the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes of the English nation, for the detection of witchcrafts,” end quote. Sidenote, when Mather reprinted this letter two years later, he omitted that part I just read to you, I assume to remove his own guilt in what would happen next.
Because just as he advised them, they do carry on with the trials. But not everyone is feeling it. One of the judges, Major Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned from the court after they got that letter from Cotton Mather. He’s like “nope y’all are delusional, I’m out,” making him the only one on the court who openly condemned the thing from the start. But with Mather’s blessing, the rest of them get back to work. Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Sarah Wildes, and Rebecca Nurse are all tried, convicted, and hanged in July. Sarah Good’s four year old daughter remains in jail for an additional 4 months after her mother is killed. In August, Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., George Burroughs, John Willard, Elizabeth Proctor, and John Proctor are all convicted and hanged minus Elizabeth Proctor who was pregnant at the time and so her execution was delayed. Contemporary author Robert Calef writes of the execution of George Burroughs in his book More Wonders of the Invisible World which was basically a denouncement of the Salem witch trials and roast of Cotton Mather whom he clearly despised quote “Mr. Burroughs was carried in a Cart with others, through the streets of Salem, to Execution. When he was upon the Ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his Innocency, with such Solemn and Serious Expressions as were to the Admiration of all present; his Prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord's Prayer) [as witches were not supposed to be able to recite] was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness as such fervency of spirit, as was very Affecting, and drew Tears from many, so that it seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution. The accusers said the black Man [Devil] stood and dictated to him. As soon as he was turned off [hanged], Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a Horse, addressed himself to the People, partly to declare that he [Mr. Burroughs] was no ordained Minister, partly to possess the People of his guilt, saying that the devil often had been transformed into the Angel of Light. And this did somewhat appease the People, and the Executions went on; when he [Mr. Burroughs] was cut down, he was dragged by a Halter to a Hole, or Grave, between the Rocks, about two feet deep; his Shirt and Breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of Trousers of one Executed put on his lower parts: he was so put in, together with Willard and Carrier, that one of his Hands, and his Chin, and a Foot of one of them, was left uncovered,” end quote. And, if you remember, Burroughs had actually been a minister of Salem Village before Samuel Parris. He had left that position because he wasn’t being paid the agreed upon salary.
In September, Giles Corey, an 81 year old man who was accused after sticking up for his wife Martha, was pressed to death under stones. Yes, you heard that correctly. This was not meant as a form of execution. It was actually supposed to just be torture, used for forcing someone to enter a plea, guilty or not guilty, which he was refusing to do. But the man was 81 years old and they took it too far and he died. A few days later, 8 more people were hanged.
By now, the number of accused was nearing 200 people and guys there are only like 500 to 600 people in Salem Village. But then, in October Governor Phips gets cold feet, well, actually his wife gets accused of witchcraft and he’s like “okay that’s enough, this has gone too far,” and he writes a letter to the powers that be back in London quote “I hereby declare that as soon as I came from fighting ... and understood what danger some of their innocent subjects might be exposed to, if the evidence of the afflicted persons only did prevaile either to the committing or trying any of them, I did before any application was made unto me about it put a stop to the proceedings of the Court and they are now stopt till their Majesties pleasure be known,” end quote. And so the court was adjourned, for the most part. A few more people were indicted and tried but there were no more executions. I guess they should have accused the governor’s wife sooner. Who knew that’s all it took? Heck, throw Cotton Mather in the mix.
In the end, 19 people were executed, 1 was pressed to death, and another 5 died in prison awaiting trial. 78% of the accused were women and most of the men were only accused for trying to protect their wives or daughters. Most of the court cases that happened after Governor Phips got cold feet ended in not guilty verdicts, no one else was executed, and the accused were eventually let go after they paid their jail fees. Can y’all believe that. These innocent people were wrongfully imprisoned for months and they had to pay the dang jail fees to get out. That is bananas. They were declared innocent by the court and they still had to pay the jail fees. Wow. But you know what’s really crazy? How long it took those who were convicted and executed to be exonerated. Because their families and descendants pretty much immediately started trying to clear their names like back in the 1690s but, you guys they were not officially exonerated by the state of Massachusetts until 2003. They had even had a big 300 year commemoration event in Salem and Danvers in 1992 and they didn’t do it then. Didn’t think to be like “hey, you know what, those people weren’t actually witches, they were completely innocent, maybe we should make that official.” Nope, needed a bit more than 300 years to figure that out, took um 310, sort of, because somehow they left someone out. The Massachusetts legislature passed an act in 2003 exonerating everyone who was convicted and listing them each by name but they forgot one or something. They never listed Elizabeth Johnson who was convicted but never executed. But she had been convicted, she still needed to be exonerated like everyone else. And it was actually an 8th grade civics class that noticed this anomaly and fought for her exoneration which she finally got in 2022. Yes, two years ago.
So what the heck happened? Because this all started with a couple of little girls acting a fool and being pressured into accusing community members of witchcraft. How does that happen? That’s quite a leap. And there are several theories that try to explain it. One of them is more conspiratorial, that a lot of this was intentional and even strategic. Because a lot of these accusations, the majority of these accusations were coming from the Putnam family. Remember I said the Putnams were like the it family of Salem. They were the wealthiest, they owned the most land, they had a lot of influence. And they had an all out feud with another family in the village, the Porters. This rivalry was so intense, literally the whole village was torn between the Putnams and the Porters. According to the Salem Witch trials Wikipedia page quote “Citizens would often have heated debates, which escalated into full-fledged fighting, based solely on their opinion of the feud,” end quote. And remember, Ann Putnam was one of the afflicted girls. She was the third one to become afflicted and she made more accusations than any of them, more than 60 people she personally named as witches. And her father, Thomas Putnam was super involved too. He was one of the greatest instigators, ringleaders of the whole thing. He wrote many of the depositions for the girls which were used in the trials as evidence against the accused. And so some speculate that this was a convenient way to dispose of their enemies. Ann would later apologize for her involvement by the way, but only when she needed to get something out of it. According to History.com, quote “In 1706, while seeking to join the Salem Village church, Ann offered the only known apology of any of the Salem accusers, stating that she had been deluded by the devil, and that she desired quote “to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness from God and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offence.” She was allowed to join the congregation, but died from unknown causes just nine years later,” end quote.
But, I don’t know, maybe the conspiracy theory makes sense for Thomas Putnam, but not really for the others. It didn’t start with Ann Putnam anyway, it started with Betty Parris and her father, the minister, had nothing to gain from Tituba, the woman he enslaved being accused of witchcraft. In fact, they basically fled the town after this. Betty never participated in the trials. Her parents sent her away to stay with family. Her father, Samuel Parris, was dismissed as minister and took the rest of the family off to where Betty was already hiding. So it’s not like Putnam and Parris sat down together and were like “hmm… how do we get rid of all these undesirables standing in our way? I know, get the girls in here, we’re going to need them for this.” It wasn’t like that. I don’t think Thomas Putnam played a role in starting the madness, but I do think he took advantage of it once it had started. He finessed it in certain directions that were convenient for him.
Another, more recent theory is quite interesting. This one suggests that there may have been an actual, physical cause for the girls’ strange behavior: ergotism. This is a form of food poisoning basically that comes from eating ergot which is a type of fungus that grows on grains, especially rye. So the theory is that the girls were ingesting this ergot by eating moldy bread and that they developed ergotism. So symptoms of ergotism which is also called St. Anthony’s Fire or Devil’s curse include convulsions, muscle spasms, vomiting, hallucinations, and pain. Pretty similar to what these girls were experiencing. And also pretty scary. And if that’s happening to you and you don’t know why and someone, a doctor even, suggests that witches are doing it to you, You’re going to be like “okay, yeah, it’s witches, now make it stop” right? “What do I have to do?” Especially if you’re a 9 year old puritan girl in the 1600s and you don’t know any better. But then, if it’s ergotism, like, why is only this small group of girls getting it. Are they all eating the same bread and no one else? It doesn’t really make much sense logistically.
And so what most experts seem to land on is that the Salem witch trials were a clear cut case of mass hysteria, something super complicated that, like many things concerning the human mind, we don’t fully understand. But we’ve seen other examples of this, school girls laughing uncontrollably for days, dancing epidemics where people start dancing and literally cannot stop, dance until they drop dead of exhaustion. And in this case we see young girls not laughing, not dancing, but screaming and writhing, and contorting their bodies, acting possessed. And nothing is wrong with them. Nothing is happening to them. But they can’t stop and they don’t know why they’re doing it. And it seems to spread. Another girl hears about it “did you hear about Betty Parris and Abigail and Ann Putnam? Did you hear what’s happening to them?” and then all of a sudden she’s doing it too and she doesn’t know why and she can’t stop. And when we study cases of mass hysteria there is a pattern that emerges. This phenomenon happens when communities are under great stress, extreme tension from disease or famine, fighting/violence, competition for resources, church driven fear. Basically all of the things that were happening in Salem. It’s a recipe for mass hysteria.
And so that explains the girls’ behavior. I mean we don’t really understand it, but we know it’s a thing, mass hysteria. But a handful of girls acting wacky isn’t enough to execute 20 people. Kathleen Brown says in Penn Today quote “This outbreak resulted in the executions of accused witches because local magistrates and clergymen pour gasoline on the fire. The elite leadership of very learned clergymen and local magistrates of the courts were definitely on board with this [Otherwise, the accusations would have remained just that—accusations, with local people] baking witch cakes and putting little locks of hair inside a frying pan of urine to see if somebody really was a witch or not. But you wouldn’t have had people tried; you wouldn’t have the gathering of testimony; you wouldn’t have all the documentation, if all of the legal apparatus and the expertise of clergymen hadn't been brought to bear,” end quote. But this can be explained as well. It’s no different than what was happening all over Europe in the 14, 15, 1600s, especially in Germany where 40 percent of the quote “witches” were burned. In Germany, where the newly formed protestant church was threatening the Catholic church for the first time. And in Salem, where the Puritan church, a Puritan colony, was being diluted by outsiders more concerned with trade and enterprise than with reading their bibles. When the church feels threatened, it invents a villain only it can defend its people against. And it so badly needs them to believe in this villain and in its power to protect them from it, that it kills innocent people, upstanding members of society even, members of the church, past ministers of the church, that’s how badly they need this to be real. Because if it's not real, then what good are they anyway? Who needs them? Your perception becomes your reality, you guys. And a perception driven by fear and suspicion, paranoia and hate, is a truly terrifying reality that leads to really dangerous and damaging actions. And not to get political, I know everything is annoyingly political right now in the US at least, but I see this perception among certain factions today. And it’s possible that my eating cats and dogs joke from earlier, wasn’t as funny as it is scary. Spooktober indeed.
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
Information used in this episode was sourced from history.com, Smithsonian Magazine, the Peabody Essex Museum, Penn Today, and Wikipedia. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.