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Context of the Salem witch trials
Societal effects of salem witch trials
Effects of the Salem witch trials
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The Salem Witch Trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts during 1692 and early 1693. More than 200 people died at the gallows, 150 of them jailed, and 20 executed. Among the executed, 19 were hanged and one was pressed to death. Various others died in prison. To understand the occurrences in Salem, one must understand the history of the witch trials throughout Europe from the 1300s to the 1600s, and also what the setting was in Salem and its surrounding areas at the
During the time of the Salem Witch Trials the intertwining of religion and government did not allow citizens of Salem, Massachusetts the right to a fair trial, so it was the states responsibility to separate the two. In the 1600’s the Puritan religion was greatly enforced by the government. It wouldn’t be until many years later that separation of church and state became a law.
The Theories of the Salem Witch Trials The Salem Witch trials and what caused them is very debatable. Some theories lead to Rye poisoning from bread, even people faking it. The most believable claim is that people are faking it. Everyone had a motive and they all just wanted to save themselves.
In Rosalyn Schanzerś “Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem”, a Puritan religion filled Salem takes the Bible literally. The town starts to find witches which causes hysteria to spread across town causing people to accuse friends of witchcraft. Communism’s Red Scare, internment camps, and the Holocaust are just like these witch hunts because they all caused histeria and actions by people that should not have been taken.
The Salem Witch Trials were a time in history where people were wrongly accused of being witches. In the spring of 1692 the Salem witch trials began. During the trials women were wrongly accused of being witches. When accused of being a witch they were tortured, tested, put on trial, and most of the time executed if not put in jail. The townspeople tortured the accused witches in the most inhumane ways. This was a very dark and eerie time for the Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts (P., Shaunak).
The Salem Witch Trials took place in February of 1692 to May of 1693 (Brock). These trials were a series of several hearings and prosecutions between the people in Salem Massachusetts (Brock). Within this time, 24 people were executed because they were believed to have been involved in witchcraft in some way (Brock). This is when hysteria began to flood Salem when the thought of witches prowling through the town arose (Brooks). Because of the increase of hysteria, many people began to blame others and point fingers at anyone who could have been considered remotely out of the ordinary (Brooks). Another reason that many people were accused was due to the fact that the person who was originally accused wanted to get the spotlight off of themselves (Brooks).
There are some events in history that put the human race to shame; however, these occasions can change our future forever. Society cannot deny that social injustices occur almost every day, maybe even more than once. One large blemish in our history, the Salem Witch Trials, alienated a certain group in our society. These trials were an unfortunate combination of economic conditions, a flock’s strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies.
INTRODUCTION The infamous Salem Witch Trials began in late February of 1692 after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. The accusations caused a wave of mass hysteria throughout colonial Massachusetts. The people of Salem accused more than 160 men, women, and children of practicing witchcraft, also known as the Devil’s magic. Most of the accused persons faced imprisonment, while others lost property and legal rights.
From June through to September of 1692 the Salem Village, Massachusetts, was in a state of constant panic and suspicion as young girls began to exhibit strange behaviour and claimed they were possessed. As a result of the trials nineteen people and two dogs were hanged, one man pressed to death by rocks, eight other persons sentenced to death, fifty expecting sentence and one hundred and fifty awaiting trial in gaol. Historians have offered many explanations for these events including: real witchcraft within Salem or hysteria through the belief in witchcraft, pressures of the puritanism religion and its leaders encouraging the events, fraudulent behaviour from the afflicted, ergotism and other physiological illnesses, and finally, social circumstances
The practices in which became known as The Salem Witch Trial, where the trials were held in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693. “Magical practices were not altogether divorced from Christianity in the minds of many “natural philosophers”, who sometimes thought of them as experiments that could unlock the secrets of Scripture”(Patricia U. Bonomi). Also, some people of practices with Christianity “had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty. A "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. Though the Salem trials came on just as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset.”(Jess
The Salem Witch Trials were a horrible event in the history of the United States of America. The Salem Witch Trials happened in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. During this event over 200 people were accused of being witches and the ones found guilty or would not confess were executed 20 people ended up being executed. The court finally admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted (Blumberg).
During the time of the Salem Witch Trials, accused witches were forced to complete at least one of seven tests. The first test was named "the swimming test". During this test, accused witches had to strip of all their clothes except their undergarments before they were thrown into a body of water. People believed that guilty witches would float, while the people that sunk were innocent. Ropes were tied around the accused persons waist, but drownings did still occur. ("7 Bizarre Witch Trial Tests")
In Salem, a small village in Massachusetts, the atrocious events that came to be known as the Salem Witch Trials lasted from February of 1962 until May the following year. This series of trials resulted with 200 people accused, with 24 dead. 19 were executed and hung. Of the 19, 6 were male and the remaining 14 were women. Giles Corey died after three days of torture for refusing to plead guilty. The last 4 died whilst in prison. (Brooks, historyofmassachusetts.org)
Accusations of witchcraft ran rampant in the 17th century colonial settlements in the United States. The individuals accused, mostly women, were put on trial and punished, if found guilty. The most well-known of such cases on public record are the Salem Witch Trials. Between February, 1692 and May, 1693, hearings and prosecutions were set up to deal with those accused of dabbling in the dark arts in the cities of Andover, Salem, and Ipswich, all in Massachusetts Bay. These trials came to commonly be referred to as the Salem Witch Trials because some of the most notorious cases were heard in the Oyer and Terminer courts in Salem. At the time, practicing witchcraft was considered a serious crime, and was often punished with serious consequences.
The Salem Trials took place between the 10th of June and the 22nd of 1692 and in this time nineteen people. In addition to this one man was pressed to death and over 150 people where sent to jail where four adult and one infant died. Although when compared to other witch-hunts in the Western world, it was ‘a small incident in the history of a great superstition,’ but has never lost its grip on our imagination’ . It’s because of this that over the last three centuries many historians have analysed the remaining records of the trials in order to work out what the causes and events were that led to them.
The Salem witch trials occurred in the Puritan society of Massachusetts during the 1960s. It began with a group of young girls claiming to be possessed and accusing other women of witchcraft and ended in the death of 19 people. After this mass hysteria people