Born the son of a minister in Suffolk, England around 1620, Matthew Hopkins was a lawyer by trade, though an unsuccessful one. Unable to make a living in the city center, he moved to the small village of Manningtree and soon found a new line of work: witch hunting.
Over the next year, Hopkins, now calling himself by the unofficial title of Witch-Finder General, and his four assistants traveled to towns such as Essex, Aldeburgh and Stowmarket — sometimes at the behest of the village elders and sometimes just to see what would turn up. In but one year, Hopkins’s investigations would lead several hundred men and women to the gallows on charges of death by enchantment and collusion with evil spirits. And Hopkins was paid for each and every one of them: in 1645 alone, he is said have earned the then-extravagant sum of £1000 for his work. 
In the early spring of 1692, Elizabeth Parris, daughter of the local clergy and resident of Salem, Massachusetts, started displaying strange symptoms. Peculiar speech and bodily contortions led the village doctor to conclude the worst: witchcraft. In days the quiet puritan town became a hotbed of accusation and deceit. The infamous and violent Salem witch trials had begun.
After 9 year old Elizabeth’s tale was told, other inflicted individuals came forward. Elizabeth’s friends Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam also began to display symptoms of possession and curses (according to the understanding of such things in the early colonial period).
Once friend and caretaker of the girls Tituba the Indian was accused of causing the girl’s illnesses. A transplant from Barbados and the only foreigner in town, Tituba was a perfect target. Whether she pleaded guilty or not guilty to the charges laid against her, she would not win. Her dark skin and exotic ways were enough for the uneducated and superstitious people of Salem to believe a young girls fancies over the pleading (and later false confession) of a grown woman.
Tituba decided she wasn’t going it alone and accused two other Salem women of being her accomplices in the craft. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were taken into police custody on February 29, the same day as Tituba. It was the beginning of a maelstrom.
As news of witchcraft spread around the town, the other girls as well as many towns’ women began accusing neighbors and old friends of practicing witchcraft. Each woman who was accused pointed the finger at another. Every old slight, bad word and malicious piece of gossip became a motivation for laying blame. And being accused of witchcraft and in league with the devil in 17th century America was no laughing matter.
Puritan New England was a place of hardened religious belief. The bible was God’s word and God’s word was the law of the land. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” is today an innocuous piece of scripture. But in 1692, it was a death warrant for 17 women and five men in the village of Salem. Pastor Parris saw his child had been brushed by the Devil and he was not about to let things slide.
Accused witches were drowned, burnt at the stake and crushed with boulders during this period. The methods were harsh, meant to force the witch to use her magic and escape. Women were cast into the water and those that floated to the surface were proven witches. Those that drowned were innocent. It was a confused faith combined with a puritan sense of justice that meant the accused of Salem at least got a trial.
But of course the trial wasn’t fair. Devout Christians were asked to admit publicly they were in league with the devil, that they had familiars and practice witchcraft on innocent children. It was a lot to admit to. Pleading guilty meant jail time rather than execution. But so many proud and faithful individuals simply refused to do it and lost their lives to the madness that was Salem. They saw themselves as religious martyrs.
The craziness in Salem has, for many years, been put down to mass hysteria and nasty little girls who carried a joke too far and didn’t know how to stop it. But in recent years, botanists and historians have considered the possibility of ergot poisoning as an alternative explanation for the events in Massachusetts. Ergot is a fungus that grows on the shaft of rye plants. The ergot was thought to be a natural part of the rye plant before the 18th century and simply ground up into the rye flour that baked the bread in early New England.
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The ergot lay dormant in the human system until enough built up over time to cause the individual physical symptoms. These symptoms include delirium, bodily contortions, mental confusion and hallucinations. Symptoms easily mistaken for devilish mischief.
Hundreds were accused of witchcraft in the 1690s in New England resulting in over 130 executions. Today, Salem is a tourist attraction, a chance to dress up as witches and play puritan. But the deaths are very real as is the legacy of the witch trials: careless talk costs lives. |
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