The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted.
On February 29, 1692, Thomas Preston Joseph Hutchinson, Edward Putnam and Thomas Putnam filed complaints against Sarah Good, Sarah Osbourn and Tituba for afflicting the girls of Salem Village after the girls had named the three women as their tormentors.
In June 1692, the special Court of Oyer and Terminer [“to hear and to decide”] convened in Salem under Chief Justice William Stoughton to judge the accused. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem, who was accused of witchcraft by more individuals than any other defendant.
It was virtually impossible to disprove charges of witchcraft in Salem, and defendants were convicted with no evidence other than personal accusations, the presence of a “devil's mark” on their bodies, or because they failed one of the so-called “witch tests.” The courts accepted spectral evidence, that is, evidence ...
On February 29th, 1692, three women were arrested for suspicion of witchcraft: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and the Parris slave, Tituba. They were all found guilty, but, the only one to confess was Tituba. Since the other two women did not confess, Good was hanged, and Osborne died in prison.
among the first four accusers, and went on to testify against 29 people in the Salem witch trials, 13 of whom were executed.
Courts relied on three kinds of evidence: 1) confession, 2) testimony of two eyewitnesses to acts of witchcraft, or 3) spectral evidence (when the afflicted girls were having their fits, they would interact with an unseen assailant – the apparition of the witch tormenting them).
They believed that the illness was all caused by witchcraft. This only lead to false accusations, of those who were believed to be a witch. These types of accusations harmed many innocent people because of the reliance on authority, their hasty judgement, white and black thinking, labeling, and resisting to change.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of 20 people, most of them women.