Every Hope of Heaven

Something horrible began to take shape in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.  And no one can tell why to this very day.  But at the beginning of the year, a group of girls led by Elizabeth Parris, the nine-year-old daughter of the local reverend, and her cousin Abigail Williams, 12, began to have "fits."  Conveniently enough, this started when they were discovered having their fortunes told by Tituba, the family servant.  Dr. Griggs diagnosed them as "bewitched," and the destruction began.

Questioned as to the identities of their persecutors, the girls named Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne (called Goody in address, short for Goodwife), who were thrown into jail.  On March 1, the Meeting House became the scene of the show.  The three women went to trial, and, as each was questioned by the judges, the girls and some young audience members screamed in agony and flailed wildly about on the floor.  While the two Sarahs kept their wits about them, denying all, the black woman knew her position was even more precarious.  So she concocted what the prosecutors wanted to hear--stories of meeting with the Devil, signing his book, dancing naked in the forest, and consorting with other "witches" in the village.  The snowball was rolling.

Soon, many others were arrested, most of them older women who had caused some sort of difficulty for their neighbors at one time or another.  Men and women were questioned.  Could they say the Lord's Prayer without stumbling?  Quote the Ten Commandments?  Recall particular passages from the Sermon on the Mount?  Women were undressed by their former friends and searched over for "witch's tits," any unusual growth or mole which might allow a "familiar" to suckle.  No humiliation was too great.  And anyone who was considered suspect was imprisoned.  Eventually, volunteers loaned barns and sheds for makeshift jails, as more than 150 people were locked away.

The group of girls had expanded, and in June an official court of Oyer and Terminer, with the power to issue warrants of execution, had been created to try the cases.  Generations from a single family were awaiting their day before the tribunal.  Both Martha Corey and her equally cantankerous husband Giles, who had not minded her arrest in the least, were accused.  Sisters, cousins, grandmothers, mothers, and daughters were all supposedly amongst the Devil's minions.  A pregnant woman could, however, "plead her belly," which meant delaying her trial or execution until after the birth.  In the end, this would literally save lives.

Only the women who refused to sign confessions were brought to trial.  The first to be found guilty, while the girls wallowed and howled, was Bridget Bishop, and her sentence was death by hanging.  She was followed in quick succession by Martha Cory, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, and many others.  All were taken to the Gallows Tree for execution, and their land was confiscated, just as that of those who had confessed.

The exception to this process was the redoubtable Giles Cory.  When he refused to sign his life away, the decision to torture him came down from the tribunal.  The old man, who was 80, was placed on the ground with a door laid over him.  That fixture was topped with one large rock after another.  While his body broke, his spirit did not.  His last words were "more weight," and his land stayed in the family.  He died an innocent man.

Eventually, anything can go too far.  In 1693, the girls were already being doubted because of their reliance upon "spectral evidence," or visions.  They often claimed that their tormentors appeared to them in another form or in their rooms at night, when they could not possibly have done so.  During the hearings, they cried out that those sitting in full view of the court were sticking them with pins or whispering in their ears. 

Then they did the unthinkable.  They accused the wife of Governor Phips, claiming that she too was a practicing witch.  It was like the sound of a needle scratching across a record, as the proceedings ground to a halt.  They had overextended their reach.

But the damage, deliberate or not, was profound.  Of those arrested, 19 women had been hanged (Tituba survived).  Cory had lost his life.  Even a dog has been taken to the Gallows Tree and executed as a "familiar."  Of the women never tried, five had died imprisoned.  The madness had spread, though not so dramatically, to nearby villages.  And the power of the great Puritan theocracy was dead.  Now those who follow this religion call themselves Congregationalists.  Even Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose ancestor John Hathorne had been one of the original Meeting House magistrates, changed the spelling of his name to disguise the connection.  But he could not change the tone of his subject matter to do the same.

So were these girls just vicious?  Perhaps, but there are other arguments.  Most were from wealthy families who believed that God smiled more brightly upon those with the most property.  They may have been encouraged to pursue the owners of valuable land, which would be put up for sale upon their confessions.  Some point out that the majority of the "afflicted" were pubescent, which could mean that hormones and sexual repression played a role.  Others argue that they simply became addicted to the attention and celebrity, for people came from far and wide to observe,  And, as the staples of the Puritan diet were bread and beer (yes, beer), the theory that the wheat crop was contaminated by ergot has been suggested.  This could mean that they actually had pain and hallucinations, but so would many others.  There simply is no satisfactory answer.

The fact remains, of those murdered 12 never confessed.  They had "every hope of Heaven." to quote Arthur Miller.  Over the following years, some excommunications and convictions were reversed or overturned, but not all.  And the term "witchhunt" has passed into popular idiom to describe any unjust accusation. 

Before 1692, twelve lives were taken for "practicing witchcraft" in Massachusetts, and still others were lost in the United States afterward.  Chadwick Hansen argues in Witchcraft in Salem, the seminal work on the subject, that white magic was practiced in the guise of superstition, just as people still avoid black cats, walking under ladders, stepping on cracks, and the number 13.  But the next time you level an accusation against your neighbor, remember that one of you is getting farther from Heaven.  How can you be sure which one?

V K