In Our Time - The Salem Witch Trials

Episode Date: November 26, 2015

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the outbreak of witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692-3, centred on Salem, which led to the execution of twenty people, with more dying in prison before or after trial. Some were men, including Giles Corey who died after being pressed with heavy rocks, but the majority were women. At its peak, around 150 people were suspected of witchcraft, including the wife of the governor who had established the trials. Many of the claims of witchcraft arose from personal rivalries in an area known for unrest, but were examined and upheld by the courts at a time of mass hysteria, belief in the devil, fear of attack by Native Americans and religious divisions.With Susan Castillo-Street Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emerita of American Studies at King's College LondonSimon Middleton Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of SheffieldAnd Marion Gibson Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at Exeter University, Penryn Campus.Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1692 in the New England colony of Massachusetts, two young girls Abigail Williams and Betty Paris had fits, were twitching, they wouldn't wake up. They and their families blamed their behaviour on witchcraft, and the hunt was on for the supposed witches responsible. This was Salem Village. The Puritans living there, and in the surrounding Essex County, started to find witches wherever they looked. Neighbor accusing, neighbor, many confessing in the hope of avoiding the noose. It was no use onlookers arguing there was no such thing as

witchcraft. This was taken as proof that they themselves are witches. Once the trials were over, there were apologies, justifications, reparations, but by then over 100 innocent women men and children had been accused and held in jail. 20 had been put to death, most of them women. With me to discuss what became known as the Salem witch trials are Susan Castillo Street. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Professor Emerita of American Studies at King's College London. Simon Middleton, senior lecturer in American history at the University of Sheffield, and Marianne Gibson, Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at Essex University's Penryn campus. Simon Middleton, who is living in Massachusetts at this time in the area around Salem Village in particular?

Well, Salem Village is, Salem is settled in 1626, initially and then is absorbed into the larger Puritan colony. So the people who are living there are mainly farmers, certainly all associated with the Puritan migration. And by the time we get to the witchcraft trials, there is something of a division. The village has become a rural hinterland to a more successful Salem town,

which is taken off on the back of the merchant trade supplying the West Indian plantations. And so this is one of the divisions that we're going to go and see in the witchcraft trials. The Puritanans, we have to say something I think, about what Puritanism is briefly and why they're there. We've left England to try and build pure churches in the new world.

They worry greatly that the Anglican Church retains too many corruptions and Catholic practices. The importance of establishing a pure church is because the Puritans are also Calvinists, which they believe in predestination, meaning that some are bound to go to heaven, some most are bound to go to hell. And the only way that you can find out which you are is by studying the Bible and studying the self and being a part of a pure church led by a church. a minister who you trust and who's wise and well-informed, and looking for signs of assurance in yourself

that you may indeed be one of the saved. This is important for Salem because the prehistory to the witchcraft hunts really revolves around a struggle to get a church in Salem Village. They have to go to the church in Salem Town, which is a 10-mile round trip for some of them. And for nearly 20 years they campaigned to try and be released from the Salem Town Church, and establish their own church in the village.

And this leads to a kind of factionalised row in the Salem Village between the people who are furthest from the town who want to have a village church and the people who are nearer the town who are perfectly happy going to Salem Town and oppose the village church. Just to re-emphasise at this point, it began the ferocity of the Presbyterians

and their determination. They started to go across at the beginning of the 17th century, those big movement across in about 1630 when Charles in this country started persecuting them, their hatred of Anglicanism. But they put up with enormous privations. They totally believe that they're going to build the city on the hill, the city to God.

They're entirely godly society. There were people we could even call them the people of the book without. And so this is bitten in to everything they do, this Presbyterianism. Puritanism. Indeed it is. And Puritan is originally... Why do you distinguish in Puritanism and Presbyterian? Well, because the people that go to Massachusetts

are congregationalists, and that's a really important idea. year. The Presbyterian wing of the Protestant Reformation, I guess, still has a place for elders and people to be in charge, the presbytery, right? The congregationalists believe very strongly that the congregation should be in charge of its own church. And this is one of the reasons that what you see in New England is a fragmentation as groups break away from the early settlement and settle around the colony, each with their own particular variation and view of how the religious practice should be ordered. When they're all fighting, against Anglicans in England, they are kind of joined together. But when they get to the new world, they kind of part and fall out with each other, very famously in something called the Antenomian Crisis of the 1630s. You've talked about the local community of Salem Village. How it was a divided community? Very divided.

How big was it? There's about 600 people in the village. But there's a lovely family tale in all of this, because the people who support the church in the west of the village are the Pottenham's, and the people who oppose the independent church in the east of the village are called the porters. And the first Pottenham and the first porter arrived about the same time in the 1630s. But by the 1680s, the Pottenham's fortunes are declining and the porters are increasing, in part because they're near a town and they've got associated with this mercantile trade that's developing.

And so at the heart of the Salem trials, there is this family feud between two long-established families. and there's even an inheritance that goes astray. A pottenham bit of land that should be in the family through marriage looks like it's headed towards the port-a-side. And this is all happening in the late 1680s right before it all kicks off. Susan, as soon as I tell you, what was it about the beliefs that made them particularly likely to believe that there was witchcraft around?

Basically, the Puritans believed in a world of invisible spirits, a world of devils and witches. None of whom we could see. They also believed in the importance of confession, and this later in the trials would prove to be very important. For them, what was paramount was the integrity of the community, and anything that threatened that was seen as prejudicial. Also, they did have the idea that they were the inheritors of the Israelites

as the chosen people of God. But the difference there was that they believed that they could create the perfect society, not in heaven, rather, but here on earth and specifically in America. And their rhetoric is very much in terms of biblical typology. They saw themselves as the parallel was the persecution from the Stuart Kings was rather like the Israelites and Pharaoh in Egypt. The crossing of the Atlantic was like the crossing of the Red Sea.

They saw themselves as the inheritors of the Israelites. They also felt that any kind of persecution or difficulty was, in a sense, a badge of honor because this showed that the devil felt that they were a threat, so that any difficulties such as plagues or battles with Indians or that sort of thing were seen as tests. And they believed in the devil. there was this presence called the devil. But they also believed in specters, didn't they?

That people, there were ghosts of people or spirits of people who could be called to account. These spirits could give information which would be valid in a court. Yes, and that was one of the reasons that the witch trials went so horribly wrong. Spectres, the idea, the Puritan idea was that the devil could work through someone's specters in order to... Can you say more specifically, and better than I did, what a spectre was, because it's very important in the side of these spectres.

When you're working through... When the devil works through a spectre, what's the spectre is working through? The spectre is a kind of invisible presence that can carry out malefic witchcraft, that can make really bad things happen. And certain people can see these spectres. They claim? They did, yes.

As they're called, the afflicted girls, the young women who began... all of this, claim that they could see spectres tormenting others. Of course, the problem there is that there's no external corroboration so that someone can allege that someone's specter is tormenting them, even if that very person has a perfectly good alibi and is physically present somewhere else. So it basically removes the need for any corroboration, only the person who is claiming this. To put this in a sort of contextualize this in a slightly different way. They're in an embattled place, aren't there?

The Indians are near. They have burnt Indian villages to the ground and thought this is a sweet blessing of the Lord, is that the phrase? William Bradford, yes. A sweet blessing, because they'd burned it all to the ground. The Indians made raids, took away some of the girls now and then, and so on. So this fear was ever present. I think there was a kind of invasion psychosis, really.

So many of the people who were, again, you know, gave testimony and were the accusers in the witch trials, had very direct experience of the battles. For example, Mercy Short was taken captive by the Wabanaki. While she was there, she experienced, she was made to witness the dismemberment of one of the captives as a sort of object lesson to other captives not to flee. Another, Mercy Lewis was orphaned and lost her family. She then was a servant with the Putnam's. So there are so many links to the frontier throughout the trials.

So coming to it, Marianne, I mistakenly said you came from Essex and not from Exeter. I thought you might have said that. I correct it, can I sort of say Mayor Culper? But Mayor Corp would really be a lot. in this particular context, so I'm really sorry. Essex is on the mind. All this happened in Essex County, not in Exeter's absolved from the Salem trial.

Okay, let's start where it's started, it seems to start, these girls, Abigail Williams and Betty Paris. Yes, Abigail and Betty are really important because they are the first accusers and as you said at the beginning they are two young girls who fall ill and start accusing people of bewitching them. Their youth is important, I think. Betty is about nine years old and Abigail is about 11 or 12.

And we know that because John Hale, one of the preachers who was called in to interact with them to try to find out what was wrong with them and to tell other people in the community about them tells us their ages. These are changed later on by later writers, but we know that they were actually quite young girls. And as you say, they start being afflicted. They think that demonic creatures are pinching them. They start twitching and writhing and their bodies are contorted in strange ways. So their hands are turned backwards and their limbs are twisted. Things like that. Do they show these backward turned hands or are we expected to believe because they say their hands were

backward to turn in the middle of the night to expect to believe that? We are expected to believe that, I think. It's something that's often said in cases of demonic possession, for example. But it's not entirely clear how it happened, whether it was a muscle spasm or whether they were simply children you know how children do, kind of making their bodies into strange shapes because they can. It's not entirely clear what was going on.

What is going on is very much to do with the household of the minister. Yes, I think he does. He's causing great dissension in the place. Paris, Samuel Paris. One of them is his niece, one of them is his daughter, and then the first accused person is his slave. Yes. So he's very much at the centre, he's even at the beginning of it and he has scores to settle with other people in the village.

Where does that fit in? That's a really important point. Yes, it is his household where all of this starts and he is very conscious of his household of having to be the minister, having to be the beacon of hope to the rest of the community. And I think there is tremendous pressure, therefore, on the people in his household to be godly. Imagine how difficult that must have been.

nine or 11 year old girl. So yes, they start. And also with no dancing, no... Yes. What they couldn't do. Can you list the things they want allowed to do? Or have you got time? Yeah, exactly. There are so many, aren't there? They were expected to be silent, to speak when spoken,

to be submissive, to ask blessing from the adults around them, to respect the adults around them, honour thy father and thy mother. But it is important to say that... And no music, dancing, toys, games, Christmas Day, yesterday, that sort of stuff. None of that. But it's important to say that, Abbe... Abigail probably doesn't have a mother and father, and that that might be important too. As you say, she's Paris's niece.

It's not entirely clear what that relationship is, but she's certainly living in his house in this rather anomalous position. Given the way that that society was such a hierarchy and so powerful, why did they listen to these girls? I think they listened to them because they thought that what the girls were saying was what they wanted to hear in a funny sort of way. Paris in particular. It's sort of what he wants to hear.

He wants to hear that he is a godly man and that therefore the devil hates him and wants to attack his family and he feels persecuted anyway because, as you were both saying, in the wider community, he's not well-liked. And there are dissensions and problems in the community surrounding the minister.

So he really feels under threat and this confirms his sense that the devil is after him. Before we leave Paris, though, is it beyond possibility that he ceded the whole thing and then egg it on and then it got out of hand? It's possible.

Yes, it is possible. It's not possible to say one way or the other to convict him or absolve him, actually. But he may have done. Certainly it's interesting that these young girls in his household are the ones that kick the whole thing off. Coming to you, Sam, do you only take that on, the girls in the hospital? How did it came to the first trials?

We're on that track now. Well, Paris is at the centre of a really vicious, well, fight between these factions. And the porter faction... Factions in the village. Factions in the village. And the porter cat faction of gain control of the church government, the previous October and stopped paying him.

They've stopped giving him his salary. And also, there's Cotton Mather, I know we're going to come on to talk about him maybe in a little while, but he, in 1689, Mather is this brilliant intellectual minister, and in 1689 he publishes a book called Memorable Providences of Witchcraft and Possession, in which he describes the case of the bewitchment of some children in Boston, the Goodwin children,

and it describes exactly what then appears, the kind of behaviour and the kinds of, you know, afflictions that then appear in Salem. And it's not too much of a stretch to see Paris reading. Everybody would have been aware of Mather's publication, reading that, and then highly suggestible children in the household, you know, picking up on that. Right, so he read the book. And they're doing the same thing as he read in the book. They're in his household.

He's got big grudges. They're not paying him any money. He wants to get his own back. So we can leave that to one side. Tell us how he went to the first trial. Well, when an accusation of witchcraft is, made. There's an arrest warrant. People are brought in for questioning. And then the decision is made about whether or not it'll go to a grand jury and then from the grand jury to trial.

What happens in Salem in the first phase from February through March is that the two magistrates, Hawthorne and Corwin, who are merchants knowledgeable of the law rather than lawyers, they follow legal procedure. And one of the things we've got to know is there's no, it's often represented in witchcraft hysteria, but the legal process is very deliberative, and very bureaucratic. One thing they do not do, which was customary practice in the 17th century before this case, was ask for a bond from the accusers to, you know, stand up for their accusation and confirm that they will be in court.

And I think this failure to ask for a bond and also the fact that the people who were accused, Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, are straight out. Accused by these girls, this 11-year-old, 9-year-old and 11-year-old girls, and by Titchie brother-slave. They're being accused by these. We've got to keep the story in mind. Going into legal it. The story is the story at the moment, isn't it? Yeah. So these

girls and the slave girl who he's bought, Paris has bought in the West Indies and he's treated a less harsher than everybody, they're accusing everybody. They're accusing initially. Older women and generally poorer women and they're being taken seriously. Yes, they're being taken seriously.

Everybody, it's not uncommon for witchcraft accusations to be taken seriously, especially not. When you look at Sarah Osborne and Sarah are good, they're straight out of central casting in terms of witchery. I mean they're kind of vulnerable, older, middle-aged, poor, a reputation for arguing with neighbours and of that kind of thing. Susan, how did these accused defend themselves? So they're being accused by these children and this Tichiba, a slave gun.

What did they defend themselves? It was remarkably difficult to do so precisely because of the issue of spectral evidence. Many defended themselves by simply proclaiming their inner. and almost without exception, those who did were hung later. Just for proclaiming that innocence? Precisely. How did that work? I am innocent, therefore, you will get hanged for being guilty.

What's going on? It's completely bizarre. I agree. Can we go into it? Of course. Can we unpack bizarre? Right. I think, again, it plays into the idea of the Puritans

that confession was good for the soul that one should reveal one's failings in a public way. So I think that certainly is part of it. I think also in this process there was always the presumption of guilt and the burden was on the accused to prove their innocence, which proved very difficult to do. Tituba, I think, probably understood from the beginning that if she confessed, she might.

be freed as ultimately happened after a long period of imprisonment. So her confession was remarkably florid and evocative, and that, in a sense, I think, touched off the outpouring of confessions which followed. Can I come to you, to you, Marion, about this. Tichiba quite a bit is known about it. She's often misrepresented, but she, as has been said, her confession gives it a boost, but then we have this, I'll go back to your bizarre. People are saying they're innocent and become accused and harm.

People who confess tend to be let off. They do. Can you tell us it about Titiava? Yes. She does confess at length. She accuses other people, including Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. She talks about how they've got demonic spirits, familiars in the shape of animals. She talks about how they've pinched the children, attack the children,

and that they've made her sign the devil's book and drawn her into their, which cover their conspiracy. But you're absolutely right. She survives the trials, whereas Sarah Osborne dies in prison and Sarah Good is hanged. So Tachuba's strategy actually was completely the right one. She is to be indicted right at the end of the controversy when things are winding down and people are starting to think that they've got things horribly wrong.

She is to be indicted, but the grand jury refused to find the indictment against her. They refused to put her forward for trial. And eventually she has returned to prison, and subsequently, as far as we can see, freed. So she does the right thing in a funny sort of way. Can we say a bit more about Titia bit? Because she's been the centre of quite a disputation as to where she came from,

what sort of slave she was. Can you just say a bit more? Yes. In all of the original documents, she's described as an Indian woman. So Mr. Paris is Indian woman, the Indian, things like that. But in the 1860s, a historian called Charles Wentworth Upham, represented her for the first time as somebody who he described as being half-negro. So she has this identity that she starts off being Indian or Native American

and subsequently morphs into being a Negro or African-American, which is a fascinating journey. It seems to have come about because, of course, in the 1860s with the Civil War and in the American politics of slavery at the time, there was interest in people of African-American descent, there was interest in that kind of racial division and Tichiba was sort of moved into that camp almost subconsciously,

as if that was who she had always been. But it's very likely that she was a Native American woman. And certainly research done in the 1990s threw up a record in Barbados from the 1670s of a girl called Tachuba, who was being sold, who was part of an inventory of an estate owned by a man called Samuel Thompson in Bridgetown in Barbados. And this may be Artituba.

She's listed among child slaves at the time. So by the time of the Salem trials, if this is our girl, she's probably sort of 25 to 30 years old, something like that. But she does seem to be a Native American, and that's probably an important thing to say about her at this stage. Simon, you wanted to say something, I want to ask you something. You go first. Well, I want to dissent from the characterisation of bizarre and move us on through the trials to a key middle bit.

I mean, we're comfortable with descriptions that, you know, it wasn't bizarre to them. It made absolute sense to them, that if you would confess, then you know, you would be... One of the reasons confessions weren't treated more harshly was because they were kept in jail because they were expected to dob more people in, you know, and also as the trials proceeded, later on in May, when the court begins to sit, if you can stay in jail long enough, you weather out the storm of the accusation and the worst of it,

and then you, you know, you are dealt with in a different way. But the other one is that the importance of confession is revealed, I think in one of the most important and key cases, which is the case of Rebecca Nurse, because after the accusations being leveled at, you know, central casting, which is, what happens is regular, respectable women and others in the community are accused, the kinds of subjects that never would have attracted.

These are still these girls fermenting it. Well, and the circle of accusers expands to include, not just girls, but Thomas Putnam's wife gets involved, and I think she's the accuser of Rebecca Nurse. and Rebecca Nurse is a member of the church in good standing, a member of the elect, and it's her trial and execution that really is a turning point in the trials. And her case is worthy of remembering,

because she's of all of them, she's the truly principled Puritan. And when she's told, she's basically told under questioning, just confess and we can sort something out. And she says, I cannot confess to something, I do not believe I've done. I can't tell a lie. So it's his, her adherence.

to the principles that take ultimately to that to the noose. You wanted you to come in? Yes. Susan. I think Simon makes a valid point that certainly it's not bizarre to the Puritans, but to 21st century scholars working on this, I think it's utterly bizarre. Beggar's belief that it violates all the rules of logic that someone should confess to something they actually didn't do.

Just a thought. Well, we're not allowed to. to bring in 21st century topics. We're in the 1690s, but I think there's plenty of evidence in current day of people, making all kinds of unsustainable play. People can be relevant with that as leading along with them.

They can work it up to themselves. So we'll stick to what we've got. What we've got on our plate is quite enough. Let's turn to the case of Elizabeth and John Proctor, Susan. That again, like Rickberg, is a very illuminating case. Can you discuss that? It is indeed. John Proctor was a man who did not mince his words.

He was genial, but he was very blunt, very forthright. He owned a tavern, and he also owned a farm. Sources give different sizes for the farm. One says it was 15 acres, another says it was 700, who knows. But he did have land and was relatively prosperous. Elizabeth Proctor was his much younger wife. She was his third wife. And she was the first to be accused by John Indian,

who was another slave of Marlop. Michael of Samuel Paris. So we're back in the Paris household? Yes. Right. Which is, I think, one of the focal points in the whole affair. Can you please go on? And then I'll ask Marianne to come in.

One source, again, says that at Ingersoll's tavern, apparently, Puritan girls did live a very circumscribed existence, but they could go to the tavern, which is interesting. And one of them there, apparently said that Elizabeth Proctor's specter was in the room. The wife of the tavern owner remonstrated and said, you really shouldn't say that sort of thing. And one of the girls said, oh, it was for sport.

So that then subsided. But after that, they then began to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft. Again, one account says that it was because she had essentially she had prescribed medicine to someone and they had not taken it and she was angry and had just caused them to become ill. So she could have been a herbalist perhaps. Right. She's accused and then John Proctor seeks to defend her.

He does. He comes to the hearing and this also was a very bad idea if you happen to be the spouse of someone under accusation because you could often end up being accused as well, as indeed proved to be the case. He was imprisoned. He till the end denied that he was guilty. And he also established,

he tried to write an appeal to appeal to some clerics in Boston saying that this was a bit of a nonsense, that some of the accusations were simply specious, they were false. Probably the very worst thing that he could have done if he had confessed they would have let him off. Elizabeth Proctor managed to avoid hanging because she was pregnant. And when he was eventually hung, he died very bravely. He forgave his accusers, and along with George Burroughs and others he was executed.

She then was put back in jail. She was very nearly hung in February, but fortunately was reprieved by the direct intervention of the governor, Phipps. And later then she was left indigent because of problems with the will. She remarried finally. Well, his cattle were sold off of Butchard, and the beer was spilled all over the ground, and the children were left without guidance, and he was ruined, and so was she.

Yes. And that became one of the central cases too. You wanted to come in, Mary. I was just thinking about Susan's point about people practicing medicine in Salem Village. And certainly, you know, going back to your point as well about this, focusing on the Paris household, Tichiba Indian and John Indian, who is perhaps a husband, certainly a slave living in the same household, were also accused of practicing magical medicine. John in particular was asked by a white female.

Mel colonist Mary Sibley to bake a thing called a witch cake, which is something that you do by getting together cornmeal and the urine of the bewitched people, so a lovely thing, and baking it and feeding it to a dog who will then take the witchcraft or the infection out of the household. So there were people practising magical medicine. Two dogs were executed, weren't that? They were, and yes, in another community.

Certainly a Baptist called Robert Caleb, who was opposed to the trials throughout, and was part of another sect, so not a congregationalist, as we were talking about earlier. Certainly says that in another community, yeah, people started executing dogs for witchcraft as well. So, Simon, they're sithing through the community. They've started with a few,

oh, you keep central casting, so we'll put that to one side now, I've said it several times. Oldish women, one or two of them were a bit drunk and couldn't, no position to defend themselves very well, especially not against the power of the, the powers that were against them, the earthly powers in that case.

And then it starts to go up the social scale, doesn't it? And this is where it becomes, dangerous for the accusers because people begin to get worried like Rebecca and like Proctor 32 people signed a petition saying he's a very good mind and helps everybody's good and so there's a worry setting in

can you just tell us the track of it now it starts in spring in 1692 and it's going on towards the end of the year what's happening as it gathers speed and people being hung the first executions I think are in June and there's a very important accusation in April when it becomes not just a Salem village enterprise anymore,

it becomes a regional Essex County problem. And certainly Andover, which is a nearby village, has ultimately more accusations than Salem. And the key figure in this is George Burroughs, who had been a minister in Salem earlier and has now been preaching up in the Casco settlement on the northeastern coast, up towards where the Wabanaki Indians are.

And the thesis of the recent argument is that it's actually much more about, the fear of all of these frontier village communities about, because they're at war at this point. King William's war has begun, and they're entering into 20 years of war on that front, and they're on the front line facing French and really terrifying Indian allies.

You know, the kinds of things that Susan described earlier on become quite common, and at least the threat of it is. And this borough's character unites the witchcraft trials with this fear of Indian, you know, invents. because that's where he's been practicing and he's brought back to the village. It also gives the trials their central male lead, you know, in terms of

he's now seen as the orchestrator of all of these and he has, and people testify to seeing hundreds of witches flying around with Burroughs as this black man in the lead. The, and what we see then developing is the trials start to happen and

the whole thing snowballs because once you've got jails with 25 or 30 people confessing to be witches, and if believe in witchcraft is a real force, then you have to proceed legally. And so they grand jury, and then the Phipps returns in May from London and establishes a court of Oyo and Termina to hear these cases, and they proceed with their business. Can you just briefly tell us about Cotton May there?

I know you said earlier that you were dying to talk about him. Well, here goes. Okay. He is one of the probably the most learned guy in Anglo-America. You know, he's the grandson of two Puritan divines who have set up the colony or were influential in setting up the colony. He's by age of 11, he's mastered Latin and Greek

and is off to Harvard to be trained. He's a minister at 23. And he is a really interesting character because he's fascinated by the new learning of the Enlightenment and later in life becomes quite interested in botany and hybridisation of seeds, inoculation, and all of these scientific inquiries. But he is a committed,

Puritan and also committed to the New England way, this idea of the mission of building this pure church. And predestination. Absolutely. And sees that he is a really powerful force in the trials justifying the acceptance of spectral evidence, saying, you know, it shouldn't only, it's famously ambiguous in the council that he gives, but often is read as saying the spectral evidence should be taken seriously

and whereas in previous trials or in England, in English, It's one thing that can count against you, but there needs to be another fairly supporting hand. So all his enlightenment learning, he was a force for witchcraft and on the side of those who are persecuting those who are accused or... That is the judgment of history on him, whether it's fair or not is, you know, is up for debate. I mean, without the Salem witchcraft trials, his famous argument in memorable providences probably would be just another period piece of combining enlightenment and Calvinistic beliefs in that period. But we have the same in which I'm proud. I love for his reputation is different. Okay, Susan, you want to say something.

I'm going to ask you something. Yes, basically, I think Cotton Mather's favorite word was nevertheless. And in one statement, he says that one should proceed with extreme caution and be very careful not to incriminate innocence. Nevertheless, one should eliminate all witches. And so he liked to play it both ways. in 172 when he was attempting to spin the witch trials according to his own perspectives

what I find fascinating is that he describes the devil as rather like an Indian Sagamore or as a French dragoon which I think also you know supports the hypothesis of the Indian frontier as a very very crucial factor So can we get towards the end of this first year the 1692, Marion Gibson.

The trials are going on. It must have been, well, terribly. They spread to Andover, they spread around Essex County. One of you suggested they should be called it Essex County trials and so on. People are being hanged, people are being custody, houses are being, lives are being ruined, living, livelihoods have been ruined. How did the trials run out of, when they reached a climax, and then they ran out of steam?

So can you tell us when they reached the climax and why they're, and out of esteem. Yes. The questions begin to be asked in August of 1692. And there is a possible moment when things could have come to and end them but they don't. The trials do have significant momentum by then.

Is that because so many people are implicated? Yes, I think it may very well be. People certainly carry on being hanged right up till the end of September. And by the end of the trials, according to Robert Kalef, anyway, the man who I mentioned earlier, the Baptist writer,

at least 300 people have been suspected right across Essex County with about 150 being in jail. But it seems that the colonists begin to realise that something terrible has happened that all these people surely cannot be witches. And there is a story also that the wife of the governor, William Phipps, who was also mentioned earlier, was herself accused.

That's a story that comes out about a decade later, but it may well be that there is truth in it. And that would tend to turn people's attention to the idea that some of those who were accused, might indeed be innocent. So it may be that the story starts to change its direction when the elite get involved

and people important to them are accused. Well, there's a very learned and wealthy merchant called Thomas Brattle who has nothing to fear from the powers in the colony and he publishes a letter and signs his name to it and denouncing the trials, saying it's more likely it's the devil working through these people rather than

these people are seeing the devil in the accused. and he I've lost the thread It doesn't matter Can I ask you a question We've lost sight of the village The village, the porter versus Putnam The small 600 people

At each other's throats for all sorts of reasons Is that still playing a part And they seem to be I'm being very crude But I think accurate They seem to be out to get each other These families And that is playing a part

Because those surrounding Paris are winning, aren't they? They're getting more of their opponents jailed and hang. They are, but I think it spins out of that factional controversy into a wider thing. And the thing that thread that I lost

was that the class thing I think is very important because one of the things that Brattle accuses Corwinov says, you're so quick to jump on the accusations of the Bridget Bishops and Sarah Osbournes, but your own mother-in-law has been called out as a witch, but there was no inquiry pursued. And so definitely when it starts to reach

up the hierarchy, Phipps' wife, Corwin's wife, and even John Hale, who's a minister who's involved in investigation, there's a very famous moment after the execution of Easterby, is it? And there's a John Hale's wife is accused

of being a witch, and he has been a supporter and that changes his mind somewhat when his wife is accused. Susan, you were to come in? To make precisely that point, so, yes. Yes. And so that is still going on. So you've got the village at each other's throats. We've got the French, strange business of French. You've got the Indians around the border. You're suggesting one of your

papers that it was perhaps to do with diet? Yes, this is a curious hypothesis that was suggested that it could be ergot poisoning, which is, ergot is basically a kind of fungus that can infect grain. And when it breaks down, one of the components is lusurgic acids. or LSD, as we know it. So they could have been having a really remarkably bad trip of some sort. The symptoms would be hallucinations and fits. This, however, has been pretty convincingly debunked because the girls between the hearings were hail and hearty.

There were no symptoms at all. Other places were quite well run with gumbedles and stuff. Why did they step in here? Why were they so gullible, patient, over puritanical? What was going on? I think that's the key question. Why did men of power listen to teenagers and women, which they never normally do?

Yeah, never normally do. And I think there's a couple of things, you know, to do with all of the problems that the colony was facing. War, there'd been a series of epidemics. They'd lost the charter in 1685 when James II establishes the Dominion of New England. There is a deal of social anxiety at work here. And I think the fact that the devil is abroad in Massachusetts appeals to people in leadership positions

as a possible explanation for why everything is going wrong, and it's not kind of their fault so much. The other thing is that although it's a very big deal for historians later, actually Salem wasn't that big a deal for William Phipps and the council at the time. And if you read the provincial council minutes, they're much more worried about the French and the Indian attacks from the north. They're about as worried about Salem as they are about the problem of wolves taking livestock. And so it's a brief mention in the minute. How did you come to an end?

Can you tell us that, Marion? It comes to an end when the court of Oya and Terminer is wound up. And this is all to do, as Simon was saying, with problems with the Charter, with the politics of governing the colony. There is a general reorganisation of reshuffle, if you like, and a new court is set up. It does continue to have some of the same personnel on it, and it does continue to convict people,

so that three people at least are convicted and sentenced to death by that new court, but the governor, William Phipps, who we've talked about, steps in to pardon them. So it seems that the elite of the colony have decided this is something that just isn't politically sustainable or indeed religiously sustainable, and they try to put an end to it, which ultimately does happen, in 1693. And although Simon's told us that at the time,

if you read the papers at the time, the more concerned about wars and wolves and so on, it began to have, sooner, whatever, in centuries afterwards and not too later, a big effect in the mythology of how America saw itself from its beginnings. And at the crucible, Arthur Miller's play is the prime example of that. And the McCarthyite chords is like the Salem trials and so on. And so it comes back, doesn't it, to haunt them?

Yes, it does. Yes, it does. It's seen as the great example of a terrible American mistake, a moment when the founding father's got it badly wrong. And so it becomes this kind of paradigm for all subsequent American mistakes. Did witchcraft end after this? I think it went on. I think probably Marion would be best. Yeah, no, it didn't. This is a fairly late example.

I mean, there have been trials all across England, Europe, the world before this time. But it isn't until the 1730s, for example, that an act is passed in England to say that if you bring an accusation of witchcraft, it's got to be on the grounds that the witch is a fraud, is a con man or woman, rather than somebody who's practically. practicing magic. So trials do go on, but they are tailing off by the time of Salem. It's a late example of a phenomenon that's been going on throughout the early modern period. Well, thank you all very much indeed. Thanks to Susan Castillo Street, Marian Gibson and Simon Millerton. Next week we'll be discussing out of more than a thousand different ideas that you've sent in, the one that we're going to discuss.

Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. We didn't really get to afterwards the battle for the kind of view of what had happened and Mather comes back again and publishes a justification, you know, which he reviews the trials. And he's absolutely unabashed in his assertion that this was the devil trying to take out New England and destroy the true church that they've been building since the 1630s. And the title of that is Wonders of the Invisible World.

And then Robert Caliph, the dissenter who Marion was talking about, publishes another response to that a few years later called More Wonders of the Invisible World, in which he introduces Mather and accuses him of, Mather continues to find witchcraft, work with people who are afflicted. And in one case, he lays his hands on a young girl, ostensibly to freer of the evil spirits. But in Caliph's telling, it's not quite all about, you know, religion and doctrine. And Caliph's account is burned, I think, in Harvard Yard when it's published by Mother.

Because he makes Mather's reputation stink, doesn't it? He does, yeah. Can I just ask you, what do you think of The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play? I mean, I think, let's say it's a very good play at the very least, maybe a great play. But what do you think of it as a representation of the trials? It's historically very inaccurate. It's interesting that Miller begins it with a note on historical accuracy, and he says, oh, I've changed this and I've changed that.

But he leaves out perhaps the most important change, which is that he raises Abigail's age, so she's not 11 but 17 in the play, and lowers John Proctor's age, so that those two can have an affair with each other. And that's hugely significant. And he later defended this, saying that he'd found in the trials a line

which said that Abigail had touched John gently during the course of accusing him, and he had built on this, this idea that they were romantically involved with, one another. So it's great, but it's wrong. But I can live with the historical inaccuracies because I think the insight of the play is the key insight about Salem Witchcraft Trials and he has that absolutely on the bottom.

The great historian Keith Thomas said that if witchcraft is about how explaining things, dreadful things that are happening when other explanations no longer serve so then you go to magic and the supernatural because and that is always with us and that's what's going on in the 50s in America. They're fearful about communism.

They've not got any rational, you know, demonstrable claims. And so this hysteria of accusation and counter-accusation takes over. Well, magic does become a form of knowledge, doesn't it? It's like rumour takes the place of news when nobody's telling you the truth about news. And gossip is very important. I think it's also about fear and about what a toxic emotion fear can be. And he certainly conveys that very, very powerfully. I agree with Marion that the idea of Abigail Williams as a kind of teenage tinctress is a discer.

But it makes very effective theatre. It does, doesn't it? Yes. I'd like to have discussed Nathaniel Hawthorne, actually. And we didn't have time. We really didn't have time. Next time. We rushed to get in what we've got.

I think you got in a miraculous amount of information. Leave without Nathan's Arthur. And here's Simon to reward us all with BBC. There are many more history and discussion programmes from Radio 4 to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.com. Radio 4.