Salem Witch Trial

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“The Salem Witch Trials”
The facts of the Salem Witch Trial case are that on January 1692 at the homestead of Reverend Samuel, a small group of girls spent some hours indoors. These girls were nine years old Betty, her twelve-year-old cousin Abigail and two of their friends who spent time indoors doing secretive things such as fortune telling and little sorceries while performing magic on household’s goods and predicting the future (“The Salem Witch Trials”). The obsession with these girls with the cult was influenced by the tales of a West Indian slave by the name of Tituba who used to work as a cook in the Paris household. Within a short time, the girls joined a club where they used to meet often. The girls were exhibiting dangerous behavior such as screaming uncontrollably, and violent contortions as if they were in possessed by the demons.
In February 1692, a warrant of arrest was issued against Tituba, the Paris servant as she was accused of bewitching the girls. The local authorities also issued a warrant of arrest for the other women who the girls accused of bewitching them. These were Sarah Good and Sara Osborn. The women who were accused of witchcraft were arrested and taken before magistrates John Harthorne and Jonathan (“The Salem Witch Trials”). When the three were questioned on the witchcraft allegations, only Tituba confessed to the crime claiming that she was assisted by the other witches who worked for Satan. In June 1692, the trials began in the local courts which had jurisdiction and Bridget Bishop was the first to be convicted of witchcraft and was executed 8 days later in Salem town.

The trials raised a lot of questions on the propriety. It was also problematic that the only evidence which was available against the accessed witches was that the spirits appeared to the witness in the dream. After some time, the public started losing interest in the issue of warrant, arrest, and prosecution of the accessed witches based on the specter evidence.
Work cited
Case: “The Salem Witch Trials,” A Seventeenth-Century Crime Wave.