Events Surrounding The Witchcraft Trials In 1692

In 1692, witchcraft trials in Massachusetts were probably the most famous trials of colonial America. The events surrounding the outbreaks of witchcraft in Salem are probably the best-documented witch trials in American history. In New England, in the 50 years leading up to the Salem trials, dozens of people were executed for witchcraft. Trials continued to crop up, and according to one source, a member of a mob killed a suspected witch outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in the late 1781’s. The victims of the witchcraft prosecutions were almost all women that were elderly or perceived as a drain on the community. The witchcraft began with the Reverend Samuel Parris’s West Indian Slave Tituba. Tituba regaled

The young girls started to interrupt church services, they were not punished but they became objects of pity and compassion. Once the community became aware of the activities that were beginning, they started a witch hunt to find the source of the bewitchment. After finding out that is responsible for the bewitchment, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, they were ensued that there was spiraling serious of accusations against hundreds of people that culminated in the hanging of 19 individuals and the imprisonment of hundreds of more. After the witchcraft, complicated social relations in community started to begin. As the community made the transition to a prosperous port town, earlier rivalries between the wealthier merchant class at the center of town and the struggling farmers on the periphery created an atmosphere of tension. The rural factions won a petition to build a new church, but the uncertain status combined with socioeconomic rivalries, ensured that all the ingredients were in place for a massive outbreak of witchcraft accusations. The witchcraft trials have affected not only the community but the people that make up the

By the 18th century, all colonies, except for one, had legislatures like the English Parliament. Twenty years about the arrival of the Virginia Company Charter, Virginia colonists had adapted English criminal justice practices to the New World. Most procedures dealing with indictment, arrest, bail, trial, judgement, and execution of sentence were familiar to an Englishmen. The courts tried minor criminal case, felony cases were heard at the General Court. “Dales Laws” were laws that expected colonists to attend daily church services under penalty of 6 months service in the of the galleys of Virginia company ships, but if you missed Sunday services repeatedly you could receive the death penalty. Capital punishment was included in the Dale’s Laws; it was mandated for almost two dozen offenses, including repeated blasphemy, unlicensed trading with the Indian tribes, stealing boats, embezzlement, unlicensed killing of cattle, and the destruction of crops. Punishments for minor violations were barbaric under the military courts, with accounts of individuals being burned at the stake, broken on the wheel, and bound to a tree with a bodkin thrust through the tongue and left to starve to death. For committing a petty crime, you were shamed in front of the public, exhibitory punishment, and hanging. Finally, the most frequent offenses committed by women included “bad speeches” or verbal