Outside on a beautiful day, planting your crops. Along comes an angry woman, storming into your face. Yelling nonsense, accusing you of being indoors making strange teas. You notice this is a council wife. She takes you to court, spitting nonsense about your afternoon activities. Claiming she saw you being suspicious during the day. They have set a day for your hanging, even when you told the truth, the court did not budge claiming to believe the woman that accused you. This is how innocent people were treated during the Salem Witch Trials. People of higher status used the witch trials to control lower-class people. It is often said that the Salem witches were targeted based on mental illness, economic social status, and personal grievance. …show more content…
This was called Encephalitis lethargic which means behavioral changes, shaking, strange pain, fever, and many more. Since the pains came out of nowhere, they would just consider themselves witches or do witchcraft. Metal illnesses have also caused some collusions, barking, and hallucinations that were called Afflicted that would make them get out of control. Emerson proposed that the afflicted were under the effects of mass conversion discussion, known as mass hydria or mass psyching illness.
Mental illness was not the only main thing that people were being accused of witchcraft, but poverty as well. Most of the chargers in Salem were leveled by economically desperate farmers against more prosecco merchant families. That is one of many things that caused a lot of conflict between the rich and the poor which was one of the many things that led to the Salem Witch trials. Most of the people and the events that were going on were typically associated with the Salem Witch Trials and were centered in Salem