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Salem Witch Trial Essay

201 Words1 Pages
This court document is about six servants and a slave who left their master, were caught, and what their punishments were. At this time, growing tobacco required a lot of labor from indentured servants and slaves. The occasion for why this document was written is that several indentured servants and a slave escaped. There was just a judge, no juries or lawyers, which is similar to what happened in the Salem Witch Trials. The audience of this document are judges in other colonies. Branding, whipping, shackles, and work were used as punishments in other cases, such as the Salem Witch Trials and Boston Massacre. The purpose of this document is to set a precedent, or standard, for the crime of escaping servitude or slavery. The document states
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In salem 1692 many died because they were ‘deadly witches.’ The accused witches were once good and kind but then the devil possessed their bodies and caused them to do bad things like burn your burn your bread. What ever shall we do?! It’s so horrible and hysteria.

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166 Words | 1 Pages

In the Salem witch trials poor people accuced the rich people of witch craft. Also in Salem 1692 people where scared of being accuced or hanged. The people where scared to death. The girls did not want to be told what to be told and these girls where crazy also the poor people blamed the rich people.

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319 Words | 2 Pages

Did you know that more women were accused of being a witch than men. People In Salem, Massachusetts were involved. There was a high number of people being accused of a witchcraft in 1692. Evidence suggests that the Salem Witch trials happened because single women were jealous that they didn't have a husband. Salem Witch Trial in Salem Massachusetts, 1692

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426 Words | 2 Pages

In the May of 1692, Increase Mather returned to New England with Sir William Phipps. By the time of their arrival, the witch trials were already taking place, having started a few months prior in February. As the witch hunt in Salem escalated, the prison cells started to fill up with individuals accused of witchcraft. The confusing political situation following the ascension on William and Mary and the new charter allowed for a court Oyer and Terminer to be put in place on the 27th of May 1692. The lieutenant governor, William Stoughton, became the chief magistrate for this newly appointed court.

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2054 Words | 9 Pages

As we suspected, the majority of female defendants were accused of inflicting their sorceries on only female victims. Out of twenty cases (the gender of the victims was unclear in one of our selected cases, so the population is reduced for this figure), nine female defendants had only female victims. Five were accused of attacking only men, and the other six were accused of affecting members of both gender. Because there were so few values for this particular variable, we did not find it relevant to graph or chart this information. We did, however, feel it necessary to create a frequency chart for this set of data, as it directly addresses one of our hypotheses.

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745 Words | 3 Pages

The Salem witch trial hysteria of 1692 may have been instigated by religious, social, geographic and even biological factors. During these trials, 134 people were condemned as witches and 19 were hanged. These statistics also include 5 more deaths that occurred prior to their execution date. It is interesting to look into the causes of this stain on American History, when as shown in document B, eight citizens were hanged in only one day.

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476 Words | 2 Pages

Other lawbreakers were positioned in the stocks with a sign fastened on their neck, which had the name of their misdemeanor written on it. Bystanders would hurl decomposing, putrid vegetables and fruit at the impotent, unfortunate sufferers sweltering in the stocks. For crimes not as serious, the wrongdoers didn’t have quite as painful punishments. A woman would be tethered to a stool and head would be submerged in water, if she argued with her husband. At school, the teacher would wallop audacious children who misbehaved.

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480 Words | 2 Pages

In Salem, Massachusetts, Puritans were strong believers in the Bible. The Bible states, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The Puritans beliefs led to them accusing 20 innocent people of being a witch, this resulted in their deaths in 1692. Even though the Puritans couldn’t see it at the time, their accusations were really based off jealousy, lies, and Salem being divided into two parts. One cause of the Salem witch trial hysteria was jealousy.

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947 Words | 4 Pages

Is it OK to kill people based solely on accusations? Kill innocent children? Burn women at the stake? Believe it or not, all of these atrocities and many more occurred in the town of Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600’s, and it was all done in the name of religion. Over 150 men and women were accused of witchcraft and sentenced to the death penalty based on accusations with no legitimate evidence proving them guilty.

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641 Words | 3 Pages

Although many events contributed to the infamous Salem witch trials, irrefutable evidence supports that the Indian War caused the trials. Their time in Indian captivity affected many of the accusers and the accused psychologically. The politics which accompanied the war landed some highly ranked men in trial. Native Americans exhibited a far greater threat than any other earthly or supernatural force the Puritans knew.

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1142 Words | 5 Pages

The True Reason Why the Salem Witchcraft Trials Were so Devastating In January 1692, there was a huge event in American History, most people know this as the Salem Witchcraft Trials. In the predominantly Puritan village of Salem in Massachusetts Bay Colony, two women were accused of witchcraft, their names are Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece of minister Samuel Parris. To the community in the village they were acting strangely, vomiting, screaming, hallucinations, and convulsions.

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427 Words | 2 Pages

Newspapers would describe the horrible stuff they would see from prisoners. Painting a Picture of abuse and despair inside the prison walls. Witchcraft and superstition was something of past ideology and the newspaper wanted people to look toward and independent America, free of these prosecutions. It would urge people to get away from this ideology cause it could disrupt the convention. Trial by water was one way they would punish witches, bound up and thrown into water To sink or float, but in the end, it would just kill them.

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435 Words | 2 Pages

Salem, Massachusetts, USA and occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned and even more accused; but not pursued by the authorities. 29 were convicted of witchcraft but only 19 were hanged. The best known trials were in the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

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907 Words | 4 Pages

Capital punishment was wide spread in Puritan Boston. Although the Bible was a moral guide, societies were swarmed with crimes and sins. The punishments included severe whipping, imprisonment, slitting nostrils, and public execution on scaffold(“Puritan”). In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, although Hester and Dimmesdale are guilty of the similar sins, they experience different punishments and outcomes.

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773 Words | 4 Pages

As the sun’s blazing rays scorched the town square, the huge crowd that had gathered around the scaffold stared menacingly. The figure of a child being hung could barely be seen from the ground as the sun’s rays were too strong to get a clear look. The crowd was frantically gossiping about the calamity that had just occurred. Apparently, this boy had cursed his parents and was put to death publicly because his misbehavior went against one of God's sacred commandments. This is an example of one of the strict laws colonial Puritan society enforced.

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