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The Prosecution And Conviction Of Bridget Bishop

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Based on the evidence provided in the documents, I have formulated an interpretation on the prosecution and conviction of Bridget Bishop. Bishop was a scapegoat for the problems of the people of Salem and accusations of witchcraft was a vehicle for her prosecution. Bishop unfortunately fitted the stereotype of a witch and the beliefs and bias of people during the 16th century that contributed to her conviction consequence demise. The testimonies claimed, Bishop was the sole reason for their children becoming sick and dying, murder, attacks on people, hallucinations and claims of bewitchment. The problem with these testimonies is that they lacked substantial evidence. There are more plausible solutions such as a lack of medical knowledge, convulsive …show more content…

They depicted instances of Bishop disturbing them at night, black pigs sucking on her breasts and savagely attacking them with her witchcraft. According to the testimony of Richard Coman, he had to sleep with a sword to thwart her consecutive attacks. Though these testimonies were not without their contradictions. Sarah Phillips, a witness on Coman’s response to Bishop attacking him stated, “In the name of God, Goodman Coman, what is the matter with you.” Another example was in the testimony of John Cooke. He explained, Bishop visited him in the morning, struck him on the side of the head and disappeared into a crevice so small that he could fit his hand into. These testimonies were either narratives conjured to convict Bishop or they were hallucinations from the effects of ergotism. There was a hypothesis explaining an ergot poisoning epidemic in Salem in 1692. This could clarify the testimonies of Bishop attacking them with her witchcraft. Ergot is a fungus and under some conditions infests rye and other cereal grains. When consumed it can cause ergot poisoning which causes symptoms such as crawling sensations in the skin, tinging in the fingers, vertigo, tinnitus aurium, headaches, disturbances in sensation and hallucinations. This could give meaning to the testimonies of Richard Coman and John Cooke and their illusions of the

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Many people involved in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 are mockingbirds in history, especially the innocent women who were executed for witchcraft. Bridget Bishop, the first convicted witch to be hanged, “was a widow who lived in Salem town. [She] had a bad reputation because she had been accused of witchcraft years before and had frequent run-ins with the law. ”(Brooks, “Bridget Bishop”) When Bridget’s husband passed away she began to behave strangely, a common trait in witches.

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devil had come bodily to her . . . and she sat up all night with the devil.’” This shows how Bridget was seen to the public. “Bridget Bishop was a self-assertive woman who had been accused of witchcraft prior to 1692. Previous experience had taught her to deny allegations of witchcraft at all costs.”

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Bridget Bishop had “a singular character, which was not easily described,” and she was born between 1632 and 1637. Bishop was married three times, and she had no child in any of her marriages. Although Bishop was accused by more individuals of witchcraft than any other witchcraft defendant. On April 18, 1692, when a warrant was issued for her arrest for witchcraft, and when she went to the courthouse she knew everybody. In 1680 she had been charged of witchcraft, and on other occasions she had ended up in the courthouse for violent public quarreling with her husband.

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Nineteen men and women hung from the tree of destruction, for they were the ornaments of hysteria. New England was supposed to be a land of opportunity for the Puritans. During the summer of 1692, Salem Village proved to a wretched example of this; twenty people were falsely accused of witchcraft and were accordingly jailed and executed. Salem’s infamy has bewildered many, for nobody truly knows in entirety what caused the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Clearly, there were a few possible causes of the hysteria; however, envious, young, single women; sexism; and lying little girls stand out as the main causes.

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N) also brings up the possibility of a fungus called ergot triggering the hysteria of 1692. Ergot grows on cereal grains and can be poisonous which was a “common condition resulting from eating contaminated rye bread” back in the seventeen hundred´s. Ergot is believed to have affected the accusers by causing symptoms such as “crawling sensations, tingling in the fingers, vertigo and hallucinations”. To better understand how ergot played a role in the Salem witch hysteria, an additional document listing how much rye and other cereal grains were consumed during the year 1692 would help determine a

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The Salem Witch Trials, which happened in 1690’s in Massachusetts, was a moment in history where hundreds were accused of witchcraft and others were violently killed. People have argued that it was ergot poisoning or economic greed or jealousy. The salem witch trials hysteria was caused by ergot poisoning, revenge, and jealousy. Ergot poisoning started off the whole salem witch trials. In the video it states that ergot poisoning gave them twitching and most symptoms that those girls had.

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Have you ever seen a government accuse a person of a crime he or she did not commit? Well, one of the best examples of this is in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. In this town in 1692, the courts not only wrongfully accused one person with sufficient evidence, but wrongfully accused 150 people of witchcraft. Furthermore, these people were accused without any scientific evidence. Even more terrible, though, is that 19 of these people were executed for this reason.

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she was accused of not living a “Puritan lifestyle” because she wore black clothing and costumes against the group code, her coat had been oddly cut or torn in two ways, and her behavior was immoral”(pg.1). Bishop was being accused of being a witch simply because of the clothes she wore and how she acted, but there is no real evidence that she was a witch because

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Bridget Bishop, a resident of Salem, was the first person to be tried as a witch. Surprisingly, Bishop was accused of witch craft by the highest number of witneses. After Bishop, more than two hundred people were tried of practicing witchcraft and twenty were executed. Many of these accusations arose from jealous, lower class members of society, especially towards women who had come into a great deal of land or wealth. Three young children by the names of Elizabeth, Abigail, and Ann were the first three people to be “harmed” by the witches.

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During the demandings time of the late 1990s, a settlement in Massachusetts called Salem murdered people who they suspected to be witches and wizards. The Salem Witch trials interesting enough began when a group of girls were playing a game. After they finished playing the game, they started to act strangely. When the parents brought in a doctor to check on their children, the healer couldn’t find anything wrong with the girls who were unwell. Many modern theories suggest that they could been suffering from mental illness, child abuse or epilepsy.

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In the book Witches the Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzer, there was a religion, puritanism, and they believed in witches. They accused people for being aligned with the devil. It started with two girls who had symptoms of histyeria and others who were not sick also joined the. Nineteen people were wrongly accused of being witches and executed. Later in the book it stated that many of the people that accused those who died, lied.

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The Salem witch trial was a time about accusing your fellow neighbor or being accused yourself, this all began in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. During this time many people were being accused of being a witch, a majority of the time it was because either someone truly believed that you were a witch and were reeking havoc or they were trying to find someone to take the blame if they were to being accused. So this leads us to question, what began the Salem Witch Trials? There were at least three causes of the Salem witch trials hysteria. These were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams story, Ergotism, and the acknowledgment of hysteria.

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Do you know what affected America the most? The Salem witch trials had a great affect on America; so great that Christianity had to change their ways. This also was one of the great mistakes America had made at the time. The salem witch trials began as a misdiagnosis on a woman named Betty Parris in Salem, she was ‘strangely’ sick.

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However, records from the Salem trials show that her original convicted crime was not witchcraft, but having an “independence of mind”, and being an “unsubmissive character”. She was “…indicted for the bewitching of certain persons” and blamed for a smallpox outbreak that she had ‘caused’ by

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In the book, The Witches: Salem 1692, the author Stacy Schiff attempts to condense a large volume of research into a cohesive narrative that tries to avoid to much speculation. There is some contention that the book does speculate into the motives of primary accusers that some reviewers have intimated are bordering on fiction. However, the author defends her arguments logically, and her inferences do seem to bridge the gaps effectively. One of the items that causes some confusion, to both the historically curious, and to the researcher is that the author has created a list of dramatis personae in which the historical figures are labeled as a cast of characters which might make the book seem fictional.

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