History 8 A Chase Voigt Mr.Faith March 21/23 Salem Witch Hysteria In the summer of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts many were put to execution for participation in witchcraft.[background] The leader of these actions were the Puritans. The puritans were a group of people who were unhappy living in England because of the churches. The puritans came to New England so they could experience and practice christianity in a new form.[background] Puritans believed every word in the bible was the word of god. That said, the bible mentions Devils and witches. They believed a witch was a person who was controlled by the devil. For example, The devil can make a young girl cry in church. One way the court accepted evidence the suspect in question was a witch was when a woman confused the words when saying the lord's prayer.[background] Because of these actions more people were being accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch trials had nothing to do with the devil and all to do with ergot. Ergot is a parasitic fungus that grows on cereal grains like rye. This infection is most common in the summer and spring. People can get this infection by eating bad rye bread. It was more common for women to get Ergot than men. The Salem witch trials accused 110 women and only 24 men.[Doc 5] …show more content…
The salem witch trial had 110 females who got accused of acting different.[Doc 5] This matches with the statistics of those affected by Ergot, which prove females were more liable to the disease than males.[Doc N] The accusers were confident they were not crazy and seeing bad things in people and accusing them. In Salem, rye was very popular so it would be common to have some bad rye. Just like fruit, not every single one is right. I believe facts over possibility, The theory that women were jealous of the men so they accused their wives of getting with the man is not reliable. That is a possibility not a fact, going back on history I want facts not
Tori Humphrey Salem Essay September 30th, 2017 Dr. Wood The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft. Of those 200 people, 20 were executed 14 women and 6 men. The 6th man was essentially pressed to death with heavy rocks because he refused to be tried. The other were hung.
In addition, one cause of the Salem Witch Trial hysteria was sexism. Evidence of this is from the Salem Court Records where out of 20 people executed for witchcraft 14 were women and six were men(Doc A). This evidence shows that there were more women than men being executed and accused of witchcraft. The people were sexist against women because they weren’t as many men being executed and accused. The accusers, who were mostly women, were being sexist against other women that were being accused.
To begin, one cause of the Salem Witch Trial hysteria was envious, young, single women. One piece of textual evidence that
An example of this is from Doc. C, recorded by Samuel Parris, a minister of Salem Village. It is a record examination of Bridget Bishop’s trial, the first person to be executed for witchcraft. She was tired of 3 girls who claimed she was a witch. (Doc. C)
They came to New England to practice Christianity in a new way.” (Background Essay) Puritans believed in predestination, this means that God had already determined who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. They believed if they worked hard enough and did enough good they would be able to go to heaven. Puritans were scrupulous and
Unlike the men, these women spent most of their time cooped up inside doing household tasks. This could have played part in the bias, because women were considered to have weaker souls, and the devil is interoperated to prey on the weak. According to the DBQ Document B, 110 of the 134 people accused were women. This represents the claim that the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria could have been caused by a bias against women. Secondly, the younger women could have been bored because they were spending everyday with the older women.
There were all kinds of different theories going around which made the people of Salem think those girls were witches. One big theory that small town had was the bread that the girls ate they were all thinking that that bread had some type of poisoning, which that was a theory that bread had caused the girls to become witches. In the article the New Yorker Stacy Schiff a newsletter writer states that “Salem witch trials followed an outbreak of rye ergot. Ergot is a fungus blight that forms hallucinogenic drugs in bread.” That ergot poisoning was a serious thing when that drug was in the bread the girls that had ate it would be crazy, they didn’t act the same that’s why they would accuse them of being witches.
That scared the town forcing them to take action and start hammering down on all the people who showed the slightest sign of being a witch. The women being accused were considered less in the community. Women were more targeted because they were seen as weak and they could easily fall into the devil’s grasp (Adam and Eve in the
These include crawling sensations in the skin, tingling in the fingers, vertigo, hallucinations, mania, melancholia, psychosis, and delirium.” All these behaviors and symptoms were alluded to Betty, Abigail, and other citizens who thought their symptoms were due to witchcraft. In addition, Salem court records of the alleged witch deaths indicates that all the hangings took place in the Summer months,the same time as the “infected” rye was harvested. The fungus could affect one population of crops and could show up one year and not the next, indicating why the Puritans turned to witchcraft instead of a disease. Ergotism or Ergot poisoning symptoms the children of Salem conceived lead to the accusing and hanging of alleged witches because
Considering this, mainly women were targeted for witchcraft, and only five men were ever killed. As a matter of fact, three-fourths of the people accused were women, and of the women accused, “a large number were middle aged women with no male relatives to defend them, and another favorite target were the cranky and irritable,” states Edward Queen in his Salem Witch Trials Article. The clergy and magistrates blatantly used the community’s fear and panic to gain more irresponsible power over the people of Salem, while the spiritual leaders also did nothing to extinguish the fear of the
Ergot poisoning mostly affected women and children with effects of skin crawling, tingling in the fingers, and mania to name a few. But very similar to what the “witches” were going through. The town of Salem was bored at this time in history. They didn't have any TVs, no government, they read all the books, and there was not much to do in Salem.
A Puritan is someone who wants to make the church more simple and purify it. The Puritans opposed the Church of England from becoming too similar to the Roman Catholic Church. However, the Puritans intended to retain all worship and ceremonial practices grounded in the Scriptures. Throughout the early 1600s, the Puritans retained firm beliefs in the existence of the devil as well as the Bible. Following the Reformation, the Bible began to provide solace and stability to the Puritans.
In document F it says “There is confined unto the atmosphere of our air a vast power or army of evil spirits under the government of a Prince (Satan) who employs them in a continual opposition to the designs of God.” They believed in God and that the evil spirits and witches are under the influence of Satan. The Puritans believed that the bible was true. In Document H says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The Puritans were
Therefore, I am going to examine the reasons why the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 might have occurred, the people who were historically known to be involved, and the aftermath of the trials. When the girls began having unexplained fits, the doctor was unable to diagnose them. However, times have changed since the 1690’s, and there is a newer theory that Ergotism or other diseases could potentially explain the strange episodes. According to Mundra and the other authors of the journal article, “The Salem Witch Trials—Bewitchment or Ergotism”, there is a specific type of food poisoning called Ergotism, which “is caused by the ingestion of alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus present in rye and other grains”. Ergot poisoning is said to be prevalent after a cold winter season, which matches the type of weather that Salem had experienced before the trials began.
In a letter from 1807 upstate New York, Stearns (15, p.274) stated that “on examining a granary where rye is stored, you will be able to procure a sufficient quantity [of ergot] from among that grain”. While it is proposed that nearly all of the rye in Salem was infected with ergot, the factors that determined the development of ergotism were both the extent of the infection and period of time over which the ergot was consumed. Furthermore, the climate conditions of Salem, which included humid springs and summers, promoted heavy fungal infestation. The prime fungus conditions ended abruptly in 1692 due to a drought, which explains the lack of witch trials thereafter ( M. H. Thomas, Ed. The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674-1729 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1973).