Stefko, Salem Witchcraft Trials - Essay Example

The first to be tried were Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. The girls attended the trials and experienced fits and convulsions as each of the accused was questioned. Tituba had been beaten by Parris for practicing the craft and confessed to being a witch. She implicated the other two women. Tituba also said that the three of them were not the only practitioners and there was a coven in Massachusetts that was lead by a tall man with white hair. This led to witch hunts and further trials. Ministers and district justices asked the girls to name more witches and they obliged.

More people were falsely accused and arrested. Ann Putman Jr. and her mother accused Martha Corey of being a witch. They did not like this woman and this was what they did to vent their dislike. Later, Martha's husband, eighty- year old husband, Giles, was accused of being a wizard and a sorcerer. At the time the hysteria began, no trials could be held in the commonwealth until a new charter was in place. In May 1692, Sir William Phips, the newly appointed royal governor, arrived with a new charter.

He did not want to be involved with the witchcraft problem, so he created a Court of Oyer and Terminer to try the accused witches. Lt. Governor William Stoughton served as chief justice and eight other judges presided at the trials. The men were highly respected in the colony. Some were biased because they had sent those accused witches to prison and believed that those who were in jail were, in reality, witches. The trials began in June. The girls had accused the "witches" of attacking them in the form of specters.

There were tests to determine if the accused were witches. One was when the girls would collapse when the accused was told to look at Them. Another was when the girls were "cured" of their afflictions by touching the accused. The trials were swift and some of those who were found guilty were sentenced to death by hanging. The sentences were carried out within days after the sentence was pronounced. Giles Corey refused to acknowledge that the court had the power to try him. He was sentenced to the punishment of having a board placed on top of his body, then rocks placed on top of it.

He was killed by the weight of the rocks. Eventually, Tituba was released from jail, and then sold as a slave to pay for the expenses of being imprisoned. The Salem witchcraft trials were the last major trials in the world. There had been other outbreaks of such hysteria in Europe prior to these trials. The Salem trials were "mild affairs compared to the hideous persecutions of Europe." (Cohen, 19) The largest witchcraft trials in the New World and one of the last events of the hysteria of witchcraft were in Salem, Massachusetts.

Those who were the most afflicted by the alleged witches were young girls whose "'child's play'