SALEM VILLAGE WITCHCRAFT (1692-1693)

Events
      Accusations by daughter and niece of minister Parris,   
            against Sarah Good, Sarah Osbourne, & Tituba

      Court of Oyer and Terminer: specially appointed court ( = "To Hear & Determine")
            June-Sept 1692: 200 accused, 3/4 women; 19 hanged, one "pressed to death"
            Oct 1692--court dissolved; May 1693--others released

Institutional weaknesses
      1684--Massachusetts Charter expires; direct royal govt
      1680's French and Indian attacks: fear, scapegoating

       Salem Village vs. Salem Town
            Conflict over village autonomy-church, government
            Factional disputes: minister as focus
                  Putnams vs. Porters; role of Samuel Parris

Intellectual background
      Puritan concept of community, "covenant"
      Possession as diagnosis: Boston--Goodwin case
      1687 Cotton Mather, Boston Puritan theologian
                  Memorable Providences Relating to W/C & Possession

The Accused
      Deviants: Sarah Good, Bridget Bishop
      Accusations move up social ladder:
            church members: Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse

Accusers: "the afflicted girls"
      "Sympathetic hysteria": act as a group
       Generational conflict:
            young women (12 - 20yrs) accuse older women
       Factional conflict: Putnams versus Porters
            see Boyer & Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed

Spectral evidence as judicial issue
    (spectres or "ghosts" emanating from witch))
     Warning by Cotton Mather to Judge Richards:
            possible demonic impersonation of innocent people
     Opposition by Robert Pike, magistrate and
            Thomas Brattle, merchant: argue for possession
     Increase Mather: Boston 1693 Cases of Conscience
              Concerning Evil Spirits Impersonating Men
              argues against use of spectral evidence

Interpretations of the Salem Trials

   Medical and biological explanations
          Hysteria:  Caulfield, 1943 (physician)
                   Mental disorder of religious origin
          Ergotism:  Caporael 1976 (biologist)
                   rye fungus poisoning as cause of convulsions
                   critique of theory:  Spanos & Gottlieb
                                    no Vitamin A deficiencies
                                    no young children, missing symptoms
          Tertiary syphilis: insanity, insensitive spots

   Cultural / Historical Explanations
            reject mono-causal, reductive theories; stress
            plurality of factors, complexity of cultural causation

       Social-economic tensions, factions (Putnams/Porters)
                   Boyer & Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed

       Why women? Carol Karlsen, Devil in Shape of Woman
           1) "handmaidens" either "of the Lord" or "of Satan"
           2) theme of "anomalous property inheritance":
                  witchcraft accusations directed against
                        recent widows without brothers or sons
                  fear of property leaving male control