Accusers In The Crucible

The second theory is that the accusers were all suffering from ergot poisoning. This theory was introduced by Linnda Caporael who conceptualized it while researching a term paper for her American History class. (Salem Witch Trials: The Fungus Theory ) Her subject choice would be influenced by a play she had just seen, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”. Looking over the symptoms and her research she would link the hallucinations suffered by the girls in Salem, to similar case in France, where the victim suffered from a known case of ergot poisoning. Since ergot poisoning is caused by a fungus that grows on rye that produces alkaloids, it is hypothesized that the accusers in Salem village would have ingested bread made with the contaminated rye

and become poisoned by the fungus. Some of the reasons why this theory has grown in popularity is because the weather conditions were conducive to ergot contamination since there was a cold winter followed by a humid spring, all of the afflicted lived on the same side of village and would have eaten out of the same crop of rye, and the symptoms the accused suffered such as “(seeing apparitions, feeling pinpricks and pinches, burning sensations, "urinary stop- page") of the afflicted resemble convulsive er- gotism.” are also symptoms of ergot poisioning.(Wolf) However, there are reasonable arguments put forth by skeptics that keep this argrument firmly in the theory column. Such as the inability to prove what the weather or crop conditions were in Salem at the time of trials,“the afflicted and accused in Salem were nonran- dom because of sociopolitical and economic divi- sions within the village, not because of who bought Putnam's rye.”(Wolf) ,and while the accusers do suffer similar symptoms to ergot poisioning the fact that the symptoms seem to be able to come and go at will and there is no lasting impact on the accusers after the symptoms disapear, as there would be in an actual case of ergot poisoning is a strong detrment to the theory. Even Caporael admits that “her theory only accounts for the initial cause of the Salem witch hunts”. (Salem Witch Trials: The Fungus Theory )
The third, and most popular theory is that the girls were probably acting out of boredom. There was very little to do in Salem Village other than work and attend church, so perhaps to relieve the boredom of everyday life the girls started having fits as a prank. In fact, it was this theory that Arthur Miller used as the basis for “The Crucible.” Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams would have spent a lot of time around their servant Tituba, who was from Barbados and rumored to have practiced voodoo and taught fortune telling to the girls. Even if the rumors were not true, the stories Tituba might have told about her culture would have seem exotic to the girls, and their imaginations would have ran wild.
If the girls were just looking for a way to relive their boredom then acting like they were suffering from strange malady was definitely the way to go about it. However, once they were questioned about the cause of their actions, boredom as an answer would have been unacceptable in Puritan society, so instead of admitting to their prank, they started to name people as a witches in an attempt to shift the blame and the consequences of their actions on to someone else. In Puritan society women and children were pretty much meant to be seen and not heard, so once the girls got a taste of the power and attention being afflicted by witches brought to them, they keep naming neighbors as witches and had no incentive to stop. They also might have continued to accuse people of witchcraft on the urging of some of their father’s because they potentially stood to benefit from the accused being imprisoned or executed. For example, the village had stopped paying Reverend Parris his salary in an effort to run him out of town, and the two original accusers came from Parris’ household, with the girls eventually naming those who had a strong opposition to Parris. Interestingly enough, only the first three people accused of the crime were considered to be on the fringe of society, every one after that either held land or a dislike for Parris.
Since the devil was a very real and invisible entity for the Puritans, (Brooks) and because there were previous cases of witches in both Europe and New England, when the girls originally started to accuse people of witchcraft it was not something the villagers thought of as implausible. Especially since their physical symptoms mimicked those that the Puritans believed a person afflicted by witchcraft would exhibit. In fact, most of the symptoms the girls displayed while they were afflicted mirrored the ones Reverend Cotton Mather observed and then wrote about in “Remarkable Providences” (1684) which details his eyewitness account of another family whose children were victims of supposed witchcraft. Mather’s book was published and would have been available in Boston, which is where the Parris household was originally living until Samuel Parris was appointed minister of Salem, so it comes as no surprise that these very symptoms were so easy for the girls to model.
However, even if the girls’ originally accused people of witchcraft as a way to escape punishment, this does not explain the amount of the accused. The girls could have easily blamed a single person for their affliction by accusing them of witchcraft and none would have been the wiser. Their symptoms would have been easily explained away as the work of a witch. Instead the girls went much farther than that, most likely because of how little opposition there was to the initial idea that a witch was running around Salem.
The girls were able to continue naming so many as witches for several reasons, but mostly because the justice system allowed them to.

There were generally five variations of evidence used as proof that someone was a witch. First the accused might be asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer (ushistory.gov) or some other biblical passage of importance, their failure to do so by stopping, stuttering, forgetting or misspeaking would help to condemn them as someone in league with the devil. While this might seem like a task that would be easy for someone who was as immersed in religion as a member of Salem Village would have been, the court was not exactly a place conducive to concentration. With the girls mimicking or screaming at imaginary specters even the most of rote of passages would have been simple to forget and the most staid of the accused easily distracted. Another type of evidence would have the accused condemned by their own body. Any wart, mole, birthmark or physical blemish were thought to act as a gateway for the devil to enter. A third type of evidence admitted was witness testimony, if someone could successfully link one of the accused with a misfortune they had suffered then it would stand that they were obvious victims of witchcraft. Even the most outrageous claims were considered. The fourth type of evidence was spectral evidence, it was the most commonly used during the Salem Witch Trials. Since the court allowed spectral evidence such as hallucinations of spirits

using the forms of the accused that only the accusers could see to be admissible, this made it impossible for the accused to cross examine or question the legitimacy of the evidence, leaving the accused unable to prove their innocence. (ushistory.gov) The last type of evidence consider by the court at Salem, is the same as that of a modern court. The confession of the accused.
Though the types of evidence used to ascertain if one was a witch played a significant part in the girls ability to accuse so many, another reason the list of accused is so long was because it was dangerous for a neighbor to stand up for one of the accused. There was the distinct possibility that if someone gainsaid the girls or opposed the court they would be accused of witchcraft in return, as a reward for attempting to protect or side with a neighbor. This stopped most people from speaking out publicly against the trials. However, in the case of Rebecca Nurse several neighbors did sign a petition asking for her release and even though it failed the community assumed that Nurse would be found not guilty since she was by all accounts considered a popular, respected, religious woman and they were right. However, Nurse would be claimed as a victim of the Witch Trials anyways because when her verdict was announced the girls immediately started having seizures. This would cause the Judge to ask the jury to reconsider and a week later they changed the verdict to guilty. The injustice inflicted upon Nurse was an eye opener for the members of Salem Village. It is the first time they begin to doubt the guilt of the accused and it increased their fear. After all if the court could find someone as pious as Rebecca Nurse was reputed to be, guilty of witchcraft it could do the same to them.
It was not just the faulty justice system or fear that helped the girls propagate the idea of witches.

Even the accused helped them extend their reign of terror by confessing and naming others as co-conspirators. The confessions lend credence to the girl’s accusations especially since it is a common belief that no one in their right mind would ruin their good name and confess to a crime they did not commit. Since it was the Puritan belief that a confession would place a person in “the hands of God” (In Search of History: Salem Witch Trials) it is no wonder that many chose to save their lives and lie confessing only as a way to escape the hangman’s

noose.
After seven months of terror, the girl’s accusations finally hit a brick wall. By September of 1692, most villagers began to doubt that so many of the accused could be witches and then it became rumored that they planned to accuse the Governor’s wife of witchcraft. (Brooks) Whether the girls would have actually accused her remains a mystery as Governor Phips quickly dismissed the court that had been responsible for hearing the Salem Witch trials and had the remaining cases tried in a new court, The Superior Court of Judicature. In the newly appointed court, spectral evidence was no longer allowed and most people were found not guilty. Those that were found guilty were pardoned by the Governor.
Today, it is clear that the events at Salem resemble a house of cards, each one balancing precariously on the shoulder of another and if one had fallen, the house would have been destroyed. For example, if Tituba has not confessed, then the Witch Trials might not have happened because the girl’s accusations would have never gained traction and while the three women who were initially accused might have still been tried and executed it would not have resulted in a witch hunt or the death of seventeen others. Likewise, if the court had only allowed proof that could be examined by everyone within the courtroom and not just the spectral evidence supplied by the accused, the outcome for everyone involved would have been changed drastically. The truth behind the events of Salem and the reasons for them might have become lost with time but the effect of the Salem Witch Trials on Massachusetts, and the United States is still felt today. The Witch Trials have become fuel for various theories and the inspiration or background for many literary works like Arthur C. Miller’s play, “The Crucible”. For now, the debate continues and will, until some shred of definitive proof can be provided as to which theory is the correct one. The Salem Witch Trials serves as an example of the dangerous combination of church and state, the importance of due process, and in conjunction with McCarthyism’s highlights the importance of maintaining the justice systems innocent until proven guilty concept. While the results of the trials cannot be fixed, the State of Massachusetts issued both a formal apology for the events of the Salem Witch Trials and in 1992 a memorial was erected for “Those innocents who died during the Salem Village witchcraft hysteria of 1692.” (Brooks)