Who Is To Blame For The Salem Witch Trials Inhumane?

Have you ever been accused of something you honestly didn’t do? Have you ever used somebody as a scapegoat because you were afraid of getting in trouble yourself? In 1692 in the small community of Salem, Massachusetts, a strange sickness had started to ail a young girl. She had fits of pain, hallucinations, and she vomited uncontrollably. The doctor’s diagnosis? Bewitchment. Thus, the hysteria called the Salem Witchcraft Trials began. The Salem Witchcraft Trials were fear-driven acts that were inhumane because the persecutions were unjust, innocent people were killed in horrid ways, and the Salem community was full of filthy, fearful liars.
The justice system in Salem in 1692 was horribly corrupted. Unjust rulings against innocent people

were made and decided from little fact and much suspicion. Bridget Bishop was the first victim of the court of Oyer and Terminer to be sentenced to death on June 2, on the fact that “poppits”, or ragdolls with pins in them, of hers were found (Lewis). The procedure used to prosecute these supposed witches were reported to local magistrates where the witch was pre-examined and taken into custody. If the verdict by the court of Oyer and Terminer is guilty, they women are subject to death and are usually hung (P, Shaunak). Early in the witch hunt, the only evidence needed to prosecute was spectral evidence (P, Shaunak). The ‘victims’ of the witches’ spectre would pretend to writhe in agony and claim to be tortured by an unseen force controlled by the witch. Incredulously, even the pastor of the church was under suspicion (Ray). Of all of the sicknesses and ailments that the witches were blamed for, the actual causes of the ailments was a fungus called Ergot, and it is found in rye. Ergot can cause delusions, muscle spasms and vomiting (History.com). It is upsetting to think that so many people died because of a sickness that a doctor didn’t know how to diagnose properly.
Innocent people were hanged and executed in other ways due to the hysteria of the witchcraft trials.

Among the numerous victims, four women died in prison, one man was pressed to death with stones, and 19 people were hung. Two dogs were also killed under the suspicion that they were spectres, or witches’ accomplices (Alchin).The first woman to needlessly die was Bridget Bishop, a wife, mother, and friend to the community that killed her. She was followed by five women just like her; Wife, mother, daughter, and friend to Salem. All were hung (Lewis). One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. When he refused enter a plea in the witch trials, they tried to force him to enter a plea by stripping him naked, placing a board on his back, and piling it up with stones. He was given no food or water, but when he was asked to enter a plea, he would call for more weight, a resounding and courageous ‘no’. After two days of this treatment he died, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Pressing was illegal at that time, but it is supposed that the Judge knew nothing of the discontinuation of the torture (Lewis). I believe, however, that they knew and yet still wanted to inflict torture and pain upon an innocent man that they were going to kill anyway. The ignorance of the people in Salem is astounding. While they were falsely accusing their neighbors and family of evils that never took place, they were in turn murdering their own people out of fear of the

unknown.
In 1692, the Salem community was made up of Puritans and common people who were too blind to see the truth; there was no witchcraft happening and they were murdering their own mothers, wives, daughters, neighbors and friends. In the hysteria that occurred, it was as if every man was for himself, and against the world. People of the Puritan religion strongly oppose anything that gives you pleasure, and believe that indulging yourself in things such as art or any sensual ways is the same as selling yourself as the devil. Anything that makes humans really human is stripped from them and replaced with strictness, modesty, and austerity (Alchin). The people of Salem Foolishly murdered 19 of their own people, and in part their own humanity and compassion.
The Salem Witchcraft Trials were very unfortunate events that caused the death of many innocent people because the court made bad verdicts, murder of friends and family was supervised and approved of, and the Salem community was comprised of Puritans who despised anything different, and extinguished it. Of all the people who went along with the ideas of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, what might have happened if a large group of people would have dispelled the rumors and declared the suspicions false? Perhaps not so many as half of the victims would have foolishly executed.