The Witch Hunt That Broke Salem: The Final Chapter of the Trials

“I verily believe in my heart that Giles Corey is a dreadful wizard, for since he had been in prison, he or his appearance has come and most grievously tormented me.”

Giles Corey: The Unlikely Defendant

Before Giles Corey found himself facing accusations of witchcraft, the Salem courts had already seen their share of unlikely defendants—like George Burroughs, a Puritan preacher with some serious political baggage, and Bridget Bishop, a tough-as-nails tavern owner. But for Giles, the trial hit even closer to home. Just a few months earlier, his own wife, Martha Corey, had been accused of witchcraft and stood on the very same spot in court. Now, it was Giles’ turn to face the hysteria, and things were about to get a whole lot darker.

By then Giles was eighty-one-years-old and had lived a life. As one of the earlier settlers in Salem, Giles was well-liked, but still had a bit of a reputation. As a younger man he’d been in trouble a few times with the law for petty thievery or for breaking procedure when it was his turn on the watch. Giles had formerly been accused of, and later confessed to, falling asleep on the watch multiple times and on one occasion his weapon was even stolen from him while he slept. He’d also at one point abandoned his post to go and collect firewood instead.

A Life of Trouble—and Trouble Again

A bit of a rule breaker but still a respected member of the community, there had only been one time in Giles’ life where he’d found himself facing the potential ire of his community.

Over a decade before the trials, Giles was in court again only this time he was charged with murder. Giles had beaten one of his indentured farm workers for stealing and had only allowed him to seek medical attention ten days after. By then it was already too late and his servant ended up dying as a result of his injuries.

Giles then faced the courts only to find himself spared from the same fate. Corporal punishment amongst indentured servants was completely legal at that historic point in time, so Giles was only found guilty of using excessive force and given a fine.

It was in that very same courthouse that Giles then watched his wife, Martha Corey, be accused of being a witch after she questioned whether the girls, Betty and Abigail, were telling the truth about being afflicted by dark magic. Swept up in the frenzied paranoia of the trials, Giles had first believed that his wife was a witch until another of the accused pointed the finger at him next.

In an instant, Giles realized how quickly people were being tried and found guilty of witchcraft with little to no evidence. His estate and assets were seized and Giles was thrown into jail, awaiting a trial of his own, but he wasn’t about to go quietly.

Silence as a Statement

Only Giles did mean to do that in a literal sense.

When Giles was asked how he would like to plead, he refused to speak. This wouldn’t mean that much by today’s standards, but in 1692, it meant that the trial couldn’t proceed. This was Giles’ silent protest and it was his appeal to the people in the courts of Salem to end the persecution of innocent people.

Faced with a dilemma and needing Giles to enter a plea before they could find him guilty of his charges, the courts then ordered that Giles be taken outside and tortured. Onlookers watched as the elderly man was escorted outside the courthouse and laid on the ground. A door was then placed over him to provide ample space to stack and balance large stones. Giles would then be asked to enter a plea and he would refuse. More stones would then be added, making it impossible for him to breathe. He endured two days of this torture before passing away.

The Dark Legacy of Salem

Instead of taking a moment to question themselves, the courts then continued. In the same lot as Giles, four others would plead guilty and eleven others were found guilty at trial. Over two hundred people would find themselves accused at one point or another over the course of the witch hunt. Twenty of which would be found guilty and were executed. Giles, as we know, died from torture and at least five other people died from diseases and the appalling conditions they were subjected to while in jail.

For those who were forced to the gallows, like respectable, church-going women like Rebecca Nurse and Giles’ own wife Martha Corey, they were not only killed, but excommunicated from their church. For many at the time, this alone was a fate worse than death. They were denied proper Christian burials and were instead buried in shallow, mass graves, although oral history claims that family members would return to these graves under the cover of darkness to rebury their loved-ones remains.

The pivotal, key figure, Tituba, who had added fuel to the fire by confessing not only to being a witch but that there were others living among them, was left to rot behind bars because her owner refused to pay her jail fee. It was years later that ownership of Tituba was sold forward at the cost of her jail fee and she disappeared from the history books.

And it is Tituba’s original owner who would prove to be a highly controversial figure, although at the time of the trials, there were few others who stood above him. His name was Samuel Parris and he was the local parish minister.

Yes, not only did that place him in a highly strategic advantage when it came to deciding who among the community was a witch, but from the very beginning of the trials, Samuel Parris was able to control the narrative. Not only was it his slave who would go on to provide testimony against the other so-called witches living in Salem, but it was his very own daughter, Betty Parris, and his very own niece, Abigail Williams, who would kickstart the whole proceedings by being “afflicted” with witchcraft.

It is, perhaps, no surprise then that men like George Burroughs, who posed a political and spiritual threat to Samuel and his position within the community, but women like Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good, who rarely attended Samuel’s church services, who found themselves the victims of the increasingly nefarious witch hunts.

But there was also more to the story.

Salem was a notoriously difficult place to live at the time, not just because it was an early settlement or that the conditions were worse off than those of other settlements, but because of the people. Those living in Salem very rarely got along with other nearby villages and communities, and they also very rarely got on with each other.

At the time, there was a particularly nasty feud between two prominent families; the Putnams and the Porters, both of which would lose members to the witch trials that would follow. The feud was so strong that it had completely divided the community of Salem and fights between sides would break out daily. Samuel Parris, acting as the local parish reverend, would often be called in to handle these disputes and would often find himself in a lose-lose situation.

It was only with the threat of a common enemy, in this case the theoretical threat of witches, that allowed the community of Salem to put aside their differences and finally band together.

Many believe that the initial idea of witches and witchcraft had been Samuel Parris’ attempt to end the feud altogether or that it had been a sweeping political move on his end to solidify his position in a growing contentious and difficult community. What had happened afterward had been the result of dangerous group-think fuelled by religious zealotry and bigotry.

But it could have, of course, also been fuelled by the emotional aftermath of the British war with France that had taken place across the American colonies, fears of attacks from Native American tribes, a recent smallpox epidemic, or the possibility of poisoning brought on by a fungus found in their food.

And, of course, like Martha Corey, we cannot discredit the theory that the girls were simply making it all up. Both Betty and Abigail had allegedly tried their hands at divining their futures and it was after that that they began to display suspicious symptoms. Betty was known to have these fits and outbursts and to quickly break down into tears. She would often tell her family that she was damned, something that she would have believed from her own father’s teachings about witchcraft and divination.

Was it possible that all of this had been Betty and Abigail acting out against their parental figures? Desperate to save her child, and to spare her daughter from the fate of being used as a witch finder, Betty’s mother sent her away to live with distant relatives. There Betty’s symptoms quickly faded away and she made a full recovery.

Was distance all that Betty had needed to be free of the religious fervor of Salem or had it been distance from her reverend father? Had the move spared her from the influence of poisoned wheat or had Betty simply been a young girl already sick and tired of the confined and small-minded Puritanical future that awaited her in Salem?

It’s difficult to say, but looking at historical records we can see that it was mainly marginalized women and members of the community who found themselves targeted by the witch hunt and ongoing trials. All it took was one accusation, especially from an already accused member of the community attempting to save their own neck, and a person could find themselves on the way to the gallows. Evidence wasn’t particularly needed, not in a modern sense anyway. An afflicted person could simply say that they had seen the image of a person while experiencing an attack and that, more often than not, would be enough to lead to a conviction.

It was this hysteria and paranoia that allowed men like Samuel Parris and clergyman Cotton Mather to rise to power and sway the masses, further adding fuel to the fire and removing any political opponents they may have had.

It wasn’t long after the trials that people began questioning the legitimacy of the whole proceedings. The victims and their families were posthumously declared innocent and awarded some level of compensation, but Tituba was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not among them.