01x01 - America: Salem's Hunts and Hysteria

[bunniefuu]

[Narrator] For centuries, witch

hunts raged through Europe

and the Americas.

[Kevin Waite] Everybody believed

in the existence of witches.

[Marion Gibson] The trials

catch fire.

[Narrator] causing the

deaths of tens of thousands

of innocent people.

[Martha McGill] It was

extraordinary.

[axe chopping]

♪

[Narrator] To this day, the

most infamous hunt of all

ravaged a small

religious community

in colonial Massachusetts.

[Martha McGill] Salem was a

community that was already

riven with hostility

to one's neighbors.

♪

[Narrator] The horrors begin

when children in the minister's

house have violent fits, an

affliction that seems

to be caused by the devil.

Triggering a savage, unstoppable

panic that saw hundreds

accused of witchcraft by their

neighbors, friends, and family.

[Martha McGill] This great

network of witches all working

together across the area.

[Marion Gibson] They know at

the end of this that they could

be judged guilty of witchcraft,

and they'll be hanged.

[crowd shouting]

[Alison Rowlands] Once you've

crossed that line, you

have actually ex*cuted someone,

it's very difficult to stop.

[Kevin Waite] It could never go

back to the way it was.

This was a w*r zone.

[Narrator] This is the story of

the Salem Witch Trials.

[whispering]

♪

[Martha McGill] Salem is a

Puritan community.

-The Puritans were a dissenting

branch of the Anglican Church

who fled England in

the early 1600s.

-They were concerned

that living in England,

the hierarchy of the Church of

England, the Anglican Church,

was telling them what to do,

was making them believe things

that they didn't actually

want to believe.

So off they go to America

to found their own church

and to own their own doctrine.

[Kevin Waite] As the Puritan

population increased

over the coming decades, they

established multiple colonies

in what would become the

Northeast of the United States.

Really, the locus of

Puritan influence

and the locus of the

congregational church

was in Massachusetts, was in

places like Boston and Salem.

[Martha McGill] The community

at Salem is a congregation-less

community, which means that

the people there

have a belief that the

congregation itself should

be able to shape how

the church works.

[Narrator] Puritans in Salem

Village have the power

to elect a new minister to

lead their congregation.

They nominate the recently

ordained Samuel Parris.

[Kevin Waite] Samuel Parris

arrived in Salem Village

in 1689.

[Alison Rowlands] He's come to

Salem from Barbados.

He has had a bit of a career

as a merchant before then.

He's not actually

very successful.

He comes to New England to try

his luck at something new,

at something different in this

new colony that's just sort

of building itself up

in the 17th century.

[Marion Gibson] He sails first

to Boston, where he

lives for a couple of

years with his family,

and then to Salem Village.

[Alison Rowlands] Salem Village

is a kind of

an appendage to Salem Town.

Salem Town is the much

more prosperous community.

[Kevin Waite] Salem Village was

fractious.

This was not considered

a destination

for an ambitious

minister like Parris.

[Martha McGill] He enters into

the community, and he

starts sifting out the most

godly people around him

to join his sort of

special congregation

of particularly pious villagers.

[Alison Rowlands] I think he's

quite an embittered individual,

and I think he tends to

take that frustration out

through very, very sort

of impassioned preaching.

[Marion Gibson] Because he's a

new minister, he's

very keen to prove his place

in the village and his utility

to the local community.

[Narrator] Parris has overseen

the church in Salem

for two difficult years.

When this highly

religious community

is thrown into disarray, young

girls in nearby villages

have been experimenting

with magic.

[Martha McGill] They had been

doing something known

as the egg and glass.

The idea was that you

would take an egg,

and you would then drip

the white of the egg

into a bowl of water and

look at the shapes it makes.

You were asking God to give

you some insight into what

shape your future would take.

[Alison Rowlands] What starts

off as playing around with

fortune telling

becomes more sinister.

What they saw in the water

was the shape of a coffin.

They start feeling very worried.

[Marion Gibson] This kind of

divination was regarded

as demonic.

[Narrator] It's impossible to

know if Samuel Parris's

daughter, Betty, and

niece Abigail

took part in these rituals.

But something terrible

happens shortly afterwards.

[Martha McGill] Betty Parris

starts showing strange symptoms

of affliction.

This then spreads to Abigail.

[Marion Gibson] They start

saying that their muscles hurt,

and they start screaming.

You can imagine how

distressing that would

have been for their family.

[screaming]

[Martha McGill] This upheaval

is coming from right inside the

house of the minister.

[Alison Rowlands] The Reverend

Samuel Parris

calls in the doctor.

He says, it is supernatural.

I can't cure it, so it

must be witchcraft.

[Marion Gibson] The people of

Salem, they're very religious.

They believe in God.

But that means they

believe in the devil, too.

They're kind of on the

lookout for witchcraft.

[Martha McGill] There had

certainly been plenty of cases

in Europe involving

what was known as bewitchment.

What was happening

to Betty and Abigail

seemed to follow this

recognized model.

There was an

established precedent

for blaming this on witches.

[Alison Rowlands] When the

community has

decided to accept

the idea

that these girls are being

attacked by witches,

the next stage in the

process is then saying,

who is it who is

doing this to you?

Who is afflicting you?

[Martha McGill] The names that

come up are two

women of

middling age

who were unpopular within

their community,

Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.

The other name we

have is Tituba.

Tituba was a servant in

the house of Samuel Paris.

[Marion Gibson] I think her

name was probably originally

something like Tata Bay.

She comes from a grouping on

the South American mainland

called the Tetebetana.

-There was that ethnic

difference compared

to the people surrounding her.

And it's kind of

that classic idea

of assuming that people

who are different

are more likely to be

in league with things

that are deemed evil

and unfamiliar to you.

[Marion Gibson] Abigail and

Betty might have picked on

Tituba as well because Betty's

father Samuel may

have been critical

of a woman of color

who lived in his community.

I can imagine him

bullying Tituba.

I can imagine him speaking

critically about her,

maybe thinking she wasn't

a good enough Christian.

So it's really no

surprise to Samuel

when Abigail and Betty start

pointing the finger at Tituba

and saying that she's a witch.

♪

The affliction starts spreading

from Abigail and Betty

to their friends,

the Putnam family.

They start exhibiting

the same symptoms.

They start screaming

in the night.

They start convulsing.

They start pointing the finger

and saying that they, too,

are bewitched by the people

that

Abigail and Betty have

suspected.

♪

[Narrator] First of March,

1692, the accused

are dragged in front

of magistrates.

A confession is needed before

they're sent to trial.

For all the women, it's

a terrifying ordeal,

especially Tituba, the woman of

indigenous or African heritage.

[Martha McGill] Tituba

begins by

denying that she did

anything at all.

[Marion Gibson] She's in front

of these powerful white men.

She's probably been hurt,

and she's certainly been

enslaved by powerful white men.

This is a very bullying

power relationship

that she's in in this room.

[Martha McGill] These women

were looking for ways

to try and save themselves.

Therefore, they might

come to say the things

that people wanted to hear,

confess to imaginary crimes.

♪

[Marion Gibson] In the end,

during her questioning,

Tituba starts to say, I

did hurt the children.

She said, the devil came to me,

and the devil kept saying to me,

you must hurt the children.

You must hurt the children.

He threatened me, she said.

He said he would k*ll me.

He would tear me to pieces.

He would cut my head off.

[Narrator] With Tituba's

confession secured,

the magistrates also questioned

the other two women accused

of being witches, Sarah

Good and Sarah Osborne.

[Marion Gibson] As part of this

questioning, Sarah Good's young

daughter, Dorothy, was asked

about whether her mother

was, in fact, a witch.

She was only four.

What was she expected to say?

And of course, she says,

yes, my mother is a witch.

And she admits

witchcraft herself,

which is particularly shocking.

♪

The people of Salem

send the suspects off

to Boston, the capital of

the colony of Massachusetts,

to await trial.

They're kept in chains.

There are women.

There are some children,

like Dorothy Good.

There are people who are

absolutely desperate.

[Narrator] Although the accused

women have been jailed,

it will be many months

until a trial can proceed.

[Marion Gibson] The colony of

Massachusetts, it's

governed under a charter

from the British government.

And the charter has expired.

The governor and many of the

leading men of the colony

have gone off to England

to secure a new charter

to make sure that its

legal processes can

continue to function.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] Although the

Salem town magistrates

can question suspects,

they can't really

start any trials until the

governor arrives from England.

It gives more space and time

for the afflictions to spread

and the concern of the

community to grow.

[Martha McGill] During that

time,

questions keep on being

asked.

A lot of other names

start getting mentioned.

And these women who are sitting

around in these jail cells

happen to keep remembering

other people who

might have been involved.

Things start to spiral.

♪

[Narrator] Months pass.

The people of Salem village

grow ever more convinced

that witches walk amongst them.

[Marion Gibson] Further

accusations are coming from the

supposedly afflicted girls.

[Martha McGill] Samuel Powers

is preaching about

witchcraft

to the congregation.

And the contagion seems

to be continuing.

There are stories of more

girls getting afflicted.

[Marion Gibson] The suspects

also carry on being questioned.

And they carry on telling

stories about the witchcraft

that they've

supposedly committed.

They name new suspects

back in Salem village,

people like Bridget Bishop.

And then these people are

brought in for questioning, too.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] Most news is

spread by word of mouth.

People communicated

at the marketplace

when they were trading.

♪

[Marion Gibson] About 75% of

those who are accused

are female.

And that's because women

are seen as particularly

prone to becoming witches.

They're seen as

gateways of the devil.

They're seen as people

who might fall prey

to these sort of demonic lies.

♪

Samuel Powers also asked the

previous minister of Salem,

Diodat Lawson, to come

and visit and see what

he thinks of the situation.

[Alison Rowlands] And then he

goes to the Powers household.

And he sees Betty Powers

in one of her fits.

[Marion Gibson] She's running

around the room screaming.

She's trying to climb out

of the window and fly.

[Alison Rowlands] And he writes

an account of what he saw

and what he experienced while

he was in Salem Village.

As a minister and trusted

member of society,

Lawson's vivid account adds

credibility to the witch hunt.

[Kevin Waite] The first accused

witches were the outsiders.

They were those

you might consider

the usual suspects

in witchcraft.

But as the accusations grow,

more and more prominent people

are actually drawn

into this net.

[Martha McGill] The sorts of

people who would not

expect to be giving

themselves up to the devil.

[Marion Gibson] They're not

people who might be seen as

outsiders or scapegoats

like the Native American

Tituba or the

homeless person Sarah Good.

These are prime, upstanding

members of Samuel Powers's

congregation, people

like Rebecca Nurse,

who's been a member of

the church all her life

and is seen by her neighbors as

being a pious and good person.

[Alison Rowlands] She's a

pillar of the godly community.

You would expect her to be

protected from accusation.

But nevertheless, she's

named as a witch.

As the accusations spread,

they dig deeper and deeper

into Salem's community.

We have to begin from

the important fact

that everybody believed in

the existence of witches.

And so as these rumors

begin spreading,

there's a sense of crisis.

There's a sense that Satan is

actually successfully waging

this w*r on their community.

[Martha McGill] Salem was a

community

that was already

riven with division.

[Alison Rowlands] You've got

the tension

between Salem

Village and Salem Town.

Salem Village is more

backward looking,

much poorer than Salem Town.

[Marion Gibson] Salem Town is

wealthier.

It's fancier.

It's becoming more interested

in the refinements of society,

the kind of things that Puritans

disapprove

of very strongly

indeed.

[Alison Rowlands] And then

you've got Paris.

Rather than smoothing things

over and calming things down,

he really intensifies the

factions and the resentments.

And I think the fact that the

afflictions of the children

start in his household

suggests that he very much is

at the center of a

lot of this concern.

[Marion Gibson] Within Salem

Village, there is a division

between two of the

prominent families.

And those are the

Putnams and the Porters.

[Alison Rowlands] The Porter

households and their allies

were much more politically

linked to Salem Town,

whereas the Putnams

are inward looking,

much more linked to Paris as

the Salem Village minister,

much more older fashioned

in their emphasis

on Puritan godliness.

The accused witches tended to

come from the Porter network,

whereas the afflicted tended

to be much more closely linked

to the Paris Putnam faction.

-The villagers are

turning on each other.

But beyond the village, there

are even worse threats.

There are Native

American peoples

who the villagers have taken

their land, essentially,

and they've dispossessed them.

There's also famine,

because they don't know

which kind of crops to grow.

The Native Americans aren't

helping them anymore,

naturally enough.

There's disease.

There are wars to

the north in Maine.

And some of the people who are

doing the accusing in Salem

Village are probably

refugees from the w*r.

We're dealing with people

who are really traumatized.

♪

-All of these factors are then

feeding into the division

at Salem and perpetuating

this mood of suspicion,

potentially of hostility

to one's neighbors.

Between January

and May, we end up

with 81 people accused of

witchcraft, 49 of whom

are imprisoned.

♪

-This is developing into a

massive social, cultural,

political crisis.

[Narrator] Several months after

the first accusations,

Governor Phipps arrives

with the new Massachusetts

charter in hand.

He now has the power

to open the courts.

And the accused will either

find justice and freedom

or a brutal death.

♪

[Marion Gibson] When the

governor arrives back from

England with the new charter, he

has a range of pressing matters

to deal with.

There are Native American

wars going on to the north.

There are wars between the

English and the French.

And he has to go in

person to intervene.

So, he's not present in the

colony of Massachusetts

for quite some time

after his arrival.

However, he's briefed about

the people awaiting trial

for witchcraft in Boston jail.

And on May the 27th, he

sets up a special court

to deal with them, a court

of our own termina, which

means to hear and determine.

[Alison Rowlands] Which is

basically an old English method

for dealing with

a legal emergency.

It's a bit of a challenge

in the Middle Ages

for things like

popular rebellion,

when you've suddenly got a

really unusual number of trials

that you need to get through.

♪

[Marion Gibson] The trials are

held in the meeting house,

so essentially the

community's own church.

It's a packed room.

It's a hot room.

It's a noisy room.

It's crowded.

It must have felt

incredibly intimidating.

[Kevin Waite] This is a

spectacle that

a lot of villagers, some of whom

are accused, are

coming to watch.

[Marion Gibson] Governor Phipps

won't lead the court himself.

He won't be the judge.

He asks his friends,

the intellectuals,

the important men in the

community, to help him.

[Alison Rowlands] There's also

a lot of potential for the

judge to steer things in the

way that he wants.

♪

[Narrator] As the court

assembles in Salem town,

the accused witches

are led from jail,

desperately hoping

they will find mercy.

[Marion Gibson] The accused

people have to

defend themselves. They

don't have lawyers.

[Alison Rowlands] They would

have been reliant on their

own words, their own denials.

♪

You get this very, very

dramatic, peculiar situation

where the afflicted girls,

including Betty Parris

and Abigail Williams, are

brought into the courtroom

♪

[Martha McGill] They might

writhe or whimper or babble.

[Marion Gibson] They actually

throw fits

in front of the court.

They make new accusations.

They say things like,

she's attacking me.

She's screaming at me.

She's hitting me.

[Alison Rowlands] If the

accused witch in the dock

raises an arm, the afflicted

individuals would react to that.

It's quite hard for us to

imagine how sensational that

would have been and how

much their performance kind

of convinces people that they're

being attacked by witches.

[Marion Gibson] The suspects

must have been frightened.

They must have been

terribly upset

by this public humiliation.

It must have been an awful,

traumatic experience for them.

They know at the end of this

that they could be judged

guilty of witchcraft, and

that they'll be hanged.

[Martha McGill] Your options

when it came to defending

yourself against a witchcraft

charge were pretty limited.

But there was an idea that those

who confessed to the crime

had at least shown some

kind of repentance,

some kind of remorse.

[Marion Gibson] If you

confessed, you lost your

reputation.

Not only had you told

a lie before God,

but all your

neighbors would then

judge you to be a witch.

You'd be permanently tainted.

But also, the people who

confess will be spared.

They will be judged guilty,

but they won't be ex*cuted.

And of course, it's a massive

inducement to confess.

The judges don't seem to

have spotted that one.

But it's something that really

makes the trials catch fire.

[Narrator] Tituba, the first

person accused of witchcraft

by the Paris family,

finally takes the stand.

♪

[Marion Gibson] Tituba did

admit that she was a witch,

whether she believed

herself to be one or not.

[Martha McGill] When she

introduced this idea that there

might be this great network of

witches all working together

across the area.

♪

[Marion Gibson] And she was

spared.

Therefore, she was

not to be ex*cuted.

She was returned to jail.

Of course, that was a

punishment in itself.

But it did save her life.

♪

[Martha McGill] Those who

confessed to the

crime might

well have helped

out the authorities by

giving details about what

happened, naming other names.

[Marion Gibson] As one person

after another confesses and is

spared, the number of witchcraft

suspects and convicted witches

starts to grow again.

♪

As well as sparing

confessing suspects,

the court also makes

another fatal decision,

which is to admit what's

called spectral evidence.

♪

And this is essentially

evidence based

on the visions of the accusers.

[Martha McGill] Spectral

evidence draws on this idea

that the devil has the power

to cause hallucinations

in people's minds.

[Kevin Waite] Spectral evidence

was basically evidence

that wasn't visible to

most of the townspeople

but was, in fact,

visible to the accusers.

♪

Sometimes these spirits

admitted their culpability

to earlier crimes.

Sometimes other spirits

accused the supposed witch

of a particular crime.

[Martha McGill] This now is an

absolute nightmare when it

comes to evidential standards,

because what you have here

is a form of evidence

that is basically

impossible to disprove.

♪

So spectral evidence allows

the trials to escalate,

allows them to move further

into the realm of fantasy

and away from anything we

would consider valid proof.

♪

Other members of the

community are essentially

allowing this to happen by not

protesting loudly against it.

There are cases of

brave individuals

who'd fight to defend

their loved ones,

but it was potentially a

pretty dangerous business.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] Trials are

doing very, very quick

by comparison with today.

[Marion Gibson] It can be as

little as 15 minutes

to determine whether

somebody lives or dies.

[Kevin Waite] On the 2nd of

June, the court of Oyer and

Terminer renders

their first verdict.

♪

[Marion Gibson] It's Bridget

Bishop,

and she's sentenced to be

hanged.

♪

[Kevin Waite] On the 2nd of

June, the court makes its first

conviction of Bridget Bishop.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] She says not

guilty in court.

She's condemned to die, but

she maintains her innocence

to the gallows, and that's

quite disturbing for people.

♪

Having an execution of

someone for witchcraft

is dramatic enough,

but she's not

going to the gallows as a

kind of a penitent sinner

admitting her guilt.

She's actually saying,

you guys got it wrong.

♪

[Marion Gibson] The same day,

one of the judges actually

resigns from the court.

So there are

already some signs

that things aren't going well.

[Martha McGill] Now an actual

execution has happened.

Things have got serious.

People are getting m*rder*d

because of these accusations.

♪

[Marion Gibson] On the 29th of

June, one of

the original

suspects, Sarah Good,

is arraigned and

formally charged,

and she's charged alongside

four other women--

Rebecca Nurse, Susanna Martin,

Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wild.

♪

At that trial, all

five of the women

are found guilty and

they're sentenced to death.

♪

The five women are ex*cuted

on the 19th of July.

Sarah Good turns on the

crowd and the ministers

and the judges, and

she says to them,

I'm no more a witch

than you are a wizard,

because she is an innocent

woman about to be hanged.

God will give you

blood to drink.

And that sounds very

much like a curse.

But at the same time, it also

feels like a bit of a prophecy

that this is all going to come

to a very bad end indeed.

♪

[ticking]

[Martha McGill] There's also

growing doubts over what's

going on now that it's proving

just so serious.

♪

[Marion Gibson] A number of

ministers are asked for their

opinion of the trials, and in

particular, the way

that spectral evidence

is being used.

Some people are concerned

that the accused people might

actually be making up evidence

of seeing the specters

of the accused witches.

♪

And they want people

like Cotton Mather, who

is a university

intellectual and somebody

with wide experience in the

field of judging the demonic.

[Kevin Waite] Cotton Mather was

regarded as one of the foremost

authorities on witches.

He wrote widely on the

subject, and he wrote widely

from a position

of real authority

as being one of the senior

ministers in Massachusetts

at the time.

♪

[Marion Gibson] So Cotton

Mather and a number of other

ministers write a letter

to the court

in which

they sum up their opinion

on this type of evidence.

It is, however, a very

equivocal letter.

They say on the one

hand that there

are some doubts about

this kind of evidence

and that exquisite

caution, as they put it,

should be used in judging

the accused people.

But at the same time, they give

the court a pat on the head

and they say, well, you

should just continue

doing what you're doing.

Because of course,

the ministers do

believe that there are witches

in the Salem community.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] Very

important that

a group of men

of Puritan ministers

with such influence in the

colony say, be careful.

But then they're also

saying, but it's a

jolly good thing

to hunt witches.

So it's a very, very difficult

situation for the authorities.

♪

[Marion Gibson] Meanwhile, some

people are asking questions

about why the

accusers are making

the accusations that they are.

Perhaps things have gone out

of hand and gone too far.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] That's part of

this beginning of perhaps doubt

about the validity

of the testimony

and the validity of

the spectral evidence.

♪

[Marion Gibson] Yet even though

there are doubts about the

process of the convictions,

on August the 19th,

a further five

people are hanged.

And one of them is even a former

minister, George Burrows.

He's Samuel Paris' predecessor.

♪

Burrows is being accused

partly because he's

drifted from the position

that Samuel Paris feels

the church should be occupying.

[Martha McGill] George gives

supposedly

this quite

impassioned speech

where he talks about

what's happened,

closes it with a

perfect recitation

of the Lord's Prayer.

♪

This was an old

stereotype about witches

that they couldn't get

through the Lord's Prayer

without at some

point tripping up.

♪

George recites it perfectly.

And this also may have

generated some doubts

in the minds of the onlookers.

♪

[Marion Gibson] The crowd start

to murmur.

And they move towards

almost a riot.

And they say the execution

should be stopped.

[crowd shouting]

But who should come

along but Cotton Mayer,

who has come to the executions

to watch justice being done.

♪

He gives almost a sermon to

the crowd in which he says

that these people

are indeed witches

and that there's

nothing wrong here.

The execution should continue.

And of course, because

he's a minister,

he's a powerful, important

figure in the community,

the crowd accept his authority.

The executions proceed, and

the five people are k*lled.

♪

The bodies aren't

even buried properly.

They're thrown into a

nearby crevice in the rock

and partially covered by earth.

♪

[Narrator] As doubts about the

witch trials grow,

some villagers courageously

decide to take a stand.

But the repercussions of their

actions will prove deadly.

♪

[Marion Gibson] On the 18th of

September, 1692,

one of the

witchcraft suspects,

Giles Corey, refuses

to plead at his trial.

[Martha McGill] And the courts

at this time had a slightly

strange idea that if people

refused to enter a plea,

you could subject them to

torment to compel them to do so.

And this is what

happens to Giles Corey.

♪

[Nimisha Patel] It's an act of

defiance to not submit a plea

and allow yourself to be

subjected to t*rture.

♪

And it may be that he would

have imagined that he was going

to be found guilty either way,

that the outcome was inevitable

and that he had no

control over it.

-The 18th to the 19th

of September, 1692,

he has heavy weights

piled on top of him.

♪

[Nimisha Patel] That would have

been like a suffocation.

It's like a slow death.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] When they ask

him, what do you want to say to

the court, he says, more weight.

He had nothing to lose.

He's going to die anyway.

But he can die with

his own dignity,

and he can die with his

own sense of innocence.

♪

[Martha McGill] But one effect

of him dying without entering a

plea is that his estate

remained his own property

and passed to his descendants,

to his son-in-laws.

If he had died having been

convicted of witchcraft,

his estate would become the

property of the authorities.

♪

[Narrator] Without a plea,

trial, or conviction,

the execution of Giles

Corey is unlawful.

His death sends shockwaves

through the community.

Days later, his

wife, Martha Corey,

is also ex*cuted, sent to the

gallows, guilty of witchcraft.

♪

[Marion Gibson] It's an

absolute disaster

for the

community of Massachusetts,

and it will leave

a terrible legacy.

♪

[Martha McGill] It's been seven

months now.

We've had 185 people accused.

59 have gone to trial.

19 were hanged.

Others died in prison.

This then takes on a life of its

own, spreads geographically.

[Marion Gibson] Across

communities

like Beverly,

Molden, Gloucester, Andover,

Ipswich, Marblehead,

Charlestown, and Boston itself,

people are being

accused of witchcraft.

♪

[Narrator] The witch hunts

spread across New England.

They continue to attract the

attention of religious experts.

Including a clergyman

and scholar from Boston,

Increase Mather, whose

son, Cotton Mather,

is already deeply involved with

the trials in Salem Village.

♪

[Kevin Waite] Increase Mather

writes a letter to express some

of his doubts, to say that

maybe some of the evidence,

maybe some of the accusations,

don't carry the water

that we once thought they did.

After all, spectral evidence

is a pretty slim reed

to hang people on.

[Alison Rowlands] Increase

really begins to call on the

governor, Phipps, to come

and sort stuff out.

♪

[Marion Gibson] Phipps and

Increase Mather go back a long

way.

They came together on

the ship from England

with the new charter.

William Phipps really

respects Increase Mather.

And what he sees in Increase's

letter really concerns him.

♪

There's also a rumor

going around the colony

that somebody has named Mary

Phipps, governor's wife,

as a witch.

♪

[Kevin Waite] And it would make

sense, from Satan's perspective,

not to limit himself to the

older, less affluent women

that were so often

associated with witchcraft.

If Satan really meant

business, he would go

after the elites among them.

[Marion Gibson] So there are a

couple of powerful motives

for William Phipps to want to

put an end to the witch trials.

It's a huge crisis, and he needs

to do something immediately.

♪

♪

[Kevin Waite] Governor Phipps

decides that public opinion

has shifted enough to call a

stop to these proceedings.

[Narrator] Governor Phipps

dismantles the courts

responsible for the

brutal witch trials.

The remaining accused

are safe from execution.

[Alison Rowlands] The people

still in jail are released.

[Marion Gibson] Tituba was kept

in prison for at least a year.

There's a statement

from the jailer

where he says that

he hasn't been paid.

And we know that somebody

paid that bill, which

leads us to think that maybe,

in the end, Tituba was freed.

♪

[Kevin Waite] Samuel Parris's

role in the witch trials

had created such bad

blood within the village.

[Alison Rowlands] Parris, by

that point, is very embittered.

He feels that he's

failed as a minister.

[Kevin Waite] The family

members of some of the ex*cuted

actually successfully pushed

him out of the village

and out of his ministry.

[Marion Gibson] So what's left

at Salem?

Not very much.

A dislocated community

where neighbors are not

speaking to each other.

The whole church structure

has fallen apart.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] The economic

impact of that would

have been very significant.

The pendulum of support

swings towards the families

of the accused.

It becomes an episode

the whole community

really wants to forget about.

[Martha McGill] There is a

legacy of guilt

and unease over

the whole affair.

♪

[Kevin Waite] It could never go

back to the way it was.

♪

[Marion Gibson] In January

1697, the general court

orders a day of

prayer and fasting

to reflect back on the

history of the witch trials.

♪

Then another of the judges

publishes a public apology

for his role in the trials.

♪

[Alison Rowlands] In 1752,

Salem Village rebrands itself.

It calls itself Danvers.

It's caused a lot of

division, a lot of friction.

[Martha McGill] And then in the

20th century, it's revisited.

♪

[ticking]

[Marion Gibson] In 1957, the

state of Massachusetts

apologized for the witch trials.

That happened partly because

of a play, "The Crucible."

And that play is really the

reason why the Salem witch

trials are so famous today.

♪

Historians have been trying

ever since to explain

these terrible events.

This started with two

young girls being

sick at the house of a minister.

♪

People have wondered whether

the girls were psychotic.

Were they lying?

Did they make the

whole thing up?

[Kevin Waite] A lot of the

blame is placed on the girls

who made the

original accusations.

But that exonerates the

men who led the trials,

who rendered the judgment.

These men were the literal

adults in the room,

and they have blood

on their hands

far more so than the young,

powerless, original accusers.

♪

[Martha McGill] It's retained

this status as a sort of almost

archetypal witch hunt, in part

because it was extraordinary

and it was extreme and

it happened so rapidly.

It provided this

really vivid example

of how witch hunts

can snowball and how

on the basis of some

slightly strange behavior

from two adolescent

girls, hundreds of people

can be accused and a proportion

of them can be ex*cuted.

[Marion Gibson] You can see

that the community's misogyny

and racism is reflected in

their choice of suspects.

Tituba, a Native American

woman previously enslaved.

Sarah Good, a very poor woman,

somebody who was homeless.

Sarah Osborne, a woman

who was regarded

as being insufficiently

submissive to those around her.

Dorothy Good, she's

gone through seriously

traumatic things

within this jail

and allegedly is insane

by the time she's allowed

to leave when she's five.

♪

[Kevin Waite] The lessons that

colonists learn from Salem

aren't entirely clear.

Even the regret over the trials

didn't shake anyone's belief

in the existence of witches,

didn't make them apologetic

or regret the wars

against Native people

on the northern frontier.

What Salem did was make them

regret the amount of authority

that they invested in the

young female accusers.

That to them was the

lesson from Salem,

not to trust the

word of young women

quite like they had before.

♪