The summer of was anything but normal for the Village of Salem. Trials and hangings of accused witches were happening left and right. It is still debated today what exactly caused the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials of Clearly, there were a few possible causes of the hysteria; however, envious, young, single women, a cross town rivalry.
Salem Witch Trial Hysteria In the actions of three girls quickly launched Salem onto the path of committing one of the largest witch hunts the New World has ever known. The witch hunt was fueled by a mass hysteria among the townspeople, this hysteria was the result of the strictness of their society and a number of internal and external stressors. The initial wave of panic when rumors of witchcraft arose gave way to compete hysteria when accusations began.
Salem massachusetts was the perfect. If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink! In , individuals known as Puritans settled among a small village named Salem in what is now known as Massachusetts.
The Puritans spent the beginning years of their settlement confronted with epidemics such as famine. The Salem Witch Trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of men and women accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts starting in the winter of The last of the trials were held in January of Several hundreds of men and women were accused and by the end of , 19 men and women had been put to death for their actions as if the devil were in Salem.
Every act that a person made would be carefully scrutinized, dissected, and repeated to others. This would lead to the question. What caused the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of ? The 3 main. In the summer of , the tiny town of Salem Massachusettes suffered a series of mass hangings. The people being hanged were accused witches. I have determined the three main causes of the hysteria. Document A Because of actors and attention seekers, neighbor conflicts, and gender, marital status, and age, many people were executed.
The Salem Witch Trial hysteria of caused 20 people to be hung or pressed to death and 4 perished in jail. In addition, people in Salem were accused of being witches. On June 10 of , Bridget Bishop was charged with practicing witchcraft and she was also accused of bewitching her husband to death. The result of her not confessing was that she was hung to her death. All of this frenzy started in the house of Samuel Parris.
His daughters were consumed by the bizarre tales told by their Indian. Once John finds out Abigail accused his wife, he starts trying to find proof that all of these young girls are pretending that they are being hurt by these older women, just so that they will be hanged. Why did Salem get so bad?
What we do know is that witches and the Devil were a very real concern to the Salem Villagers, as they were to many colonists. Once the idea took hold in the colony, things seemed to quickly got out of hand. Conversion disorder is a mental condition in which the sufferer experiences neurological symptoms which may occur due to a psychological conflict. Conversion disorder is also collectively known as mass hysteria.
Medical sociologist Dr. Robert Bartholomew states, in an article on Boston. Professor Emerson W. Baker also suggests conversion disorder as a possibility in his book A Story of Witchcraft:. Baker goes on to explain that many of the afflicted girls, such as Abigail Hobbs, Mercy Lewis, Susannah Sheldon and Sarah Churchwell, were all war refugees who had previously lived in Maine and had been personally affected by the war to the point were some of them may have been experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.
In , in an article in the scientific journal Science, Linda R. Ergot is a fungus Claviceps purpurea that infects rye and other cereal grains and contains a byproduct known as ergotamine, which is related to LSD. Ergot tends to grow in warm, damp weather and those conditions were present in the growing season. Not everyone agrees with this theory though. Many experts question the very existence of Artic hysteria, which results in such behavior as people stripping off their clothes and running naked across the wild tundra.
The accounts mention no such streaking in Salem, and while the supposed symptoms of witchcraft began in January, more people showed symptoms in the spring and summer…Encephalitis, the result of an infection transmitted by mosquito bite, does not really seem plausible, given that the first symptoms of bewitchment appeared during winter. None of these suggested diseases fit because a close reading of the testimony suggests that the symptoms were intermittent.
The afflicted had stretches when they acted perfectly normal, intersperse with acute fits. Historical records indicate that witch hunts occur more frequently during cold periods. In her paper, Oster explains that as the climate varied from year to year during this cold period, the higher numbers of witchcraft accusations occurred during the coldest temperatures.
Strikingly cold winters and dry summers were common in these decades. The result was not just personal discomfort but increasing crop failures.
Starting in the s, many towns that had once produced an agricultural surplus no longer did so. Mixed farming began to give way to pastures and orchards. Once Massachusetts had exported foodstuffs; by the s it was an importer of corn, wheat, and other cereal crops.
Several scholars have noted the high correlation between eras of extreme weather in the Little Ice Age and outbreaks of witchcraft in Europe; Salem continues this pattern. Salem was very divided due to disagreements between the villagers about local politics, religion and economics.
One of the many issues that divided the villagers was who should be the Salem Village minister. Because most of the trials were occurring in Salem, this meant that the accusations were happening among the Puritans themselves, which could very well be anything as long as the Puritans found it as contradicting…. The Salem Witch Trials of In colonial Massachusetts between February of and May of over one hundred and fifty people were arrested and imprisoned for the capital felony of witchcraft.
Trials were held in Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover and Salem Town of Essex County of Massachusetts, but accusations of witchcraft occurred in surrounding counties as well. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem Village.
Hysteria had swept through…. The answer to that question is still as talked about today as it was in People today are more open to their thinking about witches and witchcraft. What caused the girls to convulse, have visions, fall into a trance or babble uncontrollably? Was it something they ate?
Was it smallpox? The Puritan Religion beliefs might have led to the witch hysteria in Salem. The witch hunt….
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