Elizabeth Johnson was accused of witchcraft during the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, but was apparently never exonerated. At least until now. An 8th grade civics class at North Andover Middle School in Massachusetts found out about the case and brought it to the attention of legislators. Johnson wasn’t executed, but for some reason her name was not among those exonerated in the past. Pending legislation would change that (So technically she still isn’t out of the woods, but it’s virtually certain the bill will pass).
Three hundred twenty nine years is a long time – “the mills of the gods grind slow” and all – bu at least it’s not as long as the almost 2,000 years it took for the Catholic Church to finally decide in 1965 that the Jews weren’t responsible for the death of Christ.
Is it thought any of the accused actually did practice witchcraft (or voodoo, or Zoroastrianism, Catholicism, or whatever), or were the convictions 100% based on lies, perjury, and torture?
As I understand it, Brigit Bishop had a prior record of a witchcraft accusation. It depends on what you consider witchcraft. Brewing up home remedies and following folkloric practices were suspect in the eyes of Puritans.
329 years later she is going to get off on a technicality. She confessed to these crimes, What about justice for the victims of her witchcraft, who will stand up for them after all this time?
The Salem witch trials were complex, and the situation deserves close study. It’s often mischaracterized (most of the witch museums in Salem get at least some of their facts wrong).
There’s plenty of evidence that the people of Salem practiced “folk magic”, even those nobody would accuse of being witches. Superstitious cures and divination are documented, along with records of people literally cursing their enemies with an expectation of results. You can find this, along with cites, in Chadwick Hansen’s book Witchcraft as Salem, although you should take the book with a grain of salt (how’s that for a superstitious practice?) As he points out, years later they found voodoo doll-like 'poppets in the wall of a house, and court depositions record a case of one person wishing that another would be unable to urinate or defecate, and the like.
There was plenty of petty malice in the area, and lots of bad feeling between Salem Town and Salem Village. The accused and the accusers were separated by politics, relative wealth, and where they lived. Have a look at Boyer and Nissenbaum’s Salem Possessed, which gives demographic breakdowns.
Furthermore, people seemed to feel that there was definitely something unearthly going on. the cases resembled those of people called “hysterical” in the work of late 19th century psychologists like Charcot, with seizures, virtual paralysis, and visions. The physical manifestations shocked contemporary observers, and go far beyond what one would associate with fakery, a Hansen points out. This was not simply a case of a few teenage and pre-pubescent girls lying, acting out, or taking advantage of their newfound respect as accusers. There appears to have been real affliction and suffering going on, and it understandably freaked people out.
What the cause was is in dispute. Certainly the political and social situation was tense, which helped set the stage. Some people have suggested that it was touched off by hallucinatory ergotism, in which fungus-uinfected grain was the source of the havoc – thiscould cause physical reactions and hallucinations. Others think that too far-fetched.
There certainly was some duplicity. Even Hansen records cases where the girls were caught lying. Not all cases reduced to the same causes.
One problem, as well, was the official response to the situartion. There had been cases of accusations of witchcraft before 1692, and after. But people took the cases on a one-by-one basis and in most cases ignored accusations of others being witches. In salem, however, possibly because there were so many cases and accusers and such dramatic evidence, people were more willing to believe accusations and disregard protestations of innocence. Things got serious when it became clear that one way to deflect suspicion of oneself was to accuse others of witchcraft. And all hell really broke loose when the court began accepting the validity of “spectral evidence” – If someone said that they saw you afflicting them, it was taken as evidence of your guilt. This happened even in the courtroom, when one of the girls accused a woman on trial of attacking her there in the room. No one else saw any such thing – she was just sitting there. But the court accepted this vision as evidence of guilt. Prior to the Salem trials, such evidence would not have been accepted. But once it was allowed, anyone could be condemned of being a witch, even the most saintly, such as Rebecca Nurse.
It was only a year or so after the trials and executions that the court reviewed its opinion of spectral evidence and of its handling of the situation, and apologized for its actions. But by that time nineteen people were dead, hanged or, in Giles Corey’s case, crushed to death.
However, she got off by making false accusations against several other Salem women.
Right.
Of course, real magical “witchcraft” doesn’t exist. But curses can have a very real effect upon the susceptible, and poisons can kill pretty damn dead.
In Roman times more less less the synonym for “witch” was “poisoner”, and we can’t much blame the Romans for executing those who sold poisons.
My 9xgreat grandma, Sarah Averell Wilde was pardoned long ago in Salem. Unfortunately she was pardoned AFTER she was executed for witchcraft. IIRC her family received £10 in compensation. Oops.
This is a book I found informative and interesting: In The Devil’s Snare.
It suggests that some of the afflictions could be as the result of trauma brought on by conflicts between Native Americans and settlers.
Possibly my favorite. I offered a guy at a piano bar $20 if he could play it. Found it on his cellphone but he couldn’t work it out. I think everybody my age knows the refrain.
Yeah, it’s amazing what people will do for religion. But then it happens, that it amazes me what good people do for religion too. So go figure.
BTW, not that it matters. But I am getting progressively more and more agnostic, the older I get it seems. But I still believe in some higher power. That is part of the reason why I still have faith religion can do a lot of good in this world .
(I’ve been mostly away for the past week, so forgive this late addition)
Just to make things clear, although people in Salem undoubtedly engaged in folk magic, superstitious practices, and a little cursing with real malefic intent, people were not forming into large covens with major devil-worship, sexual orgies, and large gatherings. I doubt if they were doing the hallucinogenic drug stuff Michael Harner and Marvin Harris have suggested some witches practiced. And I seriously doubt they were into the king of Wiccan Nature Religion stuff you now find all over Salem.
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