10th June 1692 – The First Witch
Hanging
Bridget Bishop
Three hundred and
twenty three years ago, Bridget Bishop of Salem was the first ever to be
condemned to death as a witch and hung on 10th June. Bridget
who was reported as being a soul of dubious morals, dressed in a flamboyant way
and known for wearing a scarlet bodice. Along with her late comings
and goings and known to visit taverns on a regular basis, plus married 3 times.
would this make you a witch in current day, very unlikely.
However despite her
protests of innocence, she was found guilty and hanged on a Tuesday at Gallows
Hill.
Bridget’s maiden name
was Playfer or Playford
and her first husband was Samuel Wasselbe. She was then accused of
the death by witchcraft of her second husband Thomas Oliver. However, there is
a potential reason for this, her second husband's children wanted property that
she had possession of as an inheritance from Oliver. Her third husband, third
husband Edward Bishop, whose son, also Edward Bishop, and his wife, Sarah
Bishop, were also arrested for witchcraft.
So was she just an
easy target for her non conformists ways in a Puritan society that valued
harmony and obedience?
During the trial she
protested her innocence with much angst saying “I am innocent to a Witch. I know not what a Witch is." A
magistrate responded, "How can you know, you are no Witch ... [and] yet
not know what a Witch is?"
Her
husband testified first that he'd heard her accused before of witchcraft, and
then that she was a witch. A
further damming statement was made by workers on her cellar who said they had
found ‘poppits’ in the walls i.e. dolls with pins them. Also several
men testified they had been visited by her in spectral form in bed at night.
Was this simply wishful thinking or ensuring she was shut up to save their own
integrity, who knows!
Thirteen more women
and five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one
man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing. Most of those tried were condemned
on the basis of the witnesses’ behavior during the actual proceedings,
characterized by fits and hallucinations that were argued to have been caused
by the defendants on trial. In October 1692, Governor William Phipps of
Massachusetts ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer dissolved and replaced
with the Superior Court of Judicature, which forbade the type of sensational
testimony allowed in the earlier trials. Executions ceased, and the Superior
Court eventually released all those awaiting trial and pardoned those sentenced
to death. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in the executions of 19
innocent women and men, had effectively ended.
One contemporary
writer and a Governor summarized the results of the trials:
“And now Nineteen
persons having been hang'd, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in
all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the
Churches of N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in
general, and not one clear'd; about Fifty having confest themselves to be
Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and
Two Hundred more accused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer comes to a
period."
"Four other accused and
an infant child died in prison. When I put an end to the Court there ware
at least fifty persons in prision (sic) in great misery by reason of the
extream cold and their poverty, most of them having only spectre evidence
against them and their mittimusses being defective, I caused some of them
to be lettout upon bayle and put the Judges upon consideration of a way to
reliefe others and to prevent them from perishing in prision, (sic) upon which
some of them were convinced and acknowledged that their former proceedings were
too violent and not grounded upon a right foundation ... The stop put to
the first method of proceedings hath dissipated the blak cloud that threatened
this Province with destruccion".
—Governor William Phips,
February 21st, 1693[
The era is one of the
nation's most notorious cases of mass hysteria,
and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid
cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false
accusations and lapses in due process. Sadly, it still ring true today in
certain sectors.
No comments:
Post a Comment