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Y312: Popular Culture and the Witchcraze of the 16th and 17th Centuries

Depth study: The Salem witch trials — executions, interpretations and the end of the trials

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on the numbers imprisoned and dead, George Burroughs, the incentive to confess, the Salem Possessed and ergot interpretations, gender and property, the end of the trials, later acknowledgement and lasting impact.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Who and when

How did gender and property feature in the accusations?

Numbers

How did Massachusetts eventually acknowledge the injustice?

Numbers

How did the trials end?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How many people were imprisoned and how many died?

    Model answer

    More than one hundred and fifty were accused and imprisoned, nineteen were hanged, Giles Corey was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and several more died in gaol.

  2. 2

    Why was the execution of George Burroughs particularly disturbing to onlookers?

    Model answer

    A former minister of the village, he recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly on the scaffold in August 1692, something a witch was supposed to be unable to do, and the crowd nearly intervened.

  3. 3

    What perverse incentive did the court create?

    Model answer

    Those who confessed and named others were kept alive as witnesses, while those who maintained their innocence were hanged, so confession became the rational course for the accused.

  4. 4

    Summarise the Salem Possessed interpretation.

    Model answer

    It explains the accusations through the factional split between the agrarian western part of Salem Village and the commercial town to the east, with accusers and accused falling largely on opposite sides of that divide.

  5. 5

    What is the case against the ergot poisoning explanation?

    Model answer

    The proposed fungal poisoning of the rye does not fit the pattern of the afflictions, which were selective, socially patterned and responsive to who entered the room, and it explains none of the legal or political dimensions.

  6. 6

    How did gender and property feature in the accusations?

    Model answer

    The great majority of the accused were women, and a striking number were women who stood to inherit or controlled property in the absence of brothers or sons, which put them outside the normal transmission of wealth.

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