The Crucible

Deven Desai

Block 4

Salem Witch Trials

These trails were trial, which basically in sense took the lives of many innocent people. The trials were held around the early 1600s and 19 innocent men and women died because they were convicted as witches. Those that were convicted were sentenced to death, usually by being hung alive. Basically what caused it to happen is that a group of girls were dancing about in the nearby forest, which at that time was forbidden and was rumored to be possessed by the Devil and were caused by the sickness of a little girl. When the doctor couldn't find a cause/cure for the illness, his diagnoses was witch craft. About 150 were imprisoned. The reason they died was for many reasons: A) under British rule, any type of witchcraft related theme was punishable by death B) Many people had held grudges against each other in the town of Salem, so they decided to blame each other and C) the main reason this started to happen was because the group of girls started to behave very weird, they started to crawl under tables, making weird sounds, and they would scream that they were being tortured. These little suspicions soon led to the arrestment of three women who were doubted for using Witch Craft. This scare of witches lasted about a year or so. In 1693, the innocent victims of the arrests were freed and then later in 1711, the colony made payments to the families of Witch-hunt victims. In the end, it was proven that the air was contaminated, which caused people to hallucinate.

Boyer, Paul. "Salem Witch Trials" The World Book Encyclopedia 2004: Page 61

McCarthyism