Salem witch trials uk

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The Salem witch trials. J Toxicol Clin Toxicol. Chodoff P. Hysteria and women. Am J Psychiatry. Risse GB. Hysteria at the Edinburgh infirmary: the construction and treatment of a disease, Med Histy. Soc Sci Med. Laqueur TW.

Sex in the flesh. Schiebinger L. Veith I. Hysteria, the History of a Disease. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Fischer-Homberger E. His diagnosis of bewitchment put into motion the forces that would ultimately result in the hanging deaths of 19 men and women.

In addition one man was pressed to death ; several others died in prison, and the lives of many were irrevocably changed. To understand the events of the Salem Witch Trials , it is necessary to examine the times in which accusations of witchcraft occurred. There were the ordinary stresses of 17th-century life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

A strong belief in the devil, factions among Salem Village families and rivalry with nearby Salem Town combined with a recent small pox epidemic and the threat of attack by warring tribes created a fertile ground for fear and suspicion. All would await trial for a crime punishable by death in 17th-century New England — the practice of witchcraft. In June of , the special Court of Oyer to hear and Terminer to decide sat in Salem to hear the cases of witchcraft.

Presided over by Chief Justice William Stoughton, the court was made up of magistrates and jurors. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem who was found guilty and was hanged on June Thirteen women and five men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows on three successive hanging days before the court was disbanded by Governor William Phipps in October of that year.

This belief in the power of the accused to use their invisible shapes or spectres to torture their victims had sealed the fates of those tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer.