2 - The girls of Salem

Summary

The terrible witchcraft delusion in Salem in 1692 was caused almost entirely by children. But for a half-dozen young girls, those men and women would not have been hung on Gallows Hill. …

– W. S. Nevins, Salem Observer, August 30, 1890

The judgment against the children, rendered at the end of the nineteenth century by Winfield Nevins, carries a set of assumptions continued into the twentieth century and first articulated in its modern form in the eighteenth century by Thomas Hutchinson, who complained that “None of the pretended afflicted were ever brought upon trial for their fraud. …” Hutchinson, reflecting a judicial judgment made in 1711, embellished the account and declared that some of the accusers “proved profligate persons, abandoned to all vice, others passed their days in obscurity or contempt.” As Hutchinson realized, however, he held a view not universally shared.

The opinion which prevailed in New-England, for many years after this tragedy, that there was something praeternatural in it, and that it was not all the effect of fraud and imposture, proceeded from the reluctance in human nature to reject errors once imbibed. As the principal actors went off the stage, this opinion has gradually lessened, and perhaps it is owing to a respect to the memory of their immediate ancestors, that many do not yet seem to be fully convinced. There are a great number of persons who are willing to suppose the accusers to have been under bodily disorders which affected their imaginations. This is kind and charitable, but seems to be winking the truth out of sight.