Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne are two women who were accused of witchcraft during the infamous Salem witch trials in 1692. There are several reasons why they were easy targets for these accusations. Firstly, both women were considered social outcasts in their community. Sarah Good was poor, homeless, and had a reputation for begging for food and shelter. This made her an easy target as society often associates poverty and homelessness with evil or dark forces. Similarly, Sarah Osborne was a widow who lived with her second husband, who was also seen as an outsider in the community.

Sarah Good
Written By Sara Jobe

Sarah Good was born in 1653 to a well off innkeeper named John Solart. However, her father's estate was tied up in litigation that left Good virtually nothing. Her first marriage was to a poor indentured servant named Daniel Poole who died in debt in 1686. Her second marriage to William Good was doomed from the outset because the couple had to pay for the debts of first husband Poole. The Goods were homeless, renting rooms in other people's houses, and they had two young children. William worked as a laborer around Salem Village in exchange for food and lodging, but it became increasingly difficult for the family to find a place to stay as Sarah's reputation for and being socially unpleasant spread throughout the town. The family was regarded as a nuisance to the town, and by 1692 they were virtually beggars.

Good's position as a disreputable and marginal member of society made her a perfect candidate for witchcraft accusations. On February 29, 1692, the first warrant was issued for the arrest of Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. The three were accused initially of afflicting Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, and later many other accusers came forward to testify about injurious actions and spectral evidence against Good. Good was the first to testify in the Salem Witchcraft trials, and Bernard Rosenthal in Salem Story asserts that Good was specifically chosen to start the trials off because most people were in support of ridding Salem Village of her presence. Even her six-year-old daughter Dorcas was frightened into testifying against her, and although her husband did not call her a witch, he said that he, too, had reason to believe she was close to becoming one, thus, perhaps, protecting himself from accusation. One of Good's trial records quotes William Good as saying, "it was her bad carriage to [me] and indeed say I with tears that she is enemy to all good." Despite the overwhelming sentiment against her, Good adamantly denied Magistrate John Hathorne's accusations. When Hathorne in the pre-trial hearings asked, "Why do you hurt these children?" Good responded, "I do not hurt them. I scorn it." She also stated repeatedly, "I am falsely accused."

Although Good never confessed, she did accuse Sarah Osborne of afflicting the girls after witnessing the accusers fall down in fits in the courtroom. Historians generally agree that this accusation by Good was one of the first and strongest legitimizations of the witchcraft trials. Only one person came forth to defend Good. When one of the girls accused Good of stabbing her with a knife and produced a broken knife tip to prove it, a man came forward showing that it was his knife from which the tip had been broken in the presence of the accusing girl. Far from invalidating the girl's testimony against Good, Judge Stoughton simply asked the girl to continue with her accusations with a reminder to stick to the facts.

Good was condemned to hang but was pardoned until the birth of her child. Her daughter Dorcas was accused of witchery and was imprisoned for over seven months. Although the child of six years was eventually released on bond, she was psychologically damaged for the rest of her life. Good's infant died in prison with her before Good was hanged. Her execution occurred on Tuesday July 19, 1692. According to local tradition, when Good stood at the gallows prepared to die she was asked once more by Rev. Nicholas Noyes, assistant minister in the Salem church, to confess and thus save her immortal soul. Far from confessing, Good is said to have screamed, "You're a liar! I'm no more a witch than you are a wizard! If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink!" It was this constant refusal to confess that Bernard Rosenthal believes led Good to the Gallows, even more so than all of the accusations against her.

The way in which Good has been portrayed in literature is worth mentioning because it sheds light upon how the Salem Witch Trials have been popularly imagined and how the accused witches were and are viewed today. Good is always depicted as an old hag with white hair and wrinkled skin. She is often said to be sixty or seventy years of age by the same writers who clearly state that she was pregnant and had a six-year-old daughter. Even accounts from Salem Villagers and magistrates at the time refer to her as an old nuisance, hag, and bed-ridden. How did such a misconception arise? Perhaps her hard life did have such a physical effect on Good that she did appear extremely aged. On the other hand, witches are described in literature then and now as being old wicked women. If Good was to represent the typical witch worthy of execution, then it is not surprising that all of the stereotypes would be accordingly attached. Good was a marginal woman and no doubt a nuisance to her neighbors. However, the Salem trials were conducted unfairly, with a presumption of guilt, and little evidence. Marginality is not worthy of hanging, and Good was never proved to be nor did she confess to be a witch.

Bibliography

Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Karlson, Carol. F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

Rosenthal, Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Oppression of Women in Salem Witch Trials

A “witch” a word derived from old English that was placed in this world especially for women. Women were the main victims of the lynching and homicidal crimes of 1692. After being described as witches and the devil’s spawn, women were the main target of the people of Salem; Tituba was the fatal spark to the actual witchcraft after being seen doing critical magic/voodoo (Ray, Benjamin C. pp. 190-203). The Salem Witch Trials oppressed women in a variety of ways and was a result of many factors, including the religious and patriarchal atmosphere of the time period. Tituba was a slave who had worked for the Samuel Parris during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Tituba became one of the first women accused of performing witchcraft during this time.Sarah Osborn and Sarah Good were also accused of witchcraft. Some sources suggest Tituba was accused of being a witch because she allegedly practiced voodoo and taught the Salem Village girls how to see the future and fortune telling, but there was no concrete evidence of this or references to this in the court records. Even with no evidence against her, Tituba confessed to these accusations and went on to describe conversations she had with evil pigs, dogs, and rats. She also confessed to personally witnessing Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne transform into strange, winged creatures. There are many reasons why Tituba might have made these dramatic confessions. Several sources, including Tituba, indicate she was forced to confess after being beaten by her slave owner Samuel Parris. Also, as a slave she had no social standing, money, or personal property in the community. Tituba really had nothing to lose by confessing to this crime and probably came to the conclusion that a confession could possibly save her life. The religion Tituba practiced was unclear, but if she was not a Christian then she would not be fearful of going to hell for confessing to being a witch, unlike the other accused witches. Since Tituba confessed to the accusations, her case didn’t go to trial and she was spared by the gallows. Tituba remained in jail but as the witch trials continued, she retracted her confession. Tituba remained in a Boston jail due to her owner Samuel Parris refusing to pay her jail fees, for unknown reasons. It is possible that he wanted to get rid of her because she reminded him of the witch trials or because she angered him with the recanting of her confession. In April of 1693, Tituba was sold to an unknown buyer for the cost of her jail fees. It is also it is assumed that her husband, John, was sold with her. It is unknown as to what happened to them after this date.

Many women, including those such as Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, were accused of practicing witchcraft alongside countless other presumably innocent women (History.com). It is important to note that each of these women, including Tituba, were likely accused because of their status in Puritan society (Rosen, 23-24). As previously mentioned, Tituba was merely a slave woman, albeit to a man believed to be the most powerful in Salem. However, Sarah Good was a beggar woman and Sarah Osborne was an elderly (and by many accounts, very bitter) woman. Surely, the younger girls who had found themselves tied up in the accusations of witchcraft viewed each of these women as easy targets (Rosen, 24). Oppression of women is oppression of women, whether it is men or women doing the oppressing (Rosen, 25). In this case, these three women were primary targets simply because of their outsider status, as well as their age and socioeconomic status (Rosen, 28). To test whether or not these supposed witches were actually possessed by the devil himself, a few testing methods were employed. In some cases, the young women were asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer (“Witchcraft”). Successful recitation of the prayer would indicate pureness of heart, while difficulty (such as writhing in pain, falling to the ground) was a positive indication of possession. Other tests included the water-float test and Witch’s Marks tests (Andrews). The water-float test required that the accused be submerged into water with only their underclothes on. It was believed that those who were possessed/practicing witchcraft would float to the top, while those who would sink were innocent and pure of heart. There was also the witch’s mark test, which was basically so vague that any blemish, mole, or birthmark on the accused’s body was believed to be a mark of the devil. Essentially all of the tests that were administered were designed to find guilt in each of the accused (Andrews). While each of these tests were designed to prove the guilt of these supposed witches, it is important to recognize that those who were ultimately determining the guilt were men. The patriarchy had been alive and well for many years, dating back to the days of prehistoric man. This patriarchal system, paired with the Puritan beliefs and values were an unfortunate combination for the accused (Rosen, 28-29). Women in this time period, and specifically in the Puritan religion, had specific roles to fulfill. The two most important roles to fulfill were that of a wife and a mother. To be bold enough to go against these roles and challenge the preconceived notion of what defined a “woman” was viewed as going against Puritan religious beliefs (Rosen, 23-24). It was then that people (primarily men who were feeling threatened) began to use the term “witch” to describe these women. A woman who was bold and brazen enough to challenge the patriarchy surely must have been possessed by Satan himself. Men believed that women had no need for any positions of stature, that simply being a good wife, mother, and a faithful woman of God was sufficient. Anything beyond that was an indication that she was shunning the Puritan system that encouraged simplicity and humility, along with respect and obedience. Sarah Good is the prototype of the victimized woman during the Salem Witch Trials. As mentioned previously, Good was forced to turn to begging in order to feed her family (a daughter, named Dorcas) and her socioeconomic struggle was her ultimate downfall. Had her family never lost their farm, Good would have likely survived without ever having been accused. However, in a time period where suspicions were running high, Good’s situation made her a likely suspect. Many neighbors had initially taken her in and offered her and her daughter shelter, but those same neighbors would be the ones to become her accusers (again, primarily women) (Rosen, 26). It was said that Good would torment the children, poking and pinching them, even “bending their bones” (Rosen, 26). Other women made claims of having seen Good flying through the air and dancing around naked while covered in blood. These accusations would eventually lead to Good being sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft. She would be hanged as a result of her “crimes.” Her daughter, Dorcas, was also sent to prison, accused of using witchcraft against those who had accused, convicted, and killed her mother (Rosen, 26). Even the enslaved women who were taking care of the farms and feeding the children of the family were being accused of witchcraft; there were some that were watched closely to the point where they would be seen blowing out a candle by a child and would be accused of witchcraft. Religion played a major part in why woman of the age were called ” witches” because the church was mainly ran by men, and, in that age, they were the voice of the people and the women were seen as less than men therefore the word ” witch” would be seen as a way to degrade the women of the time (Murrin, David. pp.13-17). The devil pressured the women into the sorcery that caused them to lose their lives would be the person who watched them parish by the ignorance of all white males of the age. The accusation of witchcraft caused multiple deaths and banishments due to the woman of the age suffering prosecution and damnation from the judgment of others by the sense of vision and word of mouth. Tituba, one of the first African American women accused of having the ability to use her mind to move things and read minds, was eventually put into one of the very few religious writings of the Puritan religion where a African American woman would be described as an “informal Devil” (Zubeda, Jalalzai. 417.) As the judge talks about how his daughter would first be looked as a little sweet heart of the town and the people would worship her as a baby princess seeing nothing wrong, because of the passing around of the word “witch” the people who worshipped her were now charging her with the crime of sorcery ( Higginson 1). Women of the age were mistreated in multiple ways they were stopped by societies mindset of the seventeen hundreds, woman were damned from the beginning of the era not being able to voice their opinion or even be seen alone without the accusations of being a witch would be tossed around. This evolved into the general oppression of women causing a spiral that caused multiple murders to be accrued and a mass number of lynchings to be caused. The Oppression of the women was catastrophic, women were never allowed to do anything other than being accused of the sorcery and being used for taking care of the kids. Each woman having a chance of being used as a template of the age where everything could be easily put on women and there would be no outside source second guessing them, even religion that was supposed to be protecting women even found a way to put them down, giving them no chance for survival of their time period. Perhaps the most catastrophic of all of this is the fact that it was women oppressing other women, not just men oppressing women. When one thinks of the oppression of women, the mind automatically imagines a powerful man overpowering a weak, submissive woman.

However, in this case, women were oppressing women. Perhaps this was still, in some way, being controlled by the men of the town. Ultimately, the women were making these accusations against one another in order to make themselves appear to be devout, pure hearted Puritan women. The men controlled the religion, the town, the courts, essentially every aspect of life. While religion was supposed to be a saving grace for people, in these women’s cases, it proved to be their downfall. The era of time being the reason were treated this way, religion not being an outlet for women. One word single handedly disabling woman and causing death seems unrealistic, but very seldom for the town of Salem.

Why are sarah good and sarah osborne easy targets of witchcraft accusations

It was a cold winter night in colonial Massachusetts. Paper hung on the walls of the houses saying, “Notice to practitioners of Witchcraft: Those who seek out communion with the devil shall be burned”. In the distance, people shouted “Burn the devil!” while holding their pitchforks and torches. Two of them tied a woman to a stake and burned her. Her screams were silenced by the cheers and celebrations of the village.

This sight was not uncommon in 1692 and 1693. People were accused of worshipping Satan, kidnapping and sacrificing children, and performing witchcraft. With the onset of spring, signalling new life, 25 people faced death. This is not only one of Colonial America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria but also a lesson from history on how accusations and witch hunts can result in unnecessary destruction. Today, we know of Witch Hunts by a more unassuming term—Cancel Culture.

When The Devil Entered Salem

The Devil is said to have first entered Salem, a town heavily populated by the Puritan community, in the chilly winter of 1692. It knocked on Reverend Parris’ door when his 9-year-old daughter and 11-year-old niece started showing ‘unusual’ and ‘non-religious behaviour’. This included throwing fits, shuddering, shaking, and barking like dogs. When they took the girls to a physician, his diagnosis was—the girls were affected by an evil and unholy hand.

An artist’s rendition of one of the girls who was regarded as a victim of witchcraft.

With the so-called disease coming to the town of Salem, people started looking for its source. When the two girls were brought before the magistrate, they accused three women of being the root of this ‘disease’. On February 29th, 1692, three women from marginalised communities—Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne—were accused of being Devil worshippers.

The Unfortunate Fate of Sarah Good

Sarah Good had lost her father when she was young. The law at the time prevented girls from inheriting their father’s property, forcing Sarah to find refuge in charity. She married a servant named Daniel Poole, whose death left her in debt and forced her to sell a small portion of her father’s land, which was the only property she owned. She later married William Good. Sarah developed a reputation for being a “turbulent spirit, spiteful and maliciously bent“. She challenged the Puritan values, which did not sit right with the people of Salem.

Sarah Good — whose poverty resulted in her being held guilty of practising witchcraft.

When she was accused of practising witchcraft, she claimed her innocence until the very end. Her husband told the examiners that she was “an enemy to all good” describing her as a “burden to him“. He said that he hated her demeanour and that she had failed to meet his expectations of a wife. Sarah was pregnant at the time of her arrest and gave birth to a child in Ipswich, who later died.

After the trials, Sarah was given a death sentence. Even at the time of the execution, she profoundly claimed her innocence while blaming Osborne and Tituba for witchcraft.

The Tragic Life of Sarah Osborne

Sarah Osborne was the wife of a prominent man from the Putnam family, Robert Prince. The couple had two sons, after which Prince passed away. Following his death, Sarah married Alexander Osborne, an Irish immigrant. She took over the land and the property that her late husband had left for their sons, resulting in them suing their mother. When she was accused of practising witchcraft, Osborne was dealing with legal issues and had not attended church for three years which made matters worse for her. Unlike Tituba and Good, Osborne pleaded her innocence without accusing anyone else of practising witchcraft. She died in jail on May 29th, 1692.

Sarah Osborne — whose financial independence resulted in her accusation

Osborne, unlike Tituba and Good, did not belong to a marginalised community, but she broke social norms by taking over her late husband’s land and denying her sons the wealth that they inherited by law. Her economic independence made the Putnam family feel insecure, and her owning and taking over a part of their land resulted in their financial instability. Hence, it is possible that the Putnam family had a hand in her arrest.

The Black Witch of Salem

On March 1, 1692, while Good and Osborne claimed innocence, Tituba stood apart from the other two by confessing to having practised witchcraft. She also denied these accusations at first, but later confessed with persuasion, clarity, and scary specifics. Tituba’s testimony is one of the longest in Salem’s dark period.

She told the Court how the Devil had come to her and bid her serve him along with Good and Osborne. She had signed in the Devil’s book using blood. She related detailed images of red cats, black dogs, yellow birds, and a certain black man she described vaguely, who asked her to sign in the Devil’s book. She was called ‘The Black Witch of Salem’.

Tituba — whose ethnicity and social status resulted in her accusation

Today, we know very little about her apart from her being a worker and caretaker in the Parris household. Her status as a ‘coloured slave’ is an obstacle to knowing her story and her point of view on the accusations. Although very little is known about her later life, it is said she was jailed, and her status of ‘sole witness’ helped her survive the initial days of mass hysteria. During her trial, Tituba mentioned that there were nine more signatures in the Devil’s book—it planted a seed of paranoia, which led to 144 more accusations in the town.

The View of The Church

The Puritans were members of a religious movement that arose in the Church of England. Its purpose was to cleanse the church of its Roman Catholic values. They were also the people who immigrated to the US and formed the majority of Salem’s population. Reports of witchcraft, which was considered evil and satanic, threatened the holy barbed wire of their religion. Hence, these cases were dealt with immediately. The magistrate did not interrogate the accuser and the accused separately, and the necessity of physical evidence was ignored. In such conditions, the accused had only two options—confess to practising witchcraft or face a death sentence.

A scene from court trials determining the fate of the woman who was accused of practising witchcraft [Image Credits: BBC]

When unexplained events began to occur, the people of Salem turned to their God for an explanation. They believed that by punishing those who performed witchcraft, they were performing their duty towards Him. While the religion teaches peace and respect, they thought they were acting in accordance with His teachings by purging the world of Devil-worshippers—the epitome of destruction. They relied more on their instincts and faith than on physical evidence.

A Bad Case of The Ergotism

In 1976, Dr Linnda R. Caporael suggested that all the symptoms of witchcraft that were seen in the victims may have been a case of rotten bread. Ergotism is a form of food poisoning, caused in Salem in 1692 because of a rye bread that was infected by a fungus. It explained some of the symptoms experienced by victims. Other conditions like sleep paralysis accounted for the nocturnal attacks. Interestingly enough, the fungus, Claviceps purpurea is what modern-day LSD is derived from. There are many records that back up Caporael’s theory. The year 1691 was a wet season for Salem, making the conditions perfect for fungal growth. Moreover, the minister was paid in grains, and it was the minister’s daughter and niece who were the first victims of ‘witchcraft’.

There are still some people out there who deny Caporael’s theories because they choose to believe in flying broomsticks, grimoires, shape-shifting, and dark magic.

A Tale of Patriarchy and Discrimination

In the 17th Century, Christians believed that women were inferior, making them easy targets, and more susceptible to Satan’s wiles. Perhaps the Salem Witch Trials were to serve as a reminder of the status of women in the gender hierarchy. They believed that the devil could reach and ‘pollute’ a women’s soul more easily. The roots of this belief lie in the New Testament. Satan in the form of a serpent lured Eve and made her eat the forbidden fruit, which led to the fall of humankind. Around 70-80% of the people accused in the Trials were women, of whom, many were around the age of 40 and above—notably, an age when a woman’s fertility starts fading away. Sarah Good began questioning the values of the Puritan Society. Osborne gained economic independence by claiming her late husband’s land. Both of their actions were considered ‘evil’.

The Salem Witch Trials were not about killing and punishing witches who went against God. It was about people trying to maintain the ill-balanced social hierarchy of the time. They felt that the hierarchy that benefited them was at risk because of Good and Osborne’s actions. They wanted to maintain the fragile status quo of male supremacy. They wanted to keep on defining a woman’s worth through her fertility. This was done best by linking folklores and myths about the Devil to women and people of colour. The Salem Witch Trials was an attempt at maintaining a position of power and privilege over those less fortunate.

The accusations soon flared out in Salem’s neighbouring towns in 1693. It did not take long before accusations were meted out indiscriminately. When the wife of Francis Dane, Governor of colonial Massachusetts, was accused of performing witchcraft, the trials were ended, sentences were retracted, the arrested were released, and compensation was given. The trials came to an end.

The Trials remain a tale of patriarchy and discrimination. It was an event that marked the beginning of the end of Puritan society. It is a tale of how people valued authority over justice and delusion over truth. It is a story that is being told to this day.

The 21st Century Witch Hunt

The hashtags keep popping up on the screen. People chant with their pitchforks and receipts “Cancel! Cancel! Cancel!”. The stake is replaced by hashtags, the pitchforks with keyboards. The internet warriors come to serve justice. Salem now is not just a small city in Massachusetts with a small population. It is a town that exists on digital media with a population of millions. Years have passed, but time has not changed. Every generation has its own Salem.

The Salem of today is made up of social media apps. However, the beginning of the Witch Hunt in today’s Salem is very different compared to the 17th Century. Cancel culture arose within black culture. It arose during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s. For black people ‘Cancel Culture’ was not a mere hashtag—it was about calling out those who threatened their rights and freedoms.

Cancel culture was initially supposed to represent the helplessness people felt because of unjust systems and the influences of people in power. It was a way to boycott racist businesses in the 50s. It was a way to tell people that one may not have the ability to change the inequality and the laws that support tyranny. However, one does have the power to fight, to ‘cancel’ out the inequality and those who promote it in society.

The Aftermath of A Hashtag

Cancel culture has taken a different turn in modern times. While appearing very different from the Salem Witch Trials, it is the same issue at its heart. In a strange turn of events, it is no longer the persecution of minorities. Now, it targets those in power who often misuse their authority.

Many celebrities like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby were cancelled because of sexual misconduct in their workplaces and had to serve prison sentences for the same. On the other hand, when celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and JK Rowling were cancelled, it hardly made a difference in their lives. Ellen and her show continue to maintain popularity. Even after her transphobic tweets, JK Rowling continues to profit off Harry Potter and its merchandise.

So, while Cancel Culture was successful in hunting down figures like Harvey Weinstein, many people, even after being held at the stake of cancellation, continue to maintain their status in society. Cancel culture, just like the Salem Witch Trials, is based on instinct and faith, rather than tangible evidence. It is based on mob mentality.

Instead of bringing down these authority figures, it has created fear in people’s minds. Innocent individuals are burned at the stake of social humiliation. People with their keyboards hunt down others and hold them accountable for something they said or did several years ago. It is true that because of a corrupt justice system, people often resort to a hashtag to mete out punishments, but it can be harmful when the person being held accountable is innocent.

Cancel Culture frequently hides under the disguise of call-out culture and often turns into cyber-bullying. At the end of the day, such ‘justice’ is not worth it when it comes at the cost of mental health and the lives of the innocent.

What Lies In Store For The World?

While we continue to live and grow up in a patriarchal society where discrimination still exists, the witch hunt today is very different from what it was 330 years ago. Today, people get cancelled for supporting patriarchy and discriminating against others based on their skin.

In the 21st century, history is not recorded from the point of view of the biased majority, but in the form of digital footprints. Being able to hear opinions of both sides along with those of ‘internet warriors’ serving ‘justice’ via their keyboards instead of by the gavel does not justify the suffering innocent people had to go through. It was not warranted in 1692, it is not justified in the 21st century. With history being recorded through digital media accessible to the majority, the fate of the impetuous millions is yet to be determined.

Featured Image Credits: History.com

What were the Salem Witch Trials?

The Salem Witch Trials began in spring 1692 and lasted for seven months, during which more than 150 people where arrested, 19 were hanged and one was tortured to death. Nige Tassell explains how hysteria in the village of Salem, Massachusets, gave rise to a horror that bedazzled the world

The heat was stifling on a July day in 1692, as five dishevelled and bound women are paraded on a wooden cart through the streets of Salem village in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. As the cart bumps its way towards a hill on the outskirts, the five contemplate their mortality. Within minutes they’re led, hoods drawn over their heads, towards a rudimentary set of gallows, and their imminent executions.

Who were first Salem witches?

These five women – Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Wildes – were the among the first to be tried and found guilty of witchcraft during a bleak nine-month period of New England history simply recalled as the Salem Witch Trials. As the innocent women approached the gallows, in the last moments of their lives, they continued to protest their innocence. Rev Nicholas Noyes, one of the local clergymen who had vigorously pursued the prosecutions, was the particular focus of Sarah Good’s anger: “You are a liar. I am no more a witch than you are a wizard. And if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink.”

• A very brief history of witches by Suzannah Lipscomb

What were they accused of?

Good had been among the first local women to be arrested, after several young girls from the village had experienced mysterious afflictions the previous February. One bitterly cold evening, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams – the daughter and niece of the local Puritan minister Samuel Parris – began displaying disturbing behaviour described as being “beyond the power of epileptic fits or natural disease to effect”. They screamed, made unearthly sounds, suffered convulsions and violently threw objects, and themselves, around their homes.

When asked who it was that had afflicted them, they named Good – a homeless woman who had fallen destitute after denying the inheritance of her wealthy father’s estate – as one of the three culprits. The girls’ accusation was that Good had performed witchcraft on them.

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The other two accused and arrested at the same time were Sarah Osborne and Tituba, the Parris’s black slave. Both, like Good, were viewed as outcasts by the local community; Tituba for her race and Osborne for the shedding of any religious beliefs she might once have held. They were soft, obvious targets for a mistrustful, God-fearing populace living along strictly defined lines.

What is the context of the Salem Witch Trials?

When it came to religion, Salem Village was as devout as any other settlement in the area; one visitor observed that the residents of New England could “neither drive a bargain, nor make a jest, without a text of Scripture at the end of it”. Indeed, as Stacy Schiff explains in The Witches, her history of the witch trials, “It would have been difficult to find more than a few souls to whom the supernatural was not eminently real, part and parcel of the culture, as was the devil himself”.

Slaves made easy targets for witchcraft accusations. This engraving depicts the enslaved Barbadian woman Tituba, who belonged to the Parris family and was one the first accused during the Salem Witch Trials (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)

While Puritanism in New England demanded rigidly defined behaviour (hymns were the only permissible music, while children’s toys were outlawed), the colony’s geographical isolation increased the insularity of these communities. Hemmed in by the ocean to the east and by an untamed wilderness to the west, settlers were completely disconnected from both the mother country on the other side of the Atlantic and the remainder of the American continent.

And insularity bred paranoia, as Schiff sharply explains. “In isolated settlements, in dim, smoky, firelit homes, New Englanders lived very much in the dark, where one listens more acutely, feels more passionately, imagines most vividly, where the sacred and the occult thrive.” These five executions were not the first in New England for the crime of witchcraft. Between 1647 and 1688, 12 women had been sentenced to death for making covenants with the devil.

But the particular brand of paranoia that was rife in Salem Village – fed by a rivalry with neighbouring Salem Town, ongoing family feuds and attacks by Native Americans – developed into mass hysteria. A flurry of accusations from girls with afflictions similar to those of Betty Parris and Abigail Williams resulted in an avalanche of arrests and prosecutions.

Warrants were issued by the dozen, sometimes for the arrest of the most unlikely suspects. Among those detained in March 1692 were Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse, upstanding members of the local churches in Salem Village and Salem Town respectively. Corey, a woman who, in her own words, “had made a profession of Christ and rejoiced to go and hear the word of God”, had drawn the attention of the prosecutors by offering the opinion that the accusers were just “poor, distracted children”.

The hysteria gripping Salem – a settlement resonating with the incessant sound of accusation and counteraccusation – showed that no-one was exempt from suspicion. Even Sarah Good’s four-year-old daughter Dorothy was arrested and interrogated by the magistrates.

How did the Salem Witch Trials begin?

By the end of May, more than 60 people were in custody; the vast majority were women, but a handful of men were also detained. On 2 June, the specially convened Court of Oyer and Terminer (‘oyer’ meaning ‘to hear’, ‘terminer’ meaning ‘to decide’) sat for the first time, presided over by William Stoughton, the newly appointed lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. As chief justice, Stoughton believed that spectral evidence presented to the court – that is, evidence gathered from dreams and visions – would form a central plank of the prosecutions. At the same time, the accused would be denied legal representation.

Two days before the court convened, a Puritan minister from Boston named Cotton Mather wrote to one of the judges expressing his concern over the admissibility of such evidence.

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A prolific pamphleteer railing against the spread of witchcraft (or “molestations from the invisible world”), Mather was nonetheless keen for due diligence to occur inside the courtroom. “Do not lay more stress on pure spectral evidence than it will bear,” he cautioned.

Who was the first witch of Salem to be executed?

The first case brought before the grand jury was that of Bridget Bishop, a woman around the age of 60 who faced a plethora of accusations: that she could pass through doors and windows without opening them; that she had made holes in the road suddenly open up, into which carts would fall before the holes would instantly disappear; that she had summoned a “black pig” with the body of a monkey and the feet of a cockerel.

A large proportion of the case against Bishop also focused on her lifestyle, especially her rumoured promiscuity and un-Puritan ways. Tried and found guilty within the course of a single day, Bishop was hanged a week later on 10 June, the first execution of the trials.

Bridget Bishop, a woman of 60, was the first 'witch' to be executed during the trials. She was tried and hung on the very first day ((Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

After Bishop’s execution – and the court’s endorsement of the indictments against Rebecca Nurse and John Willard, a local constable who, doubting the allegations, refused to bring the accused to court – the grand jury adjourned for almost three weeks. They did so in order to gather the observations of the colony’s most senior ministers, to hear their reflections “upon the state of things as they then stood”.

The eight-point response, penned by Cotton Mather, advised prudence when it came to procedure, cautioning that hastiness shouldn’t overwhelm lawfulness. However, the subtlety of the ministers’ response was largely sidelined by the grand jury, who drew their energy from one particular concluding line from Mather: “we cannot but humbly recommend unto the government, the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious.” In possession of such a mandate, the trials moved up a gear.

In early July, Sarah Good and her four co-accused were tried and found guilty of bewitchment, making that journey to the gallows on that wooden cart a few days later. The indictments then came thick and fast. Another five were executed exactly a month later on 19 August, four of whom were men. One of them, George Burroughs, protested his innocence as the noose was readied.

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He is recorded to have recited a prayer “uttered with such composedness from many, so that it seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution”. Only the intervention of Cotton Mather – whonappeased the crowd with the observation that “the devil had often been transformed into the Angel of Light” – ensured that the hangings continued as scheduled.

In mid-September, a further group went to the gallows – “Eight Firebrands of Hell” in the words of Rev Noyes. Three days earlier, the death of another of the accused had occurred. Giles Corey, the husband of Martha Corey, refused to enter a plea and was subjected to a particularly gruesome form of torture where the accused is crushed under heavy stones until they either respond or die – a tactic known as peine forte et dure, (‘until he either answered or died’). Corey still refused to offer a plea and paid with his life. By now, seven months on from the arrest of Sarah Good, the hysteria was decelerating.

When did the Salem Witch Trials end?

Having initially set up the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Governor William Phips – having returned from fighting in King Philip’s War in Maine – voiced concerns about “what danger some of [his] innocent subjects might be exposed to” and dissolved the court, in the process pardoning those remaining in custody. Not that the prosecutions were concluded even then. Fresh witchcraft cases continued to come before the new Superior Court of Judicature that, while again presided over by William Stoughton, was ordered not to accept spectral evidence. Even when the court ordered further executions, Phips wisely issued pardons to those convicted.

The Salem Witch Trials offered a salutary lesson not only to the colony of Massachusetts Bay but also to the new nation that would be forged in the following century. Through the loss of 20 lives, the episode continues to warn of the dangers of insularity and isolationism, of intolerance, of religious extremism. The less-than-thorough procedures of the Salem courtroom also prompted tighter, more rational legal processes that would later be enshrined in the US Constitution.

Of course, remembering the events of 1692 can still act as a brake when contemporary events take a sinister downturn. This was no more notable than when playwright Arthur Miller chose to dramatise the trials in his 1953 play The Crucible. An allegory of the intolerant McCarthyism discolouring the nation at the time – Miller would himself be called before the Committee on Un-American Activities three years later – the parallels were undeniable.

Despite its power as a cautionary tale, Salem remains an enigma that continues to fascinate and beguile more than three centuries later.

What caused the outbreak of hysteria in Salem?

In the 300 years since the Salem Witch Trials, experts have gone to great lengths to offer explanations for the young Salem girls’ afflictions of a somewhat more rational nature than the ‘witchcraft’ diagnosed at the time.

A 1976 study, printed in the journal Science, attributed the girls’ hysterical and possibly hallucinogenic behaviour to the ingestion of rye bread made with grain infected with ergot of rye.

Ergot contains lysergic acid, a precursor for synthesis of LSD; certainly the visions of shape-shifting devils reported by the afflicted might be consistent with the experiences of an acid trip. Other medical explanations have included encephalitis lethargica, a disease carried by birds and animals, and Lyme disease, an infection that produces skin rashes similar to those believed to have been administered by the Salem ‘witches’.

Other diagnoses have focused more on the mental wellbeing of the Salem girls. Psychosomatic disorders have been suggested as the root of the hysteria, most notably the societal strains placed on them in a strict, deeply religious adult world that made no contingency for the developmental needs of children. The hysterical behaviour was an unconscious outlet for rebellion, a release valve for the pressure that the threat of eternal damnation put them under.

And, of course, there’s the theory that it was all down to good old fashioned spite. In an insular society like Salem, where anyone straying from the norm was immediately criticised or condemned, accusations of witchcraft were a method of self-defence, of keeping the more undesirable elements of the local community at arm’s length, if not removing them completely.

Witchcraft in England

While Salem has, in the English-speaking world at least, become the byword for witch-hunts, a very similar episode occurred in Lancashire in 1612, some 80 years before the panic in New England – the case of the Pendle Hill witches.

Witchcraft had been made illegal during Henry VIII’s reign, with subsequent legislation passed under Elizabeth I further outlawing “conjurations” and “enchantments”. When a young Lancastrian woman called Alison Device asked for a pin from a travelling peddler but was denied, the peddler apparently became immediately paralysed down his left side. Device reportedly admitted an act of bewitchment, as well as accusing another woman of undertaking similar practices.

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In pre-echoes of what would later occur in Salem, panic took hold of the local community, with accusations flying in all directions. More significant were admissions of attending a witches’ meeting on Pendle Hill. Ultimately, eight women and two men were tried and found guilty of attending the gathering. With a 1562 act now permitting the death penalty for acts of witchcraft, they were hanged.

The other most notorious case of witchcraft in England came during the British Civil Wars when Matthew Hopkins – the son of a Puritan clergyman and the self-styled ‘Witch Finder General’ – scoured East Anglia in search those suspected of making covenants with the Devil. Hopkins’ crusade was at its most virulent between 1644 and 1646. Estimates suggest that over 200 women were executed during this period as a direct result of the investigations of Hopkins and his associates.

The English laws against witchcraft were repealed in 1736, after which incidents of suspected bewitchment, by now very isolated, were dealt with by mob rule rather than by a clear legal framework.

Nige Tassell is a freelance journalist specialising in history

Similarly, Sarah Osborne was a widow who lived with her second husband, who was also seen as an outsider in the community. Their unconventional lifestyles and social status made them susceptible to accusations of witchcraft. Secondly, both women had conflicts with other members of the community.

Sarah Good and her husband had been involved in legal disputes over their property and were known for their arguments with neighbors. This created a sense of resentment towards them, making it easier for their neighbors to point fingers at them when accusations of witchcraft arose. Similarly, Sarah Osborne had a history of contentious relationships within her own family and was involved in an inheritance dispute. These conflicts added fuel to the fire and made her an easy target for accusations. It is common in cases of witchcraft trials for personal grudges and disputes to be used as a basis for accusations, and both Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne fell victim to this trend. Furthermore, both women possessed traits that were associated with witchcraft during that time period. Sarah Good was often seen talking to herself and exhibiting erratic behavior, which was interpreted as signs of her connection to the supernatural. Similarly, Sarah Osborne was known for her apathetic attitude towards attending church, a clear deviation from the religious norms of the Puritan community. These behaviors made them stand out and seem suspicious, further solidifying the basis for their accusations. In conclusion, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were both easy targets for accusations of witchcraft due to their marginalized social statuses, conflicts with others in their community, and perceived eccentric behaviors. These factors, combined with the hysteria and fear surrounding witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, led to their unjust persecution and tragic fate..

Reviews for "False Confessions: The Coerced Confessions of Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne."

1. John - 1/5

I found "Why are Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne easy targets of witchcraft accusations" to be extremely biased and lacking in substantial evidence. The author seems to have a preconceived notion that the two Sarahs were innocent victims of a witch hunt, but fails to provide solid arguments to support this claim. The article ignores the fact that both women had been involved in previous legal disputes and that their reputations were already tarnished before the accusations started. Additionally, the author overlooks important contextual factors such as the prevalence of superstition and fear during the Salem witch trials. Overall, I believe this article is not worth reading if you are seeking an objective assessment of the Sarahs' guilt or innocence.

2. Sarah123 - 2/5

While "Why are Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne easy targets of witchcraft accusations" raises some interesting points about societal factors that may have contributed to the witchcraft accusations, I found the argument to be weak and poorly supported. The author relies heavily on speculative assumptions and fails to provide concrete evidence to support their claims. Additionally, the article overlooks the fact that other individuals accused of witchcraft during the Salem trials did not share the same societal disadvantages as the Sarahs, suggesting that there may have been other reasons for their accusations. Overall, I was disappointed with the lack of depth and substance in this article, and I would not recommend it to those looking for a thorough analysis of the topic.

3. JaneDoe - 2/5

"Why are Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne easy targets of witchcraft accusations" presents an interesting perspective on the Salem witch trials, but ultimately fails to convince. The argument heavily relies on the assumption that economic disparities and societal prejudice were the primary reasons for the accusations against the Sarahs. However, the author overlooks the fact that other accused individuals, who did not fit into the same societal categories, were also targeted during this period. Without providing a more comprehensive analysis and considering all possible factors, this article lacks credibility and fails to provide a convincing argument.

An Examination of the Evidence: Assessing the Lack of Evidence Against Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.