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Salem Witchcraft Trials: More Bonkers Than You Know · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, there's Jerry over here,
0:17
Speaker 1: uh lurking around like a bit of a ghoul because
0:20
Speaker 1: it is the Halloween season after all. Uh, and this
0:23
Speaker 1: is stuff you should that's right spooky which trials Yeah, yeah,
0:30
Speaker 1: it is. It's really nice to like have stuff like
0:33
Speaker 1: this that you can be removed from by a few
0:35
Speaker 1: hundred years, and you know, it just kind of evokes
0:39
Speaker 1: that Halloween spirit or whatever. But Chuck, I have found,
0:43
Speaker 1: just in recently researching this, if you put yourself into
0:47
Speaker 1: the position that people who are like walking to the
0:50
Speaker 1: gallows and like think about how nuts all this was,
0:53
Speaker 1: it is exponentially scarier on a much more existential level.
0:57
Speaker 1: It goes beyond like Halloween spooky too. This is a
1:01
Speaker 1: genuinely frightening event in the history of America. No kidding,
1:05
Speaker 1: I mean like it was messed up in every way,
1:10
Speaker 1: shape or form. So I take it you never read
1:12
Speaker 1: The Crucible. I did read the Crucible, but I read
1:15
Speaker 1: it and didn't do it. No, it really didn't, because
1:19
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if it was me. Maybe
1:21
Speaker 1: I wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared to accept it on
1:24
Speaker 1: that level, who knows, But no, it was it was
1:27
Speaker 1: like imagining myself in the shoes of the people who
1:30
Speaker 1: were going to die. Um, that got me researching. Yeah
1:37
Speaker 1: that's dark, no, uh no, no shade though on Arthur Miller,
1:41
Speaker 1: he was great and his play was great, and it
1:43
Speaker 1: was very timely for the time. Yeah. I mean, you know,
1:46
Speaker 1: there's been so many kind of movie adaptations and TV
1:51
Speaker 1: movie adaptations about this time, and I'm still waiting first
1:55
Speaker 1: sort of the one great one that's not the Crucible. Well.
1:59
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason why there hasn't been
2:02
Speaker 1: that great one yet is because historians are still like
2:06
Speaker 1: actively competing explaining just what exactly happened in Salem. It's
2:11
Speaker 1: such an anomaly even among like Puritans, even among people
2:15
Speaker 1: who believe there was such a thing as witchcraft and
2:17
Speaker 1: even executed witches. This was a genuine anomaly, at least
2:22
Speaker 1: as far as American history goes. And I think because
2:25
Speaker 1: they don't understand it fully, it's difficult to really get
2:28
Speaker 1: the point across as well. You know, I don't know, man,
2:31
Speaker 1: I think you can make a great movie like look
2:33
Speaker 1: at the Witch that that danced around it, so well,
2:36
Speaker 1: like you just need a movie like that. But based
2:38
Speaker 1: on this, well, why don't we just say the Witch
2:41
Speaker 1: then as the is all we need? Well because it
2:44
Speaker 1: wasn't about the Salem witch Trials, but I mean it
2:46
Speaker 1: was so analogous to it and took place in at
2:48
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, I mean, just pretend like
2:51
Speaker 1: there's a trial scene that they cut it they cut out,
2:54
Speaker 1: and there actually a lot of other people they drag.
2:57
Speaker 1: They dragged the father into work basically and and excommunicate them.
3:03
Speaker 1: So there is almost like a witch trial scene right there. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: that's true, the which is the Salem witch trial movie
3:12
Speaker 1: We've always needed, That's right. So I'm glad we we
3:17
Speaker 1: resolved that. You must feel very satisfied. Now, yeah, completely disagree,
3:20
Speaker 1: but I'm just moving on. So, um, everybody knows about
3:24
Speaker 1: the Salem witch Trials, right, but I think because you know,
3:28
Speaker 1: we learned about it in American history, you hear about
3:30
Speaker 1: it as Halloween stories all of that kind of stuff.
3:32
Speaker 1: But like I said, I mean, we really genuinely don't
3:35
Speaker 1: understand what happened. And that's despite the fact that it
3:38
Speaker 1: is really well documented because a lot of the stuff
3:41
Speaker 1: took place in the courts, and they wrote a lot
3:44
Speaker 1: of stuff down. But we only have like official primary
3:49
Speaker 1: documents that were written by people who were aware that
3:51
Speaker 1: these were public documents, rather than say a trove of
3:54
Speaker 1: private journals and letters. The Puritans didn't do that that much,
3:58
Speaker 1: and so we don't have like kind of the underneath
4:01
Speaker 1: the official line explanation for what happened. Well, yeah, and
4:06
Speaker 1: if if people are confused by what we mean there,
4:09
Speaker 1: you know, there were other witch trials in other places
4:13
Speaker 1: in the Young America, there were other witch trials in
4:17
Speaker 1: centuries previous in other countries, and there were mild panics
4:21
Speaker 1: and stuff. But Salem like collectively lost their mind for
4:27
Speaker 1: a short period of time. And that's what people still
4:31
Speaker 1: don't get there, like why why did that happen only
4:34
Speaker 1: there to to this scope and this degree? Uh? And
4:38
Speaker 1: you know, people have looked at various biological reasons and
4:41
Speaker 1: things like that, but I don't know. I think it
4:44
Speaker 1: was just sort of one of those weird things that
4:47
Speaker 1: could only happen like at one place in one time. Yeah, exactly.
4:51
Speaker 1: And there was actually a guy who wrote a book
4:54
Speaker 1: in two named John Demos, and he said, not only
4:58
Speaker 1: can it happen like under these very specific circumstances, here
5:03
Speaker 1: are the circumstances that could happen in And he his
5:06
Speaker 1: book wasn't just about Salem. It mentioned Salem, but it
5:08
Speaker 1: was about like witchcraft trials and panics and accusations in
5:11
Speaker 1: New England in general. And he basically said that when
5:13
Speaker 1: a town starts out really small and it's like a
5:17
Speaker 1: colonial town, they're living like on the razor's edge of existence.
5:22
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't really know each other. They're dying,
5:25
Speaker 1: so there's a big population turnover as newcomers come in
5:28
Speaker 1: and there's just not enough familiarity to say I think
5:32
Speaker 1: you're a witch to accuse your neighbor or something like that.
5:35
Speaker 1: But then after they settle in a little while and
5:36
Speaker 1: maybe there's like some boredom and everybody gets to know
5:39
Speaker 1: each other and you have grudges, but you're still living
5:42
Speaker 1: in a really small area, that's when the witchcraft accusations
5:46
Speaker 1: can really take place. And Salem seems to have kind
5:49
Speaker 1: of followed that pattern to that these witch witchcraft accusations
5:53
Speaker 1: like really took hold at a time where the colony
5:56
Speaker 1: was under tons of stress. People knew each other, had
5:59
Speaker 1: had deck aids, long rivalries and lane disputes, and they
6:02
Speaker 1: lived still in a very small little village, and they
6:06
Speaker 1: were basically crawling all over one another and saw one another,
6:09
Speaker 1: and you could not get away from people you didn't like. Yeah,
6:13
Speaker 1: and this is especially true in Salem. That was Salem Village,
6:17
Speaker 1: in Salem Town, And like you said, they were stacked
6:21
Speaker 1: on each other and there were a lot of uh like, hey,
6:24
Speaker 1: your cow can't graze over this imaginary line because that's
6:28
Speaker 1: my land and you're not even allowed to build a
6:31
Speaker 1: fence over there, like kind of common land disputes that
6:35
Speaker 1: have happened throughout history. But in Salem they were just
6:40
Speaker 1: they were. They were described as a very quarrelsome people.
6:43
Speaker 1: They were. They fought and argued a lot, kind of
6:46
Speaker 1: more so than it seems like even other Puritans and
6:50
Speaker 1: other parts of the country. Yeah, and the Puritans in
6:52
Speaker 1: general were deeply litigious. They took each other to court
6:56
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat, at the drop of
6:58
Speaker 1: a hat with a belt buckle on it. Um. But
7:01
Speaker 1: they they they had like the way that they supported
7:05
Speaker 1: that um, that kind of litigiousness was to say most
7:09
Speaker 1: of the courts would be like, you need to go
7:10
Speaker 1: handle this privately, and then this kind of secondary mediation
7:14
Speaker 1: kind of thing would come in and there being negotiations
7:17
Speaker 1: and then the dispute would be resolved. But the first
7:20
Speaker 1: thing that they would do is drag one another into court.
7:22
Speaker 1: That was how they would get one another's attention. Yeah,
7:26
Speaker 1: And so this is sort of the backdrop of what's
7:28
Speaker 1: going on in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and particularly in
7:33
Speaker 1: Salem Village in Salem Town, which I think I think
7:37
Speaker 1: Salem Village today is dan verse and then Salem Town
7:41
Speaker 1: is Salem that's right, still around and still has spooky connotations. Yeah,
7:47
Speaker 1: And dan Versus where the Um the State Asylum was located.
7:50
Speaker 1: That was the setting for one of the greatest horror
7:53
Speaker 1: films of all time, Session nine. Oh that's right, man,
7:58
Speaker 1: that's a movie I don't even know if I want
7:59
Speaker 1: to see again. It's so good. I saw it a
8:01
Speaker 1: year or two ago and it's still just as good.
8:04
Speaker 1: It's great. Um. All right, So the Puritans were in control.
8:07
Speaker 1: I guess the back backdrop of this was they were
8:11
Speaker 1: full on, you know, human holocausts in Europe in the
8:14
Speaker 1: sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with their witch crazes and things
8:19
Speaker 1: got really out of hand over there. But by the
8:21
Speaker 1: time folks got to be here, they were mainly just
8:23
Speaker 1: arguing a lot. And there were you know, there was
8:26
Speaker 1: a small witch panic in Connecticut. Uh, not small if
8:29
Speaker 1: you were one of the people accused, but it didn't
8:32
Speaker 1: quite get out of hand, um, certainly in that like
8:34
Speaker 1: it did in Europe in centuries previous. And I saw
8:37
Speaker 1: an explanation, Um, I want to give a shout out
8:39
Speaker 1: to a couple of sites. But when I got a
8:40
Speaker 1: lot of info from is called the historic present, and um,
8:44
Speaker 1: they were pointing out that like for the most part, yes,
8:47
Speaker 1: people generally agreed that there were such things as witches, um,
8:52
Speaker 1: And yes you would accuse your neighbor of witchcraft, but
8:55
Speaker 1: it was kind of like it was a way of
8:58
Speaker 1: like getting your neighbor's attention, like a serious about this
9:00
Speaker 1: and publicly accusing you being a witch. Let's talk about
9:03
Speaker 1: your cow grazing on on my land, you know. Um.
9:07
Speaker 1: And that was another thing that made Salem so anomalous.
9:10
Speaker 1: Is it just kept going and going through these steps
9:13
Speaker 1: of like the court in trial and then finally executions
9:17
Speaker 1: and and it. It just got out of hand basically, right.
9:21
Speaker 1: So the Puritans are in control in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
9:26
Speaker 1: They've got an iron fist on on ruling. They don't
9:29
Speaker 1: like basically anybody who is not a Puritan. It seems
9:33
Speaker 1: like most of the Puritans didn't even like each other.
9:36
Speaker 1: But they certainly didn't like Quakers, they didn't like Catholics,
9:40
Speaker 1: and they did all they could to really establish themselves
9:43
Speaker 1: as the ones in charge and did so well. Yeah,
9:46
Speaker 1: it depends on who you're talking about. Though. There were
9:48
Speaker 1: some Puritans who were deeply conservative religious leaders like Increased
9:52
Speaker 1: mather Um, who wanted to just completely secure Puritan control.
9:57
Speaker 1: But there was also like a real um read through
10:00
Speaker 1: the Puritan leadership that was willing to like give like
10:04
Speaker 1: voting rights and and um the ability to be elected
10:07
Speaker 1: into office to non Puritans who lived in in town um.
10:12
Speaker 1: And they had kind of a proto democracy in a
10:14
Speaker 1: lot of ways. So it's like the Puritans in general, Yes,
10:18
Speaker 1: we're deeply intolerant of Quakers and Catholics, and they actually
10:21
Speaker 1: tortured Quakers um who were unrepentant UM, but they also
10:26
Speaker 1: did have they weren't just like this the band of
10:29
Speaker 1: like theocratic thugs that that they're often painted as. There's
10:34
Speaker 1: just more nuance to it than that. But yes, there
10:37
Speaker 1: were plenty who were like, no, we just need total
10:39
Speaker 1: puritanical control over over this whole colony. Yeah, and you know,
10:44
Speaker 1: as we'll see once the witch trials were conducted. You know,
10:48
Speaker 1: I said that Salem collectively lost their mind sort of
10:52
Speaker 1: true in a way, and that a lot of people
10:54
Speaker 1: in power and the decision makers did. But there were
10:57
Speaker 1: still people even while it was going on. It wasn't
10:59
Speaker 1: like hundred percent of the town was behind this. There
11:01
Speaker 1: are a lot of people and I guess they were
11:03
Speaker 1: probably some of those reasonable people you know that you
11:06
Speaker 1: were talking about that were like, you know what we're doing?
11:08
Speaker 1: Is it right? I don't think they really spoke up
11:11
Speaker 1: to vocally, but they were like, what is going on here?
11:14
Speaker 1: This is getting out of handing kind of crazy. Yeah,
11:17
Speaker 1: I mean, it was such a dangerous situation where it
11:20
Speaker 1: was one of those kind of fascist situations where people
11:23
Speaker 1: who did dare to speak out against this and say
11:26
Speaker 1: this is crazy, this is wrong, or even to like
11:29
Speaker 1: testify on behalf of somebody who was accused, you were
11:32
Speaker 1: putting your own life at risk. Like there's a possibility
11:35
Speaker 1: you would be accused of witchcraft and then tried and
11:37
Speaker 1: then executed. It was that kind of a situation, even
11:40
Speaker 1: with people on the outside being knowing that this is wrong,
11:44
Speaker 1: it was just such a inevitable machine that it was
11:49
Speaker 1: like people just stayed out of its way for a
11:51
Speaker 1: little while. All Right, I think that is a healthy preamble. Okay,
11:57
Speaker 1: the foundation is laid. I think we should take a break, okay,
12:01
Speaker 1: and come back talk about those mother boys right after this.
12:05
Speaker 1: I concur stuff you should stuff you shouldn't, you should know. Okay, Chuck,
12:37
Speaker 1: so you want to talk some mothers. That's the Beaver.
12:43
Speaker 1: He's still around, I believe by the way, he still
12:46
Speaker 1: looks like he's one of those guys that stayed the same. Huh. Yeah.
12:50
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't help that he dresses the same
12:53
Speaker 1: still too, But you can recognize him even in a
12:56
Speaker 1: tux I'm guessing. So you can't talk about out the
13:00
Speaker 1: Salem witch trials without talking about the Mathers. I'm talking
13:03
Speaker 1: about the elder mother whose name was Increase of these
13:07
Speaker 1: Puritan names, and uh, the younger mother, Cotton Mather. He
13:13
Speaker 1: was the son son of a mother, so Increased Mother.
13:16
Speaker 1: He was, like you said, he was sort of the
13:18
Speaker 1: staunch Puritan who was in a position of power. He
13:22
Speaker 1: was working to establish a charter that would, you know,
13:26
Speaker 1: basically give the Puritans all the power. He was also
13:29
Speaker 1: a believer, and you know, because I mentioned that the
13:32
Speaker 1: European witch trials like this is sort of the background
13:35
Speaker 1: that allowed people like Increased Mother and Cotton Mother to
13:38
Speaker 1: really legitimately believe that demons were real and Satan could
13:43
Speaker 1: overtake and possess someone, and that there were real witches.
13:48
Speaker 1: I mean, that was just generally the puritanical worldview, but
13:51
Speaker 1: some people were much more preoccupied with it than others.
13:55
Speaker 1: And the Mathers were both deeply preoccupied with this kind
13:58
Speaker 1: of thing, and Increase other gets a lot of the
14:02
Speaker 1: blame for this, and and rightfully so, but there's a
14:04
Speaker 1: lot of lesser known people who actually were way more
14:08
Speaker 1: villainous during this and really took advantage of this crazy situation.
14:12
Speaker 1: And and really I just didn't didn't care about the
14:16
Speaker 1: lives of innocent people. But he was. He was not good,
14:19
Speaker 1: and that he helped fan the flames of this initially
14:22
Speaker 1: big time. That's right, Um, so should we I mean
14:25
Speaker 1: we'll we'll get a little bit more into the matters
14:27
Speaker 1: as we go. Uh. Cotton was certainly one of the
14:30
Speaker 1: villains of the trials, and they were both writing books
14:34
Speaker 1: about supernatural things. So this was all sort of the
14:37
Speaker 1: foundation that was laid when the first two people, uh
14:42
Speaker 1: were accused in what January of Yeah, So to to start,
14:48
Speaker 1: there were two girls ages nine eleven. There was Betty Paris,
14:52
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Paris was her name, and Abigail Williams. And they
14:57
Speaker 1: basically started barking and convulsing and just behaving really bizarrely
15:04
Speaker 1: and strangely and would not stop. And so Samuel Paris,
15:09
Speaker 1: who was the head of the Salem Village church it
15:13
Speaker 1: was actually pretty divisive figure apparently, UM, he brought in
15:17
Speaker 1: a doctor and the doctor proclaimed this to be bewitchment,
15:21
Speaker 1: that these girls were bewitched. And that's ultimately what kicked
15:25
Speaker 1: the whole thing off. And a lot of people have
15:27
Speaker 1: tried to figure out like what initially started that because
15:30
Speaker 1: just about everybody who has a theory about this um
15:35
Speaker 1: immediately converts to mass hysteria. But you still have that
15:40
Speaker 1: first that first case of Abigail Williams and or Elizabeth
15:44
Speaker 1: Paris to to explain, and apparently it was like really
15:49
Speaker 1: prolonged stuff. They were vomiting, they were doing stuff beyond
15:52
Speaker 1: just like behaving weirdly. They were they seemed to be
15:55
Speaker 1: physically afflicted. And that's another thing too that I think
15:58
Speaker 1: your theories that say like it was just a hoax
16:00
Speaker 1: that these girls perpetrated, that doesn't understand like just how
16:04
Speaker 1: long these girls carried out this stuff, And I think
16:07
Speaker 1: it kind of ignores the fact that there are also
16:11
Speaker 1: like the Puritans weren't dumb people. They were deeply religious,
16:15
Speaker 1: they believed in witches and Satan having you know, a
16:18
Speaker 1: hand on things here on earth. But they also were
16:21
Speaker 1: very smart, very practical, and they would have seen right
16:24
Speaker 1: through a couple of girls just planning a hoax or
16:27
Speaker 1: carrying out a hoax. So there has to be something
16:30
Speaker 1: there at the beginning that no one has ever fully
16:32
Speaker 1: explained that kicked this whole thing off. Yeah, I mean
16:36
Speaker 1: it's hard not to become a little obsessed with some
16:39
Speaker 1: sort of biological route I know or got poisoning has
16:42
Speaker 1: been mentioned. I saw encephalitis. Oh, I saw that one too.
16:45
Speaker 1: That was interesting. Yeah, and just some other like possible
16:49
Speaker 1: reasons of like maybe something physically was wrong with them,
16:52
Speaker 1: while they also happened to be goofing around with folk
16:55
Speaker 1: magic and stuff like that. Not not a good combination
17:00
Speaker 1: to like get sick while you're being a kid and
17:03
Speaker 1: playing around was essentially what they were doing. Yeah, but
17:06
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you think about the fact
17:08
Speaker 1: that the the adults were like, okay, this is this
17:12
Speaker 1: is significant enough that we're going to start looking around
17:14
Speaker 1: for the witches, and the girl started accusing people too, Um,
17:18
Speaker 1: it does seem like there was something going on with
17:21
Speaker 1: at least one of them. And then yes, it started
17:23
Speaker 1: to spread, probably through mass hysteria to other girls in
17:26
Speaker 1: the village. It kind of makes when I when I
17:29
Speaker 1: read the sort of timeline account, I feel like if
17:32
Speaker 1: that original doctor hadn't said the word, which it could
17:36
Speaker 1: have gone in a completely different direction. Yeah, he should
17:39
Speaker 1: have just been like, it's um anti N M D
17:42
Speaker 1: A R and cephalitis and dummies an autoimmune disease that
17:46
Speaker 1: will only begin to grasp in thees and everyone would
17:50
Speaker 1: say you're a witch, right, he just see some crazy words, doc,
17:55
Speaker 1: So uh, the doctor has has breathed the word, which um,
17:59
Speaker 1: the girls are like, um, They're like, hey, what's going
18:02
Speaker 1: on with you, and they said, uh, you know, it's Tituba.
18:06
Speaker 1: It is my father's slave to Tuba, and it's her
18:11
Speaker 1: fault and she's a witch. And so they, like you said,
18:14
Speaker 1: they started accusing, and they started with her. They started
18:16
Speaker 1: with her, and then they very quickly moved on to
18:18
Speaker 1: Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. And by doing that, by
18:22
Speaker 1: accusing those two women are actually uh with Titchuba as well,
18:27
Speaker 1: all three of them. Is it. I've always heard Tichuba,
18:30
Speaker 1: but I've heard I think I've heard Tituba before too,
18:32
Speaker 1: So I don't know that sounds Tchuba sounds more right, Okay.
18:36
Speaker 1: So so by accusing those three women, they were following
18:43
Speaker 1: um Abigail and Elizabeth were following like a well established
18:48
Speaker 1: tradition of focusing on older women on the margins of
18:54
Speaker 1: society as witches. Right, Titchuba was easy to accuse me
19:00
Speaker 1: because she was a foreigner. She was brought to um
19:03
Speaker 1: the colony as a slave, and she worked as a
19:05
Speaker 1: slave in the Paris's house. Um, so who knows what
19:10
Speaker 1: she was into before you know, she came over to Massachusetts,
19:13
Speaker 1: I guess was the thinking of the Puritans. But then
19:15
Speaker 1: also Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. They were like older
19:19
Speaker 1: women who were poor, um, lived on the fringes of society,
19:23
Speaker 1: and like that is who you accused of being a witch. Typically.
19:26
Speaker 1: So at first, this which panic kind of followed the
19:29
Speaker 1: standard which accusations that had been um, you know, spread
19:33
Speaker 1: around New England before. But but what made it different
19:36
Speaker 1: is that it just started to pick up steam more
19:38
Speaker 1: and more because more and more girls and people around
19:42
Speaker 1: them the colony or around the village I'm sorry, started
19:47
Speaker 1: to suffer bewitchment and started accusing one another of of
19:50
Speaker 1: bewitching them. Yeah, if you were a person, for sure,
19:56
Speaker 1: a woman, but um, a man or a woman who
20:00
Speaker 1: like you said, was about middle aged, and you know
20:02
Speaker 1: you were over there kind of doing your own thing
20:04
Speaker 1: a little bit and maybe just kept to yourself. Maybe
20:07
Speaker 1: you didn't like hanging out in the village as much
20:10
Speaker 1: as the rest of the villagers did. Uh, you marched
20:14
Speaker 1: to the beat of your own drum. You had a
20:16
Speaker 1: target on your back basically right. Yeah. And also apparently
20:20
Speaker 1: one of the things that they were well known for,
20:22
Speaker 1: these people who were accused of which is would be
20:25
Speaker 1: like like they needed things from their neighbors, so they
20:28
Speaker 1: would extract them by threatening to curse them, so they
20:31
Speaker 1: would actually use like witchy threats. Um. They were probably
20:35
Speaker 1: also into folk magic, so there was like, it wasn't
20:38
Speaker 1: just completely baseless other than the fact that like which
20:42
Speaker 1: is in that kind of puritanical conception don't exist. But
20:46
Speaker 1: it wasn't just totally out of the blue like these
20:49
Speaker 1: they they still like if you a modern person saw
20:52
Speaker 1: the person that they were originally that they traditionally accused
20:55
Speaker 1: of being, which is you'd be like, oh my gosh,
20:56
Speaker 1: a real life which there's one right there, it would
20:59
Speaker 1: fit the bill. Are you You know what I'm saying, Yeah,
21:02
Speaker 1: for sure. So you know, these accusations start flying around,
21:06
Speaker 1: they start mounting, the jails start filling up. The conditions
21:10
Speaker 1: in the jail were not good. It got so crazy
21:13
Speaker 1: early on. And this is sort of the first part,
21:15
Speaker 1: This before the like trials and hangings and everything. This
21:19
Speaker 1: is when you were just like jailed and shackled and
21:21
Speaker 1: then charged for your shackles I guess like a rental fee. Uh.
21:25
Speaker 1: But they arrested a four year old named Dorothy good
21:30
Speaker 1: Um and she was eventually released. But a four year old, like,
21:36
Speaker 1: it's crazy me as a father having gone through life
21:39
Speaker 1: with a four year old that you could accuse a
21:41
Speaker 1: four year old of being anything other than a four
21:44
Speaker 1: year old, right exactly, But she wasn't. She was held
21:46
Speaker 1: for months. I think she was arrested in March and
21:48
Speaker 1: released in May, and like this wasn't like a pleasant December.
21:52
Speaker 1: Just oh my goodness. Okay, so she was there for
21:55
Speaker 1: almost a year, just under a year. For the intense
21:58
Speaker 1: and purposes of exagger rating just how bad this was,
22:01
Speaker 1: she was in there for basically a year, Okay, Yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: Sarah Ozgar died in jail. She died in jail. Yeah,
22:07
Speaker 1: this is the thing. Like these jails were like dirt floors.
22:10
Speaker 1: You were chained, like you're saying, like it was just
22:13
Speaker 1: it was a place where like a life could just
22:15
Speaker 1: be lost way too easily. So to keep a four
22:18
Speaker 1: year old in there for almost years just horrible. There
22:21
Speaker 1: was a woman who gave birth in jail and they
22:25
Speaker 1: just left her infant daughter in there with her, so
22:28
Speaker 1: the infants didn't survive. She died in jail. Um just
22:32
Speaker 1: from being born in jail. Somebody who was accused of
22:34
Speaker 1: being witches And this was before the trials had even started. Chuck,
22:38
Speaker 1: Like this was just the initial phase of the panic,
22:41
Speaker 1: which was accusation, accusation, accusation, and then suddenly the jails
22:45
Speaker 1: were overflowing with more than a hundred people, um who
22:49
Speaker 1: were accused of being witches, and the court was totally
22:53
Speaker 1: backed up. When increased, Mather and the new governor that
22:57
Speaker 1: he was coming back with, William Phipps, Uh he'd gotten appointed,
23:01
Speaker 1: Um showed back up in in Salem and we're like,
23:05
Speaker 1: what is going on here? And they had a choice, Chuck.
23:09
Speaker 1: They could have been like, have you all lost your mind?
23:11
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Stop this right now, let all
23:14
Speaker 1: these people out. They didn't go that route. They went
23:16
Speaker 1: the exact opposite route. They at that moment when they
23:19
Speaker 1: decided which way to go, they chose incorrectly. Basically yeah. Um.
23:25
Speaker 1: And it was also a pretty bad time. It was
23:28
Speaker 1: kind of an uh, what's the word conflagration? Man, you
23:32
Speaker 1: nailed it, And it sounded so confident confident. Uh. It
23:39
Speaker 1: was a conflagration of a bunch of things happening politically
23:43
Speaker 1: and legally. It was a very bad time because by
23:46
Speaker 1: the time the trials rolled around, they eventually got this
23:49
Speaker 1: new charter, but previous to that, they were uh, the
23:53
Speaker 1: charter of the colony was temporarily suspended, and a new
23:57
Speaker 1: charter did arrive in May of uh in the hands
24:01
Speaker 1: of the Elder Mather, but it was brand new and
24:05
Speaker 1: the court didn't create laws. They didn't have time to
24:07
Speaker 1: create any new laws. That is so they basically said,
24:11
Speaker 1: all right, we need to we got all these people
24:12
Speaker 1: in jail. We need to quickly establish a special court
24:15
Speaker 1: for this, and we'll call it the Court of Oyer
24:18
Speaker 1: and Terminer to hear and determine, and we're going to
24:22
Speaker 1: get this these people out of jail or kill them.
24:28
Speaker 1: So they're no longer in jail, but they're getting out
24:30
Speaker 1: one way or another. Right So there there ed helps
24:32
Speaker 1: us out with us. We should say we failed to
24:34
Speaker 1: mention so far. But he he points out that Um
24:37
Speaker 1: William Phipps, the new governor, possibly went along with this
24:41
Speaker 1: idea of creating a new court to get rid of
24:43
Speaker 1: this backlog of witchcraft accusations, to get these people out
24:47
Speaker 1: of jail, to get this over and done with. And
24:50
Speaker 1: that may have happened, actually, but he Um was very
24:53
Speaker 1: much focused on dealing with the the constant threat that
24:58
Speaker 1: the colonists lived under being attacked by Native Americans. King
25:01
Speaker 1: Philip's war, King Philip being the guy that punks Tawny
25:05
Speaker 1: phil was named after that I got way way wrong
25:07
Speaker 1: in our Groundhog episode. Um that had just ended. There
25:12
Speaker 1: was another war that included the French and the Native
25:15
Speaker 1: Americans to the north, sweeping down all the way into
25:18
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and staging rads. So they've lived under the constant
25:21
Speaker 1: threat of death, which definitely didn't help their mindset during
25:24
Speaker 1: the Witchcraft panic. But that's what Phipps was was worried about.
25:29
Speaker 1: That's what he was working on. So he threw the
25:31
Speaker 1: the um the job of seeing seeing this this court
25:36
Speaker 1: through to his lieutenant governor, a guy named um what
25:40
Speaker 1: was his name, William What william Ston Williams Stoughton I mentioned,
25:45
Speaker 1: like some of the lesser known people who were actually villains,
25:48
Speaker 1: this guy was a bad, bad man and he made
25:52
Speaker 1: a decision that changed the course of everything. I think
25:56
Speaker 1: Phipps's initial idea that this would have just moved the
25:58
Speaker 1: backlogs out and freed everybody from jail would have come
26:01
Speaker 1: true had it not been for Stoughton and Stowton's radical
26:05
Speaker 1: decision to include what's called spectral evidence that changed everything,
26:10
Speaker 1: and that that is what led to people being executed. Yeah,
26:15
Speaker 1: so before we get into spectral evidence, I just want
26:18
Speaker 1: to point out that William Stoughton was such a bad
26:20
Speaker 1: guy they named a town after him, and they named
26:23
Speaker 1: a college dorm at Harvard after him. I believe, well
26:26
Speaker 1: Increase Mather was the Harvard president for a while too,
26:29
Speaker 1: so Stoton went to Harvard, but I think it's still
26:33
Speaker 1: one of the dorms is still Stowton. And uh, I
26:36
Speaker 1: think Stoton mass is most well known now for having
26:39
Speaker 1: an idea. Uh So yeah, spectral evidence. Let's talk about
26:47
Speaker 1: this because this changed everything. Um, there were different kinds
26:51
Speaker 1: of evidence that would be accepted in these courts. Uh.
26:55
Speaker 1: One was the spectral, which we'll talk about. One was confession,
26:59
Speaker 1: um two eyewitness testimonies. Uh. And then there were we
27:04
Speaker 1: won't get really into all the tests, but there are
27:07
Speaker 1: all kinds of different tests, including the you know, does
27:10
Speaker 1: she float? Can she swim? Uh? From Monty Python, the
27:14
Speaker 1: Holy Grail. I think they were still doing some of that.
27:17
Speaker 1: That was the witch's teat, which was it's basically, if
27:20
Speaker 1: they found a mole on a woman, they would call
27:23
Speaker 1: it a witch's teat, which was uh supposedly a third
27:26
Speaker 1: nipple used to feed her animal familiar. That's what my
27:29
Speaker 1: dad always told me my moles were when I was
27:32
Speaker 1: growing witches. He was dead serious too. So there were
27:37
Speaker 1: certain tests and all, but spectral evidence was the big
27:39
Speaker 1: one because this was basically you could kind of make
27:42
Speaker 1: up anything, and and you could be in court and say,
27:45
Speaker 1: as an accuser and say, this person is being uh
27:50
Speaker 1: has been uh possessed or or their possessor is in
27:55
Speaker 1: the courtroom right now, your honor, the this ghost, this
28:00
Speaker 1: specter is sitting on your lap right now. You just
28:03
Speaker 1: can't see it, and it's and it would freak people out.
28:06
Speaker 1: There was nothing you could really say to defend it
28:08
Speaker 1: because it was made up to begin with, uh and
28:12
Speaker 1: supposedly Cotton Mather said it should be used more sparingly,
28:17
Speaker 1: like at the end of the day he was like,
28:19
Speaker 1: it's it's enough to indict, but not to convict. Was
28:22
Speaker 1: that cotton or increase that was cotton supposedly. And then
28:27
Speaker 1: in the end I think they verified that nobody was
28:30
Speaker 1: convicted solely on the basis of spectral evidence. Okay, well,
28:35
Speaker 1: then my my hypothesis is kind of out the window.
28:38
Speaker 1: That none of these people would have been executed without it.
28:41
Speaker 1: Well it was you know, if if you need two
28:45
Speaker 1: out of three things and that's one of them, then
28:47
Speaker 1: you're right. You know. One of the other things that
28:49
Speaker 1: one of the more practical problems that spectral evidence presented
28:53
Speaker 1: for somebody accused of witchcraft was that it destroyed any
28:56
Speaker 1: alibi you had, Like your your neighbor could be like, well, no,
29:00
Speaker 1: couldn't have been bewitching this person. He was out working
29:02
Speaker 1: with me in the fields all day. They could say no, no,
29:05
Speaker 1: it was a spirit. He sent his spirit to bewitch
29:08
Speaker 1: this poor person who's accusing him, and then boop, there
29:11
Speaker 1: goes your alibi. So there you like it was like
29:14
Speaker 1: you said, you just can't defend yourself against that kind
29:16
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. And that was like the level of
29:19
Speaker 1: stuff that they were. That they were, that was how
29:22
Speaker 1: they were accusing people. There was one guy I read about,
29:25
Speaker 1: Philip English who who will come up again later. Um,
29:28
Speaker 1: he was accused of witchcraft by somebody who said that, uh,
29:32
Speaker 1: they got a nosebleed while they were discussing a lawsuit
29:35
Speaker 1: they had against Philip English with somebody else, so that
29:39
Speaker 1: it must be that Philip English had bewitched that Like
29:42
Speaker 1: this was the kind of accusations that they were making
29:44
Speaker 1: against one another, and they were holding up in court.
29:47
Speaker 1: That is something that you cannot look past. It's so
29:52
Speaker 1: easy to look back three years and be like, yeah,
29:53
Speaker 1: this whole collective group lost their mind. No, there were
29:56
Speaker 1: plenty of people who did lose their mind, but the
29:58
Speaker 1: people who were supposed to be in charge, the people
30:01
Speaker 1: who were in a position to put a stop to this,
30:04
Speaker 1: actually allowed it, in some cases fan the flames of
30:07
Speaker 1: it even further. That was the true breakdown at the
30:10
Speaker 1: Salem Witchcraft trials. The grown ups did not step in
30:14
Speaker 1: in in halt it before it got out of hand. Yeah.
30:18
Speaker 1: Another thing that someone might do if you had a
30:21
Speaker 1: pet that you really liked, not good, Um, they could
30:24
Speaker 1: say that, well, no, no, no, they have an animal familiar. Uh.
30:27
Speaker 1: It could be anything like take Black Philip from the
30:30
Speaker 1: Witch I mean that's taken kind of straight from this
30:33
Speaker 1: time period. But if you had a pet that you
30:36
Speaker 1: enjoyed hanging out with, they could accuse you of having
30:40
Speaker 1: a familiar. If they found, uh a folk magic or
30:44
Speaker 1: folk tale book in your library, Um, that could be evidence.
30:48
Speaker 1: And that was pretty common too. I mean, like I
30:51
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, local hospitals to go to to
30:54
Speaker 1: to heal themselves or anything that any like you said
30:58
Speaker 1: with the nosebleed or whatever, anything bad happened to you,
31:01
Speaker 1: if your crop failed or if one of your cows died,
31:04
Speaker 1: you could say it was my neighbor and there which
31:06
Speaker 1: and they put a hex on me. So they established, okay,
31:10
Speaker 1: we can use spectral evidence, and we're going to use
31:12
Speaker 1: spectral evidence. And this court of Oyer and Terminer, um, god,
31:19
Speaker 1: it was established. I think they held their first trial
31:21
Speaker 1: on June two, and they were profoundly efficient at at
31:27
Speaker 1: convicting and killing people. Um Bridget Bishop was the first
31:31
Speaker 1: person hanged, and she was hanged on June tenth, just
31:34
Speaker 1: over a week after the first trials began. Um, and
31:38
Speaker 1: that kicked off like this new phase where this this
31:41
Speaker 1: idea to like clear the the jails of the accused
31:45
Speaker 1: was actually now diverting them to the gallows. And for
31:50
Speaker 1: being witches, we can't forget that either, like for being
31:54
Speaker 1: which is even though which is in this conception don't exist. Yeah,
31:58
Speaker 1: and I think it's at efficiency in the speed that
32:01
Speaker 1: all this happened was a big part of it, because
32:04
Speaker 1: it was the train was moving so fast that once people,
32:08
Speaker 1: the more level headed people of the town realized what
32:11
Speaker 1: was going on, like, wait a minute, we're actually hanging
32:14
Speaker 1: people for this um, certain people started to come forward
32:18
Speaker 1: and say no, no, no, I'm recanting my confession, or
32:21
Speaker 1: let me stand up for someone's good character. But it
32:25
Speaker 1: happened so quickly that you know, before you know it,
32:27
Speaker 1: there's you know, a couple of dozen people have died. Yeah,
32:31
Speaker 1: and like people got wrapped up in it too, Like
32:33
Speaker 1: there's the case of Giles Corey. I believe man, he
32:37
Speaker 1: testified against his wife and then later he recanted it.
32:43
Speaker 1: And after he recanted at the purgeon's apparently UM viewed
32:46
Speaker 1: perjury so suspiciously that that was enough to get him
32:49
Speaker 1: accused of which craft and he ended up paying for
32:51
Speaker 1: his life with which we'll talk about a little more later.
32:55
Speaker 1: But like, he testified against his wife, and to this
32:57
Speaker 1: day was historians are like, we have no idea why
32:59
Speaker 1: jil Corey testified against his wife. He didn't seem to
33:02
Speaker 1: have a grudge, they seemed to have a fine marriage whatever,
33:05
Speaker 1: Like it just doesn't make sense. The only way that
33:08
Speaker 1: you can explain that, at least from my perspective, is
33:11
Speaker 1: that it was, like you said, just this thing that
33:13
Speaker 1: people got whipped up in, and it just happened so
33:16
Speaker 1: fast that it was just easy to lose yourself into
33:18
Speaker 1: that degree. I mean, the whole thing happened over the
33:21
Speaker 1: course of what four to six months. Yeah, I think
33:26
Speaker 1: the first things were in January, but yeah, the first
33:29
Speaker 1: trials were June two, and they ultimately I think stopped
33:32
Speaker 1: the following like winter. So yeah, I mean it was
33:35
Speaker 1: not a very long prolonged thing, but it was just
33:38
Speaker 1: like this weird orgy of of mind loss and death.
33:43
Speaker 1: You know. Oh man, it sounds like some kind of
33:47
Speaker 1: album after Uh. The other weird thing about this was that, uh,
33:56
Speaker 1: the social order was completely knocked out of whack. Um
33:59
Speaker 1: the Puritans, if there's one thing they didn't like, it
34:02
Speaker 1: was hearing from children about anything. Kids were just they
34:07
Speaker 1: were meant to work and to shut up basically and
34:10
Speaker 1: do what they were told and kind of like full stop.
34:13
Speaker 1: And you had a situation here where children, young girls
34:17
Speaker 1: were accusing these middle aged men and women of of
34:22
Speaker 1: witchery and and it works like people listened to them
34:26
Speaker 1: and people were hanged because these kids were speaking up
34:29
Speaker 1: at a time when kids were barely allowed to even
34:32
Speaker 1: you know, have any agency or speak yeah, which is
34:34
Speaker 1: another thing that perplexes his storians because they're like, something happened,
34:39
Speaker 1: like there was something that was that this which panic fulfilled.
34:44
Speaker 1: Maybe it was to let off steam from being constantly
34:47
Speaker 1: afraid of being murdered by a Native American attack. Maybe
34:52
Speaker 1: it was um living too close proximity, too far away
34:55
Speaker 1: from where you called home, like who knows, but there
34:58
Speaker 1: was something about it was worth turning the social order
35:02
Speaker 1: on its head. And that was That was just one example.
35:04
Speaker 1: There are other examples of how the social order just
35:07
Speaker 1: totally broke down. And that wasn't how who some of
35:10
Speaker 1: the people who were accused and executed were, because it
35:14
Speaker 1: wasn't just the marginal women who were your prototypical witches
35:20
Speaker 1: a living you know, on the outskirts of society who
35:22
Speaker 1: were accused. That was just at first, it started to
35:25
Speaker 1: become extended to really surprising people like Rebecca Nurse was
35:30
Speaker 1: maybe one of the most upstanding Puritan women that town,
35:36
Speaker 1: the colony had to offer, and she was accused, tried,
35:41
Speaker 1: and executed as a witch. And that I think really
35:44
Speaker 1: kind of opened a lot of people's eyes in two ways.
35:46
Speaker 1: One I was like, what is going on here? This
35:49
Speaker 1: could not be the case. And then to other people
35:51
Speaker 1: is like, if Rebecca Nurse could be a witch, than
35:54
Speaker 1: anybody could be a witch. And I think that was
35:57
Speaker 1: kind of the thread that the witch trial followed. But
36:00
Speaker 1: it also is a like a really good explainer about
36:03
Speaker 1: how just completely the society broke down for these handful
36:08
Speaker 1: of months that anybody was was at risk of being
36:12
Speaker 1: murdered by their fellow townspeople for being a witch, no
36:16
Speaker 1: matter what kind of background you had. I'm picturing a
36:20
Speaker 1: I'm picturing a Puritan, like the only Puritan that actually
36:23
Speaker 1: went on vacation that summer. And they come back, you know,
36:26
Speaker 1: they leave in early June, they come back in in
36:28
Speaker 1: late September, and they're like, so, what's been going on everybody? Right,
36:32
Speaker 1: And then they get the sight of what's going on,
36:35
Speaker 1: they dropped their mickey mouse ears to the ground. Oh boy.
36:41
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take another break and we'll come
36:43
Speaker 1: back and talk about sort of the finality of this,
36:46
Speaker 1: how it ended, and a little bit more about Giles
36:50
Speaker 1: Corey's crazy, crazy story. Right after this stuff you should
37:08
Speaker 1: stuff you shouldn't, you should know, all right, So in
37:24
Speaker 1: the end, um I don't think that the final final number.
37:28
Speaker 1: I've seen twenty two. I've seen UM nineteen people were hanged.
37:34
Speaker 1: Giles Corey, who were going to talk about in a minute,
37:36
Speaker 1: was pressed to death via you know, torture. UM. Five
37:41
Speaker 1: people died in prison. I think the numbers sort of
37:43
Speaker 1: depend on what you count is like like a fallout
37:47
Speaker 1: death and not a direct death like the one lady
37:50
Speaker 1: who couldn't repay like she was eis or. I think
37:54
Speaker 1: she just couldn't pay her debt to get out of jail,
37:56
Speaker 1: so she died in jail. That's such a sad story. Yeah,
37:58
Speaker 1: Lydia Dustin. She is she outlived the um the witch
38:03
Speaker 1: trials like they had ended a few months before, uh,
38:06
Speaker 1: and she had actually been personally exonerated, and yet she
38:10
Speaker 1: couldn't pay her um shackle fees, so they just kept
38:15
Speaker 1: her in jail and she ended up dying there in
38:16
Speaker 1: March of six even though she yeah, for sure, yeah,
38:21
Speaker 1: because she otherwise would not have been killed or died
38:25
Speaker 1: had it not been being placed in jail after being
38:27
Speaker 1: accused of a witch for sure. But they did this
38:30
Speaker 1: in mass hangings. It wasn't just like one at a time.
38:32
Speaker 1: There was a hanging on July nineteen August nineteenth. In September,
38:38
Speaker 1: after they died, they were stripped and put in a
38:41
Speaker 1: big mass grave. Um. Supposedly, there are stories that families
38:46
Speaker 1: would come and get them out of the mass grave
38:47
Speaker 1: at night, buried them in unknown probably on parts of
38:51
Speaker 1: their land. And they tried for many years to find
38:54
Speaker 1: out exactly where these hangings took place, and they ended
38:57
Speaker 1: up at a place called Roctor's Ledge, And I don't
39:03
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a memorial there and people go there
39:07
Speaker 1: and basically they treat that as though that is definitely
39:10
Speaker 1: the place, But I don't think they have like hard
39:13
Speaker 1: heart evidence other than just trying to like take eyewitness
39:16
Speaker 1: accounts in place where they were right. Yeah, supposedly there
39:19
Speaker 1: was a study in two thousand and sixteen that where
39:22
Speaker 1: they took those eyewitness accounts, took into account what the
39:26
Speaker 1: people said they could or couldn't see in like the
39:28
Speaker 1: background or whatever, and then plotted them and then figured
39:32
Speaker 1: out that the most of these points were standing in
39:35
Speaker 1: around the same place around um that ledge where they
39:39
Speaker 1: think that yes, this happened, yeah, but they never found
39:42
Speaker 1: like and then underneath the ground they dug and they
39:44
Speaker 1: found the gallows bowl. Right. No, they never found any
39:47
Speaker 1: physical evidence. So whatever. So the story of Giles Corey,
39:53
Speaker 1: if you know The Crucible you know it. Well, if
39:55
Speaker 1: you've seen the movie, you know it. Um. He is
39:59
Speaker 1: the man that was pressed to death. Uh, he was crushed. Basically,
40:04
Speaker 1: pressing is when they would lay you down, they would
40:06
Speaker 1: put boards on top of you and then just start
40:08
Speaker 1: adding weight over the course of time, more and more weight,
40:12
Speaker 1: until you eventually die. UM. I had heard this story
40:15
Speaker 1: before because supposedly Giles Corey said more weight because he
40:20
Speaker 1: refused to He was standing mute, and he refused to
40:24
Speaker 1: to say whether he was guilty or innocent. The one
40:27
Speaker 1: thing I didn't know is that Giles Corey was eighty
40:29
Speaker 1: one years old. Yeah, he was an old guy. He
40:31
Speaker 1: was like the old guy from that um Metallica video.
40:36
Speaker 1: That's what I always imagined Giles Corey do. It looked like. Man,
40:39
Speaker 1: what a story. Though. One thing standing mute would do
40:42
Speaker 1: would um allow your estate to be passed onto your
40:45
Speaker 1: heirs rather than being convicted where that wouldn't happen. But
40:50
Speaker 1: I saw that this wasn't the reasoning behind him standing mute,
40:53
Speaker 1: because most of his stuff had already been taken and
40:57
Speaker 1: that he even wrote down that he was standing mute
40:59
Speaker 1: to protests the sham proceedings. Yeah. So yeah, and it
41:04
Speaker 1: sounds like just the way he's been um kind of
41:07
Speaker 1: lionized by history, that that was his motivation for sure.
41:10
Speaker 1: But you said something about how most of his stuff
41:13
Speaker 1: have been taken. There's another villain in all this. Beyond
41:16
Speaker 1: Stoughton and the Mathers, Um, there was a guy named
41:20
Speaker 1: George Corwin, and he was the sheriff of Essex County,
41:24
Speaker 1: which is where um, this which panics took place. Um.
41:28
Speaker 1: And he was basically taking advantage of the fact that
41:32
Speaker 1: a lot of people were suddenly way more vulnerable than
41:36
Speaker 1: they had been the year before, a few months before.
41:39
Speaker 1: And so when he would arrest them and take them,
41:41
Speaker 1: he would also take possession of their property officially, their stuff,
41:45
Speaker 1: their land, all that, and he and his deputies would
41:47
Speaker 1: divvy it up. So he had every incentive to arrest
41:50
Speaker 1: as many people as possible and throw him in jail.
41:53
Speaker 1: And he did that, and he took a lot of
41:54
Speaker 1: people's land. Uh. And I guess he took Giles Corey's
41:58
Speaker 1: land as well. And Giles Corey curse the town and
42:00
Speaker 1: the sheriff as he died, and supposedly, UM George core
42:04
Speaker 1: Actually shouldn't say supposedly. George Corwin definitely did die less
42:07
Speaker 1: than three years later at age thirty of a heart attack.
42:11
Speaker 1: And there's a local legend that UM every Essex Essex
42:14
Speaker 1: County sheriff from Corwin onward. Um either died or resigned
42:21
Speaker 1: while in office because of a heart condition. I didn't
42:24
Speaker 1: have time to go look through the records of Essex
42:26
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's but I thought that was a pretty interesting
42:28
Speaker 1: local legend. But this dude was in his twenties when
42:31
Speaker 1: he was doing this. Yeah, he was in his in
42:33
Speaker 1: his middle late twenties, and he was one of the
42:35
Speaker 1: worst of the worst. And so there's one more story
42:38
Speaker 1: about when he died. That guy Philip English that I
42:41
Speaker 1: mentioned before, UM, who was accused because of the guy
42:45
Speaker 1: getting the nosebleeding. He was a very very wealthy merchant
42:49
Speaker 1: in Salem Town and Corwin took his stuff, like his land,
42:54
Speaker 1: a lot of his ships. Um just took a lot
42:57
Speaker 1: of his stuff while Um English was on the run
43:00
Speaker 1: evading capture. And when English came back after the Salem
43:04
Speaker 1: which trials were over, and found what Corwin had done.
43:08
Speaker 1: He Um, he tried to get his money back from Corny,
43:11
Speaker 1: tried to get his money, his land and ships, all
43:13
Speaker 1: that stuff, and Corwin wouldn't give it to him. Well,
43:15
Speaker 1: Corwin dies of a heart attack, and um, Philip English
43:18
Speaker 1: placed a lean basically on this guy's body and said,
43:21
Speaker 1: you're not burying him until I get paid back. The
43:24
Speaker 1: family was like, we're not listening to you. We're gonna
43:27
Speaker 1: go bury him. So Philip English hired a bunch of
43:29
Speaker 1: guys and they went out and stopped the funeral procession,
43:32
Speaker 1: took possession of the body and held a hostage until
43:35
Speaker 1: Corwin's family paid Philip English back for what Corwin had
43:40
Speaker 1: taken from, had confiscated from, and then Philip English gave
43:43
Speaker 1: them the body to bury. Wow nuts, not a nice guy,
43:49
Speaker 1: who Philip English? No, No, okay, yeah, I totally I
43:53
Speaker 1: was gonna say I totally sighed with Philip English on
43:55
Speaker 1: that one. Um. All right, So Corey dies and the
43:58
Speaker 1: sort of the the long and short of his death
44:02
Speaker 1: was that it was sort of a final straw. And
44:05
Speaker 1: this is when Phipps comes back in and says, you
44:08
Speaker 1: know what, things are getting really out of hand. Uh, increase.
44:11
Speaker 1: Mather says, Yeah, this spectral evidence thing is gotten way
44:16
Speaker 1: out of hand and it's probably not real. And people
44:19
Speaker 1: started to um sort of stand up more and more,
44:23
Speaker 1: and it was clear that Governor Phips had to kind
44:25
Speaker 1: of halt things. Um. He said he did it under
44:28
Speaker 1: the context of, you know, this is a contravention of
44:32
Speaker 1: English law. We can't do this. I'm dissolving the court
44:35
Speaker 1: of Oyer and Terminer and I'm going to create a
44:39
Speaker 1: new court where we can't use spectral evidence. And what
44:42
Speaker 1: do you know. In January and February there were dozens
44:46
Speaker 1: of people released. Um. Note grand juries weren't indicting people. Uh,
44:51
Speaker 1: they were found not guilty. Uh. He pardoned some and
44:55
Speaker 1: by the end of May that next year, the jails
44:58
Speaker 1: had no more um quote unquote, which is right, because
45:02
Speaker 1: they found when you take away the spectral evidence, what
45:04
Speaker 1: you have, for the most part is personal grudges, land disputes,
45:08
Speaker 1: land grabs. People just trying to to um take advantage
45:13
Speaker 1: of this situation to get back at somebody they don't
45:15
Speaker 1: like and haven't liked for a really long time. And
45:18
Speaker 1: that was a weird, weird, scary time. It was very scary,
45:22
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine like living during that time. Actually
45:24
Speaker 1: it's not true. I can't imagine it, um, But it
45:27
Speaker 1: was just basically another example of like a time when
45:31
Speaker 1: a group of people became fascist together and people died
45:35
Speaker 1: as a result. Yeah, and that you know, the term
45:38
Speaker 1: witch hunt is still used, um that the Crucible was
45:41
Speaker 1: written because of McCarthy ism. It's been thrown around a
45:46
Speaker 1: lot in recent years, maybe not as accurately, but it's
45:49
Speaker 1: still a term for that reason. Um. I've got one
45:53
Speaker 1: little nice button to put on the end of this, chuck.
45:56
Speaker 1: There was at least one guy who was a judge
45:58
Speaker 1: in the Court of vy or in term, named Samuel Sewell,
46:02
Speaker 1: and within a year or two after the witch trials,
46:05
Speaker 1: he was standing in front of the Boston Congregation of
46:08
Speaker 1: Puritans having a petition read um by the local reverend there,
46:15
Speaker 1: asking for their forgiveness and admitting that this was a huge,
46:19
Speaker 1: huge mistake and he regretted participating in it, and would
46:22
Speaker 1: they forgive him? Um, And I believe they did. So
46:26
Speaker 1: the whole thing ended. Well, you got anything else else, man,
46:32
Speaker 1: If you want to go down a rabbit hole start
46:34
Speaker 1: researching the Salem witchcraft trials, you could do a lot
46:37
Speaker 1: worse than going to the Historic Present, the New England
46:40
Speaker 1: Historical Society and the History of Massachusetts dot org or
46:45
Speaker 1: just hit at Grabanowski up, he'll tell you all about it.
46:48
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you could do that too. Walk around, they're
46:51
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to take your money in all kinds
46:53
Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, Essex County, mass is one of the
46:56
Speaker 1: most beautiful places on earth. If you asked me, sure, Um, okay, Well,
47:01
Speaker 1: since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
47:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this cool kid. I like to read
47:09
Speaker 1: the emails from the cool kids. Hey, guys, my dad
47:11
Speaker 1: introduced me to your show when I was barely a teenager,
47:14
Speaker 1: and I've been listening ever since. In that time, my
47:16
Speaker 1: family has gone through a lot of changes, and my
47:19
Speaker 1: dad and I haven't always been on the best terms.
47:21
Speaker 1: I wanted to reach out and let you know that
47:23
Speaker 1: stuff you should know is the only thing that we
47:25
Speaker 1: have consistently been able to talk about when we reconnect
47:28
Speaker 1: after being a part. We can go months without seeing
47:30
Speaker 1: each other and I can just ask if you listen
47:32
Speaker 1: to your latest episode to have something to talk about.
47:34
Speaker 1: It helped keeps things lighthearted and it's something we feel
47:38
Speaker 1: like it's just for the two of us. I hope
47:40
Speaker 1: we can see you live in Austin soon. Furthermore, this
47:44
Speaker 1: is mostly for Chuck. You were so much like my dad,
47:47
Speaker 1: it's actually freaky. Sometimes we always make jokes that you
47:50
Speaker 1: two would be best friends if you met in real life.
47:52
Speaker 1: Your voices even sound a little bit the same. I'll
47:55
Speaker 1: be honest. Sometimes it's comforting to listen to y'all when
47:58
Speaker 1: I miss my dad. Uh, I've been meaning to send
48:00
Speaker 1: this email for a while. Just tell you guys how
48:02
Speaker 1: much you mean to me and my family. Thanks for
48:04
Speaker 1: being there for us. Also, I don't know if my
48:06
Speaker 1: dad listens to the end of the episodes or just
48:08
Speaker 1: the factual content. We'll find out, but if he's listening
48:12
Speaker 1: this far in, tell him I said, hi, warm regards
48:14
Speaker 1: c J. Curbo and Uh says, we come to Austin,
48:19
Speaker 1: they treat us to dinner at their favorite fried catfish
48:22
Speaker 1: seafood restaurant. Nice, very nice. Um, that was very nice,
48:26
Speaker 1: c J. What a great email, and thank you very
48:28
Speaker 1: much for the invite. We probably will be in Austin
48:30
Speaker 1: again sometime. It was and c J, you should know
48:33
Speaker 1: that we cut it out, but I accidentally said fried
48:35
Speaker 1: cat food. It was hilarious and Josh got a good
48:38
Speaker 1: laugh out of it. Yeah, so thanks for that. Yeah,
48:41
Speaker 1: you're welcome. If you want to be like c J
48:44
Speaker 1: and write a very nice email we want to hear it,
48:46
Speaker 1: you can send it to us that Stuff podcast at
48:48
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
48:54
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
48:58
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
49:01
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm