Kara 0:00

Hey everybody, this is Kara. And this is it. And this is your day's dumpster fire.

Ed 0:31

Yo. Yo. It's been a while. Well, not really. I saw you just the other day, but it's been a while since we've been behind the microphone.

Kara 0:40

Yeah, it feels like it, but I I'm gonna say that it hasn't been that long. We just had some technical difficulties that blew up in our face. So it's uh really it's only been like two weeks.

Ed 0:52

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, for for me it was the technical difficulties. Um we had actually recorded uh this episode two weeks ago, but I don't know what happened or how it happened or what, but I um when I hit record, my computer decided to use the microphone on it instead of my dedicated good microphone that I used to record with. So uh I I went back to you know to bring it up in the editing software and all that stuff, and then I I hear my voice and I sounded like I was on a zoom call. Nice, it was horrible, and my chair is unbelievably squeaky, and for some odd reason, that microphone on my laptop decided it was just going to focus on the squeaking chair, and it just it overpowered everything. And you could hear the cars outside, you could hear the planes flying over. I sounded like I was on the other side of my house yelling at the computer. Oh yeah, that what I I listened to that for like 30 seconds. I'm like, no, this is a this isn't gonna work. And I and I felt bad because I totally pressured you into recording that before you left on your trip.

Kara 2:06

Yeah.

Ed 2:07

And then you because of that, I think like making you stay up to almost midnight, forcing you to record before you left, is what got you deathly ill the following day to the point where you couldn't even go on your trip.

Kara 2:20

I mean, I kind of disagree, but I'll take it. So But that that did happen. I did get sick right after that. I was dying.

Ed 2:30

What what was the initial issue? Wasn't it like your flight got pushed out or something like that?

Kara 2:35

Yeah, flight got pushed out like hardcore.

Ed 2:38

That's right.

unknown 2:39

Yeah.

Ed 2:40

And and you're deathly ill, so then you're like And I was deathly ill.

Kara 2:44

So my husband and I are like, you know what? Let's just exchange what we got. I'll lay in my deathbed.

Ed 2:52

So yeah, that will that that'll be our trash can fire.

Kara 2:56

Yes, there it is.

Ed 2:57

The uh I have that episode archived. I may may maybe at the end, instead of having like the close up music, um, maybe I'll put in a uh sampling of that initial recording so everybody can participate in the cringe that is the original episode. And uh and episode 20, this is episode 20, was supposed to be like a hallmark episode, because we're at 20 episodes. I from what I understand, like 80 to 90 percent of uh all podcasts don't even make it that far.

Kara 3:32

Well, that's alright. We're still here. Yeah, we're episode 20.5.

Ed 3:38

Yeah, yeah, technically it's episode 21, but yeah, we uh when we recorded this, this was before Halloween, and we decided on doing an episode on the Salem witch trials. Because, you know, it's spooky season, and there's been all sorts of different interpretations of the Salem witch trials, but it seems like it seems like when we talk about Salem, it fits in really well around Halloween.

Kara 4:08

Yeah.

Ed 4:09

And and maybe it's because the witch trials took place at around November and lasted for what, like a little over a year or something like that. So I don't know, it just seemed like it would be a good fit. So now this thing is probably be coming out right after Thanksgiving.

Kara 4:29

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ed 4:32

You're welcome. I really wanted to do an episode, and I think I mentioned it this time last year. I really wanted to do an episode about the early Europeans coming over and how they thought like this is gonna be the promised land and how it was gonna be great, and yeah, America and all that stuff, and the instant they got off that boat, that it was hell on earth. There is famine, disease, yeah, there was just wild droughts, there were hostilities on both sides between the Europeans and the Native Americans, like it just it it went sideways fast. But then when I was really digging into it, it was so dreadfully boring. That yeah, it yeah, I I mean reading like went through up like and on this day and this time of the year of our dread sovereign lord, we saw a deer, and we shot the deer, and then ate the deer, and then you turn the page. On this day of our dread sovereign lord, uh John shot a rabbit and we brought the rabbit back and we ate the rabbit. Sick, thrilling, like gripping, gripping material.

Kara 5:47

Oh yeah.

Ed 5:48

That I mean, maybe maybe has to be said with a very, very strong British accent, like that podcast you're showing me the other day.

Kara 5:58

Oh yeah. That guy's awesome.

Ed 6:01

Like just a super thick Liverpool collegiate accent, just so so yeah, this is going to be your spooky Thanksgiving treat. Um hopefully I'm uh I'm recording it properly this time. And um, so yeah, let's let's dive into it.

Kara 6:22

Excellent. All right, here we go. The Salem Witch Trials, just in a nutshell, here's what happened. February 1692 it started, and then it finally ended in May of 1693. More than 200 people were accused, 30 were found guilty, 19 were hung, 14 were women, and five were men. One guy, his name was Giles Corey, he was awesome, he died after being tortured. At least five people also died while they were in jail. Some of them were accused and their families were parted in 1711, but it wasn't until 2022 when the final convicted person was exonerated. Her name was Elizabeth Johnson Jr. In Europe, witch trials were extremely popular from the 14th century to the end of the 17th century. This puts these rich trials at the end of the craze of the Europe by European standards. So what caused this to happen in Salem and why? The superstitious belief that the devil or demons would give particular people powers in exchange for loyalty was widespread throughout the colonies by the time of the 1600s. Considering these beliefs were rampant throughout England, it's not that surprising that these beliefs came from the settlers in the Americas. You know, it's basic common historical knowledge that when you have people who are migrating from one place to another, they always bring in their beliefs and their traditions and all of that fun stuff. So it's just part of the English culture that came over to the Americas as well, so it's not that surprising. Along with all of the other superstitions that they had going on, uh, other factors that affected how people in the community would spawn to rich craft caused this as well. So, um, at least the idea. The big one was King William's war. That was a war that lasted from 1688 to 1697. Uh, it was a war that was between Britain and France. They were basically fighting for land up in the northeast. It occurred in the colonies north of Massachusetts. So, what happened was all the displaced colonists fled down to Salem and the surrounding areas. So the rise in population at that very fast rate restricted land and resources. So people were essentially fighting for resources, they were fighting for land, everybody was really stressed. They thought the war was going to come down to them in Massachusetts. Um, so super high anxiety mixed with a lot of superstitious beliefs, and people started to believe that the war and the lack of resources and all of these things, it was due to the devil's work. So that's that's basically Salem witch trials in a nutshell, what kind of costumes and all of that fun stuff. Uh, Ed over here, he's going to um set up the stage for you, and we'll go into more detail with all of that fun stuff.

Ed 9:02

I mean, I think you said everything. I mean, I say we just wrap up the show right now.

Kara 9:06

Okay, cool.

Ed 9:07

See you in two weeks, guys.

unknown 9:09

Dude.

Ed 9:10

Yeah, uh, I I want to go back. I mentioned in the beginning of the episode or of this segment, I mentioned that like Saint Lynch Trails, I thought they started around November. No, no, they actually started in February, and I thought they lasted for about a year. And no, I don't think they did.

Kara 9:32

They lasted a year and four months. Okay. And it started in February, which means it did go through a winter season.

Ed 9:40

Okay, fair enough. So there was I yeah, I guess if you really think about it too, like, yes, it started in 1692 in February, but I think it really ramped up by November of that year. Like that is when it was in full swing.

Kara 9:57

Yeah, that makes sense.

Ed 9:58

No pun intended for the people that were were hanged, um, but they were probably swinging, but but literally, yeah. Yeah, it's fine. So, what I want to do is I want to kind of go into real briefly, um, as I've got like five pages of notes on it, I want to go in to who who were these Puritans, what what was it that that helped set things up for what would be a colossal dumpster fire? So something to think about in American history at this time as think of America as a fangirl to Britain. All the way even through the 1800s, it's like whatever Britain did, America would try to replicate it or copy it or or build upon it, especially in in literature. But it's funny because America today prides itself in in not taking crap from anyone and all that blah blah blah stuff. But yeah, in the 1600s, going all the way up to like the 1800s, it was a vastly different thing. They were really, really attached to Britain, and going all the way up, and actually, I would say all the way up to the like 1812, America's was kind of dependent on Britain for everything. And it ties all the way back to the pilgrims, right? You got a group of people that really didn't like how they didn't like how the churches were working in Europe at that time, and well, they protested, Protestants, right? And so they were I guess they they they didn't have an issue with their king, they had an issue with how religion was working and how it needed to be purified, it needed to be uh reformed, it needed to be set up so that you're it you're closer to God. And boy did they put God in it, and everything, everything was attached to your relationship with God. Like they believed, they literally believed to the point that when you went to bed at night and you fell asleep, you would die, and then it was by the grace of God that you would be allowed to wake up the next day.

Kara 12:18

And when you have God, you also have the devil.

Ed 12:24

Yeah, so they they really adhered to the notion too that the devil is a physical being that can come to you directly and really, really mess you up, which is strange because I mean maybe their their interpretation of the Bible is different, but I always thought that that the devil never really had a body, he was never given a chance to have a body because, well, he did doubly things. So the Puritans were eventually kind of asked to leave. And when they were asked to leave, it was more like at gunpoint, and it's not like this was something that they could just pack up and like you know, get your affairs in order and and head out the door in a couple of weeks. No, these these people they they have maybe an hour or two to pack up. Some of them did actually have some time, like they were able to work out shipping and and all that stuff, but a lot of these pilgrims, they because they disagreed with the church in England, and they disagreed with the Catholic Church, and they disagreed with uh don't even get them going on on Judaism, uh, they disagreed with everybody, and when England says that their king is chosen by God, and you disagree with that, you're also kind of inadvertently saying that you disagree with the is uh the existence of your king. That that doesn't sit well in a post-Elizabethan time period.

Kara 14:02

Doesn't really fly, yeah.

Ed 14:04

And so, yeah, they they were to pack up, and what they did was they they had their Bible, and they the way the Puritans thought is okay, the Bible is our field survival guide, if because whatever worked for the the Jews in in the old testament, like hey, whatever worked for people that survived in biblical times will work for us, and if God loves us or likes us, actually, I don't want to say that, they they believe that God hated all of humanity. They uh He they thought that because Eve took a bite out of that fruit from the tree of truth and knowledge, and that whole original sin, they they believed that God hates you, he's an angry God, he despises you as a human being, and at any moment he will just snuff you out, and the only way that you could get into any sort of tolerance, like a tolerating relationship with God, is that you had to work. And by pure hard manual labor, that was the only way that you could kind of prove yourself that you weren't a uh that that you weren't a piece of trash. And in all fairness, that actually worked out well because when they came to to the Americas or when they landed in Plymouth, which is funny because they left Plymouth and then they landed at Plymouth. I I guess there was a rock there that already said it was Plymouth from somebody. I don't I don't know. It's just weird.

Kara 15:41

We're just they're original, it's fine.

Ed 15:43

Yeah, we're leaving Plymouth Rock and here we are.

Kara 15:46

It was it was a great name.

Ed 15:47

Yeah, yep. So the uh that that work ethic is what kind of helped save these early colonists because they would work 18 hours a day, and that's kind of what you would need to establish a colony because what they didn't realize, and this is a the dumpster fire in its own right, they thought coming to America uh it would be the promised land, it would be the chosen land, this would be the land that God set apart for us, and it's going to be perfect, and it's going to be beautiful, and it's it's it it's going to be the best place in the world for us. The minute they got off their ship, it a I mean it seemed like America was trying to kill every one of them. There was famine, there was disease, there was droughts, there were crazy winters, there was hostile Native Americans, there was yeah, like there was actually Roanoke, which was completely lost. Nobody to this day knows what happened to it. Like a whole colony of people just vanished in a couple of years. And it was that work ethic that really helped to kind of tame the land some. Once they actually got established by you know, what is it, by the late 1600s, so they they kind of battled the land for about 50-60 years, so about two generations. Then once they finally kind of tame the land, then they they had some time to think. And ultimately what they started to think about is okay, who will become regional and local leaders? What why does it have to be a king? Um, 7,000 miles away. Uh, who will contribute to making the laws? Uh who what what will be considered admissible evidence? Who can determine which person is guilty? Right? They were looking at all these laws that the king of England had set up, and they're like, do we really have to do it this way? And in a weird sense, as kind of corrupt and as messed up as these witch trials were, they did kind of lay the foundation for democracy that would eventually come about in the late 1700s. So it's not like, yeah, it it it was a very dogmatic and narrow-minded ways of doing things, but it's funny how it it really established the Constitution when that came about like a hundred years later. So the uh the puritanical code, so to speak. So when it came to faith and day-to-day conduct, the Puritans had a very, very strict way of living. Aside from their land-grabbing, super sketchy way of life, they adhered to some politically taboo morals by today's standards. So they would monitor each other, they would really just spy on each other and report you if you are doing something that was not considered puritanically correct. They would spy on people that were making a baby, and if the position wasn't correct, they would report you not to the police, but to like the priest, the uh yeah, the priest of the in the area. Like they would go straight to that. And everything was tied to what God would expect a human being to do based off of the Bible. You had to be honest in everything. This was a big thing for the early Puritans, and it kind of fell apart during the witch trials. But yeah, if if you lied at all, then you run the risk of God smiting you down. And this is kind of what tied into the witch trials flying off the rails, because you know, you had these girls that were screaming that they were seeing uh spectral evidence. They're they were seeing specters of other people in town that were haunting them and tormenting them, and they were making packs with the devil. Uh obviously the girls were clearly lying, but to the to the religious leaders and even like the deputy governor of Massachusetts, they're like, Well, they're children, they they can't lie. So what they're saying has to be true. And it's just like what? How is that how is that even a thing? So if you lied at any point, then the punishment would be most extreme up to death, or even worse, like torturing, uh, body manipulation, uh you name it, it if they thought you were lying, and somehow they they knew who was lying and who wasn't, like the girls were telling the truth, but then the guys that were of these homesteads that were manipulating the laws and using uh fake BS evidence to have a court case so that person gets killed and then they can buy their land. It's it we'll get into it in a little bit, but it's funny how the adult men don't lie. Uh yeah, they they can lie and get away with it, but the girls can lie and for the time being get away with it. It's the key is to move the goalposts. Uh yeah, yeah, that's actually that's actually a good way of looking at it. You combine these very, very, very strict ways of living on top of the only thing that they had access to a survival guide. Like for me, if I had to pack up and just leave town, I'm taking like a Boy Scout training book with me, right? Because it teaches you how to survive out in the wilderness and start fires and make knots and all that stuff. Uh, you to me that would make more sense, but they probably didn't have that in England at the time, and it would make sense. Take the Bible, and then you combine. That with their interpretation of God being very vengeful. I'm sorry, they didn't adhere to the New Testament all that much. Because in the New Testament, that's where you know Christ is born. He's like, okay, everybody needs to chill the F out. Like we we we need everybody just calm down. Right? And then the Puritans really didn't focus on that, where Jesus was talking about a loving God. They just focused on the fire and brimstone stuff, you know, destroying an entire city in a day and turning women into a pillar of salt. And yeah, you combine that, and then you combine how their society was structured where their laws and their beliefs were heavily intertwined. Like the laws of the land were derived from the religious leaders, which is something that is real big in constitutional understanding to this day, right? You want that separation of church and state because look what happened here in Salem in 1692. And so when you have that, and then you have people that are now say like Salem, because there's two Salems, there was two, yeah, it was it's really weird. When when you get into the 1690s, yes, they're on the frontier. And I'm sorry, I find it so funny every time when you look back at American history, like Massachusetts was the frontier. That was the wild west. And here we are in Arizona, like, really, guys, you call that you call that the West, but but they they're the colonies were now self-sustaining and they were growing. And yes, they were still battling uh land issues with the Native Americans because instead of like working with the Native Americans on how to you know work out a treaty or how to buy land or whatever, they just killed the Native Americans. And you know, when you when you go into a Native American tribe or anybody's village and you kill a bunch of them, you you don't make friends that way.

Kara 24:19

Yeah, they're not gonna like you very much.

Ed 24:20

No, no, they're they're gonna be very resentful. And so, yeah, like you you mentioned, what was it, the King William War? Like that that brought down a ton of people into Salem, which was kind of reclusive and very old conservative, but hey, they were established, they were technically growing on their own accord, and now it's almost like they were kind of primed for something major to happen. It's almost as though like the town was bored and they needed something to go wrong for like entertainment in a way, and the ones who really paid the price on it were the women. And so, Kara, why don't you go into uh how how women were considered in in puritanical society because that's probably the biggest factor in how the Salem witch trials just went off the rails.

Kara 25:20

Yeah, um, one note before I jump into that. I did want to bring up uh something about how Puritans were viewed in Europe. So we all know or we all know the story of how Puritans went to America for religious freedom and blah blah blah blah blah. And really in Europe they weren't ostracized, they weren't abused, they weren't treated badly, they were considered very extreme, but they were primarily left alone. Uh at this time in Europe, the religion who really suffered a lot was Catholicism, especially during this time. So when we're talking about the Puritans and how they left for America and they were treated so horribly and all these things, it was more like they wanted religious freedom, yes, that's technically true. However, they weren't abused or ostracized or tortured or anything like that. Like they they yeah, they they had to rush out of there, but at the same time, they weren't treated badly. They just wanted to go somewhere.

Ed 26:28

Yeah, and I I I think you're right on that. I probably overplayed it a little bit, um, which is fine because this show is all about screwing up. You're right, because I think like the original pilgrims, they they weren't they weren't being tortured, they weren't being overly harassed, but they were also they were kind of outsiders to the rest of English society. They were looked at as kind of like a bunch of weirdos that you don't necessarily want in your neighborhood. And so some of them, I think there was some of them that were really heavily ostracized, like a like a super aggressive HOA. Uh, but I think like the original pilgrims, the one that Winthrop came from, like they went to like the Netherlands or something like that, and they kind of set up shop there, and then they were heavily encouraged to to get out of there. Uh, I can't remember the the exact history behind it, but it it got to the point where it's hey, look, you can stay here and as a society, we will make sure you fail, or you can hop on a boat and head over to the Americas and try your hand there, because we need to colonize the place anyways. So head on over there, and we're not gonna force you necessarily, but you've got an hour to pack up and get on that boat. They were they weren't treated too horribly, but they were definitely seen as people that you really don't want there, I guess. Does that make sense?

Kara 28:02

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It was more, I don't know, like to me, it was more along the lines of yes, they were kind of weirdos and and all of that, but I don't know. I feel I feel like there were other groups of people who got it a lot worse than they did.

Ed 28:16

Um yes, like people that were legitimately being tortured in dipped in boiling oil, and yeah, there and I would say that was more like in in the middle of Europe and not as much as in in England. Like, I mean, look at the Spanish Inquisition, but like holy cow, that that's an episode in its own right. I mean, the Spanish Inquisition made the Salem witch trials look like like a party. It yeah.

Kara 28:48

Yeah, those are those are rough.

Ed 28:50

Yeah, that that was that was some intense stuff there. So, yeah, I think I I think what it really boils down to is that the Puritans were viewed as as weirdos, and I think the discussions that they had with you know the political leadership was that, hey, look, you guys kind of don't belong here. You're you're you're just a too extreme. And why don't you guys do this? Why don't you guys go help colonize America? And so I think the selling point to them was that okay, we can go over to America and we can live in peace and not be viewed as weirdos. Let's do it. And then the guy was maybe negotiating that with him, but it's like, oh, your ship leaves in an hour, so grab what you can and and and go.

Kara 29:44

Yeah, yeah, that sounds that sounds right.

Ed 29:47

So yeah, and I do have to imagine that there was probably some points where Puritans were harassed or threatened, but I feel like now that I look back at it, that that was probably the exception rather than the norm. Yeah. So yeah, and e either way, uh they didn't have a lot of time to prepare. And they probably maybe they did have other books, but I do know that uh during the Salem Woods trials, if you had any books in your house outside of the Bible, that was heavily questioned. Like why why would you need a book on on how to survive in the wilderness when you have the Bible? Why why do you have a book on political theory? Which I don't know if they had them back then, but you know why why would you have this when all you need is the Bible? That's very uncharacteristic of how you're supposed to behave. The first yawn. So so yeah, you know, you bring up a good point, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, it it was the women that took the brunt of the internal strife that they had.

Kara 31:08

Oh, yeah. So women were considered inferior to men in Puritan society. Uh, they believed that the souls of the people were one of two halves, the immortal men and the mortal woman. Puritan ministers preached this outlook religiously. That pun was very much intended. Uh ministers also preached that due to the sin of Eve, women were naturally vulnerable to temptation. They believed women to possess qualities that would make them dive into a life of sin, which was very scary and ooh, and don't do this. Uh women could not attend town meetings or vote in the church decisions. They were expected to marry, work at home, and mind the children. Even children were considered property to parents, and an interesting point to note, women were not to teach or preach the Bible. They often didn't even read it themselves. Many could not, as they were not educated academically, but only domestically. Most of the Bible verses they were taught came directly from the men in the community. Um, it can be argued that this was a cause for concern for the men, and that the women could be coerced by the devil due to their lack of knowledge of the Bible, even though men were the ones who were giving the women all of this information. So, like, it might make sense to teach them how to read the Bible themselves so they're more better equipped to fight the devil? Maybe if they want. I mean, it's an option.

Ed 32:32

Well, I mean, I I guess my question is was this a matter of just men being insecure and having to have control over women, or was it that they were legitimately concerned, like, hey, you know, it was a woman that put us in this predicament by pissing off God so much? Like, we we need to keep that in check because women could get us in even more trouble. So I I guess, in your opinion, was it a matter of the men trying to be dominant and controlling a woman? Or do you think there was a legitimate concern that it was Eve that messed up and they can mess up again and get us into more trouble?

Kara 33:24

I'm gonna say it was probably a little bit of both. I'd say that due to just the way the Puritan society is, um it it could it could very much be easily said that they just because of their beliefs, their strong beliefs in the Bible, and how uh they were taught that the automatic assumption is that you know, because of Eve, the the women are weak and they they need to be protected and all this stuff. So there were like men who had really good intentions despite this belief system that I don't agree with. Um but also at the same time, I bet you anything there is also the other part where certain men would use it to control women and use it to control their community, and it was a form of control for men, especially men who were um a little bit higher as far as like hierarchy and having power, if that makes sense. I think it's a little bit of both, it just depends on what kind of man we're talking about.

Ed 34:28

Yeah, I guess it would really boil down to how the position of the man, right? One thing that the Puritans did differently was that the ministers could have a wife and have kids. And I feel like, okay, if you're the minister, because you're almost kind of like the mayor of the town when you're the town's minister, and they would invest in their minister, and you know, they'll collect taxes to pay the minister. And I feel like, okay, the minister, if he's gonna be married and have kids, that wife and those kids need to be the perfect model of what their beliefs stay. Whereas, so I could I could see the priest being or the minister being very, very strict and very orthodox and very literal when it comes to theology, but then you could have, you know, a family out in the middle of nowhere just farming and just trying to get through day-to-day stuff. They probably wouldn't be as strict, but the men, since they're not so religiously bound, would probably use the religion to control women. And I I I would love to go back in time and see how much of this, like I wish I could go back and poll the uh the Puritans and be like, okay, how many of you actually believe in this stuff? How many of you are just how many of you are really just afraid of an educated wife? Uh you know, like what are you really believing in? Because we don't have any of that evidence, right? They couldn't just fill out an online survey and move on. So, I don't know, based off your answer, it it being a little bit of both, it would make sense, especially whatever title that the man would hold in in town.

Kara 36:18

Well that, and I think the most important thing with any type of anything history, when you're talking about the ancient times, when you're talking about medieval times, when you're talking about colonial times, when you're talking about 1945, there is still an element of being human. There's still an element of people are different, but they have they all have human qualities. So when you're talking about a generalized large group of people, it's probably safe to say that there is some sort of humanity there where people are generally nice to each other. There are good intentions there. There are going to be people who have bad intentions, but there's also going to be a lot of people who have good intentions, just like there are people today who have good intentions and bad intentions. And it all boils down to the same thing when you're talking about history. So when you're talking about a large group of people, it's really hard to generalize, especially when you're picking out little tiny cherry-picking events like this. Um, a good rule of thumb is to remember that they're people.

Ed 37:23

Yeah. So yeah, that's true. I mean, they're they're uh humanity today is really no different than what it was 10,000 years ago. The same emotions and and stuff like that. I feel like you take a town like Salem, I feel like there's a lot of people were buying into this religious model that they set up because that was the right thing to do, not because they were douchebags.

Kara 37:54

Right. They felt that there was the you know the correct thing to do, and and all for all intents and purposes, especially in this era. We may not agree with what their belief systems are, we may not agree with how they worshipped or whatever, but they could be a really nice family that could be your neighbor, and they're just gonna invite you over for dinner one day. You know what I mean?

Ed 38:17

Yeah, yeah, that's uh uh that that is something to think about because what we're gonna be focusing on here pretty soon is like the individual, a handful of families that that ruined it for everybody. Yeah. To the point where all of a sudden it's like, wow, everybody in Salem now has this stigma of being you know so over the top that they couldn't even function as a society, when in reality, most of the people there were fine, but you know, it always takes one or two people to just ruin it for everybody.

Kara 38:54

Yep. This is a particular situation too where it was just a perfect storm of craziness that really put the entire town of Salem into disarray for these few this year and four months. So, yes, people are people.

Ed 39:12

People be peopling.

Kara 39:13

People be peopling, but that perfect storm of situation and craziness and events is going to affect everybody at this time. Yeah. Um and and to finish off, uh, marriage. I'm gonna touch on marriage real quick. Uh marriage was an important aspect to Puritan culture. Those who did not get married were generally ostracized. Uh the average age for marriage was about 26 years old for men and 23 years old for women.

Ed 39:39

Therefore, women who are when they would get married?

Kara 39:44

Yeah, so they the average age for marriage to get married for men was 26, and women it was about 23-ish.

Ed 39:51

I did not know that. I thought it would have been a lot like Europe, where hey, you turn 16, daughter, time to get you married off.

Kara 39:58

Well, the reason for that is um in Puritan society society, they generally married for love. There were no um marriages that were um.

Ed 40:11

Oh, I see arranged for specific reasons.

Kara 40:13

Yes, thank you. They were never arranged, they were never um, you know, set up by your parents or anything like that. They they did marry people who they loved, so finding a partner might have been it take takes a little longer, you're not gonna get married at 15. Therefore, women who were opposed to marriage or had a difficult time finding a partner, or just wanted to be an independent lady lady, they naturally became a target. Um because, you know, if you don't get married, then you're ostracized from the community, therefore you're a weirdo, therefore we don't like you.

Ed 40:45

Yeah, they're you're damaged goods. You're not yeah, you're you're not yeah, for if if a guy can't find a reason to love you, then there's something wrong with you. And I and there is some truth to that. You know, I've come across women that have been married and divorced like five times over, and they always blame it on the guy, but I'm like, I I I don't know. Uh being married five times, uh there's not all guys are bad. Like there's there's gotta be something there that is not vibing correctly with five different guys. Yeah but but back then though, like you could have a woman that would let's say she had uh depression, uh instantly regarded as damaged, like you're you're not going to be able to to uh you know contribute to the household, or worse yet, if you're infertile, if you were not able to produce a baby, then you were that you then yeah, you would be marked as somebody who really can't be in the town. And then Lord help you, if you have a woman who was fertile and didn't have depression, but just wanted to be like, I'm just gonna build my own house, I'm gonna just do my own thing and you guys stay away from me.

Kara 42:10

Yeah, so some notable ladies that we're gonna touch on later on. We got Bridget Bishop, she was elderly, a widow, loud, argumentative, and poor. Sarah Good, also a widow, poor, and she was spicy. Susannah Martin, a widow, poor, elderly, and feisty. And we got Tichiba, the Paris family slave. She was often accused by the children for stories about witchcrafts and demons. Um, and again, she was also a slave and of a darker complexion, so therefore, unfortunately, she she was also a target for witchcraft.

Ed 42:46

Well, she was the target.

Kara 42:48

She was the one yeah, she was the first target. We'll get there, we'll get there.

Ed 42:51

Yeah.

Kara 42:51

And then there's Rebecca Nurse. She was elderly, but interestingly enough, compared to these other ladies, she was actually a well-respected member of the community and the church. And she was a catalyst for a lot of drama happening after a while. So those are some of the people that we'll mention later on. I just wanted to note the commonalities between most of them. Most of them were elderly or a widow. They were loud, they would argue, they were I I don't know about loud and argumentative, they probably were, but at the same time, they could have just been opinionated. We'll go with opinionated.

Ed 43:28

But yeah. Well, and and to touch on Rebecca Nurse, what because she was married, and she was a part of a huge family, and and I wouldn't go into the uh the tale of two towns here, because you have like tail you have Salem town or village, and then you have um Salem town proper, right? Uh Rebecca Nurse, she was a part of a very prominent family, very big. Family, and she was one of the few that were that was married and in good standing with the community that was charged for witchcraft, and her mindset was that and I'm basing it off the movie uh or the play, The Crucible. You know, she's like, guys, the girls are acting weird. It's not because they're possessed, they're just little girls playing games. Like it it will it will blow over in time. Just don't freak out. And because of that mindset, um, that's what got her into a lot of trouble. Now I wanna I wanna see something though. Um Googling Rebecca nurse. Uh did she exist?

Kara 44:50

Yes, she did. She was a human.

Ed 44:53

Okay, yeah, she was fully exonerated a few years ago. Okay. Uh, because uh when I was doing research for this, because I when I taught high school, I taught uh the crucible for like nine years, and so I I get my characters mixed up from the play because uh Arthur Miller put in characters that didn't exist. Um like like John Proctor, that that that whole family never existed. Uh that was just a fictitious family setup so that there could be a clearly defined target. Um so I wanted to make sure that I would like okay, yes, I'm basing it off of my understanding of the play. Let's make sure that Rebecca Nurse actually existed. And you're right, she did exist. We're not giving up bad information. So I want to talk about uh what I have I have it listed here as a tale of two towns, and what we think of Salem is as a town or a village or whatever. Uh, it was actually separated by two. Um, you had Salem Village, so this was further inland, composed of poor farmers. Uh Salem Village was very conservative and very religiously devout. Uh, keep in mind the Salem Village may have only been like maybe five miles down the road from Salem town, which is you know a drop in the bucket by today's standards. But back then it it that was a very big gap. Um so like when you think of puritanical people, it is Salem Village. Uh this is where the Putnams lived. So the Putnams were the ones that really instigated this, and they were the ones that really add fuel uh to the fire, so to speak. Like they they saw a dumpster fire and then they just kept throwing crap into it to see like how big they could make this thing go. Um, and you also notice too it's the Putnams that were doing most of the accusing. And Anne Putnam, which this is the part that I find funny. Um, Anne Putnam was probably the only one in town that was actively engaging in witchcraft because she she had a lot of miscarriages and she had uh a lot of her children die very young for 1600s reasons. Um, and so she was actively going to Tichaba and like, hey, what magical stuff can I do to not have it so my kids die all the time? And so like she was the one who was actively engaging in witchcraft and nothing happened to her. She she was fine, yeah. Yeah, it's funny how that worked out. Um, in terms of religious leaders, uh, everyone wanted Samuel Paris, who in my book is an absolute douchebag. He was like a failed business owner from like the Caribbean. And he's like, Okay, I suck at running a business, so I'm just gonna go to Harvard. Fair enough. Guy went to Harvard. Granted, back then Harvard was not what it is today, but he he got his education in being a minister, and the only reason why he wanted to do it is because it is a very, very secure job, and you can live quite well on it, and all you have to do is just give a lecture for like four hours every Sunday. So, like yeah, yeah, and and and church on a Sunday was an all-day thing to these people. Like, you didn't farm, you you didn't do anything, but when you went to church, it would be four to five hours long of just this minister just berating you, and then when you went home, it you were inside reading the Bible, studying the Bible, talking about the Bible, and they actually had people in town, I forgot what they were called, but they worked for kind of like the sheriff. I don't want to call them cops because they weren't, they were more like professional uh snitches, and they would go from house to house and check up on people, look through windows, and make sure that they were actually doing proper Sunday activities at home all day. It was it was very insane compared to what we have today. So, yeah, you've got Samuel Paris, yeah, he was just in it for all the wrong reasons. Okay, then we've got Salem town. So Salem Town uh was a coastal town and it comprised of the more wealthier, successful members, like the nurses and the porters. That that that's the big one that the porters were yeah, yeah, it was like the Hatfields and McCoys sort of situation. So nowhere nearly as conservative. Uh they were accepting to more progressive ideas, and I think a lot of that ties into the fact that they were a coastal town, which meant they had more people coming through outside of Salem, right? You would have ships showing up, you would have boat showing up, you would you they had a better access to what was going on in the rest of the world than what Salem Village had. Um, more progressive, uh more accepting of progressive ideas, and most of the accused lived in this town, so they were very targeted by Salem Village. And then Salem town members wanted George Burroughs as the minister, who was a really fascinating character in his own right, because Burroughs was compared to a lot of other even liberal religious leaders to this day, Burroughs was even more progressive and more open-minded than anybody else in that era. Like he uh when he was accused of being a witch, uh, they said that somebody said that his house would fill up with frogs and that he was making frogs magically appear. And before this council, he's like, frogs? What I don't have any frogs in my house. Now I did summon a bunch of giant lizards, but I don't know anything about the frogs, and so like he made a complete mockery of the whole thing very early on. Uh, because there was before the Salem Worsh trials, there was an incident involving um a case of witchcraft, I think it was in Boston, and we've got Cotton Mather, who I um I don't know, the jury's still out on this guy, but he claimed that he had fixed this girl in Boston, and Burroughs was just like, guys, you this is stupid. Like, just shut up. Like, it's we're you're making a big deal about nothing. And you can probably guess what's gonna happen to him. So we've got the Putnams versus the Porters. The Putnams hailed from Salem Village and were somewhat divided themselves. Uh, they were the wealthiest members of the village and owned a good portion of the land. So it's like he the Putnams were the kings of their own pile of dirt. Because remember, I said that Salem Village was um was a lot more uh I don't say poor, but they they were not as well off. And so the Putnams were the most well-off people in an already somewhat unwell off village, if that makes sense. In 1686, Thomas Putnam Sr. died because, you know, the 1600s of it all. And when he died, he gave a vast majority of his money and land to his second wife, Mary Varen Putnam. Well, I mean, she's dead, so she can't assume me for saying that wrong. Uh, this meant that the only son he had with a second wife is going to inherit everything. The oldest son uh Putnam Sr. had with his first wife was Thomas Putnam, and this guy hated his half-brother Joseph. And I kind of see where he's coming from. Like, shouldn't the oldest son get it? But I there was something about the relationship between uh Thomas Sr. and Thomas Jr. And yeah, I think there's so much more going on behind the scenes that wouldn't we know about. He was not too happy that Joseph Putnam was going to get all the land, the money, and worse yet, Joseph married Elizabeth Porter. That's one of the daughters of the family that the Putnams hate more than anybody else.

Kara 54:10

Okay, so we got some Romeo Juliet stuff going on. Cool.

Ed 54:13

Yeah, yeah. And believe it or not, uh Joseph cut that like you, I know you talked about how they married out of love. Um this was a two-parter. Yes, they married out of love, but they are also like, hey, you know what? If if we as opposing families, if we get married, then that should be a way to combine the two and stop the hostilities. It it was I want to say it was arranged, it was like they got married, and the cherry on top was the idea that it would end the hostilities between the two families. But yeah, Putnam or Thomas Jr. was not a fan of that. Uh the per the Putnams also wanted Reverend Samuel Parris in charge of the church, primarily because this guy was easily influenced. Like the Putnams gave them gave Paris the most amount of money to live off of, and he they literally bought off their minister, so then the Putnams could use the minister for a lot of shady things, like charging people of witchcraft, so then when they get hanged or killed, then their land, because they're a convicted witch, goes up for auction, and then you can buy their land for pennies to the dollar. And that's what the Putnams were really doing at that time. So the Porters were the wealthiest family in both Salem Village and Salem town. So they were doing way better than anybody else, which is one of the reasons why the Putnams hated him. Uh, they were religious, but not crazy like the Putnams. Uh, I personally don't think the Putnams were very religious. I feel like they were using religion as a weapon uh for strategy and manipulation. They were very progressive and really didn't have too many disputes with anyone other than the Putnams, but even still, you know, they didn't have all the issues with the Putnams. Like, I felt like when I was researching this, I felt like the Putnams hated the Porters more than the Porters hated the Putnams. Like, I almost feel like the Porters treated the Putnams as like, yeah, whatever, do your thing. You're not you're not a big threat to me. And then the Porters also wanted George Burroughs, the guy who could apparently, you know, introduce or create lizards instead of frogs inside of his house. And primarily because he wasn't as uptight and he was more open-minded, and just a more likable and agreeable person overall. The other thing to think about is that from 1688 to 1697, Salem was pretty much on its own ever since King William had his little war in the north. Uh, there was some shady business dealings with the king, and I I don't I can't remember the exact details, but basically uh they ended up getting their charter revoked from the king. So the king was not going to send soldiers over there, they weren't gonna send anybody over there to help him out. It's like you are literally in the middle of hostile Indian territory, and you're on your own. They didn't really have uh much contact um from a leadership set sense, and and uh this is kind of where uh we see uh the seeds of democracy being planted because they're like, well, if the king isn't gonna take care of us, then we're gonna vote in our own people. Uh the Salemites were nervous about absorbing all the refugees from the north because, you know, why do the Christ-like thing and actually help people out? Like they were, especially Salem Village, wanted no part when anybody new or outside coming into their town. Which is weird because if you are so reclusive for too long, won't all your kids start to look alike? Like, would you not have a very, very shallow genetic gene pool to work with? Yeah. I don't know. I I um I don't know what the numbers are in that for that to go sideways, but this is weird how the village part of things wanted no part in anybody coming into their town or fiddling in their in their affairs. This also emboldened the Native Americans in the area to attack small British villages like Salem. Many of the Salemites remember being attacked when they were younger, so the adults of 1692 remembered, I think it was like 15 years prior, uh, there was a an attack on on either was in Salem Village or very, very close to it, and there was an attack there, and a lot of lot of people got killed in that. And one of them was a survivor of that. She was a little girl at that time, but she uh uh she somehow survived, and then she was living in uh Reverend Paris' house, kind of like as a like a servant type of thing, and she alone remembers that attack, and she would often tell stories about how savage they were and how evil they were and all of that, which put people on edge even more in that town. And then this affected Tichiba more than anything. So Tichiba was Samuel Paris' slave from Barbados. Let's look at the girls here. The the jury is still out on what caused the girls to behave the way they did, but there are some interesting theories. Uh my theory is that they were caught doing something unpuritan-like. What maybe completely uh innocent by today's standards, but back then, I mean, they were facing getting whipped or beaten and all that kind of stuff. So my guess is that they started acting out to try to get the attention off of them for the wrong reasons and get the attention onto them for the good reasons. The girls were simply just caught up in hysteria. So this is theory number one. So mass hysteria is where you go along with everyone else's irrational behavior and you don't know why. Nine-year-old Betty Parris and 12-year-old cousin Abigail Williams, that was the one who survived that Native American attack years pride. I think I said 15 years, it would obviously it would have been more like nine or ten years. Old cousin Abigail Williams uh were caught up or caught by Paris performing some sort of goofy ritual. The legend here has it they were doing uh some ritual to see who they were going to marry someday. Because you know, that's totally satanic.

Kara 1:00:54

Like Yeah, absolutely not okay.

Ed 1:00:56

Yeah, that that is uh abhorrent. You you should never ever ever think about the kind of person you're gonna marry someday. That is That's terrible. Yeah, yeah. Uh Betty, knowing that she was going to be in a lot of trouble, fainted and pretended to be bewitched. Abigail then became afflicted, doing air quotes over here, and pointed to Tichaba as the one who was afflicting them. Basically, they wanted to not be known as the ones that were doing some goofy ritual, and they knew that if they pointed a finger at a slave from another land far away, with darker skin, kind of like the evil Native Americans, all eyes would focus on her. They they really set her up pretty hard. Like Tichabu was the one that was kind of raising these girls, so that's kind of messed up. And I honestly think they didn't realize just how far this was gonna go. They probably thought that Tichabu would maybe get whipped a little bit and then they would move on. They probably didn't realize that this was gonna go on for a year and four months and result in 19 people being killed and you know, hundreds of people thrown in jail and all that. Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, they were accusing the people in Salem Town. And I have a funny feeling that was Thomas Putnam putting him up to it. Because, like I said before, if you were accused of being a witch and you were convicted and you were executed, by law, your land and everything you own goes up for auction. So even though you could have a son that would inherit all your land upon your death, if you died a witch, then that son or daughter or whoever could not inherit the land and it immediately goes up for auction. And when it goes up for auction, then you can buy it really, really cheap. It also went so far as like say that inheriting son or daughter or whatever, if their parents were accused of being a witch and they were executed for it, then you would be if you were one of the inheritors, then you would be up for trial because you could be being affected by your parents' devilish nature.

Kara 1:03:20

This comes into play later too.

Ed 1:03:22

Yeah, yeah. This is this is what did Giles Quarian.

Kara 1:03:25

Yeah, we'll we'll get there.

Ed 1:03:26

And this is why he's such he's such a he's such a stud in in both in the play and in real life. From a Freudian side of things, some argue that the girls were sexually oppressed, and that is why they behaved that way. It was believed that women could become irrational and subject to possession by the devil if they were not gratified enough. Is that not the most classical Freudian thing to say? Oh, Freud. That's right. A nine and a 12-year-old girl, you know, because they were they were they were caught trying to see who they're gonna marry someday, and that was because they weren't gratified enough and they would be susceptible to being possessed by the devil, kind of like what you were mentioning uh earlier. Some people thought the girls were poisoned from ergot, which is a type of gold that gold. If it if it was gold, I'll I'd eat it. Uh, it's a type of mold that only grows on rye, and arogot can can cause hallucinations. And they thought that maybe they ate some bad rye, and then they were like tripping balls, and they were seeing you know purple unicorns and all sorts of weird stuff. Uh, for the most part, this theory has been debunked because like nobody else got it. You'd be thinking that if they had a whole bunch of bad rye, then like, could you imagine going into Salem and like everybody's just like wandering around the streets, like grabbing at things in the sky? Sick. It eventually turned into a situation where the girls became social litmus tests for the entire town. So if anyone did anything out of the ordinary and the girls didn't like it, then they would point a finger at them and then go into fits. This kind of turned into a scene where now these girls are elevated. Like they're doing the heroic thing, they are putting themselves in harm's way to save the town from from Satan. And I think there's a little bit of a power play here where they're like, wow, suddenly us being girls and us being children, we don't suck anymore. Because it's true, they were as a society, they were very, very harsh on their children. This was very prevalent in the early days when people weren't getting executed too much, but once we hit to at least 10 to 12 people being hanged, the effect was starting to wear. Off and even the uh the witness girl started to second guess their actions because it's all fine and dandy until people are being executed.

Kara 1:06:08

Fair. That's fair.

Ed 1:06:10

Yeah, it's like for me, I would probably stop at not even letting this start. That's that's kind of how I look at it. Something else here was an idea called incestuous burglary. That sounds fun. Yeah, get out your banjos. It's gonna get fun.

Kara 1:06:31

Good.

Ed 1:06:31

So another aspect, no offense to anybody who plays a banjo, but we've all seen the movie. Another aspect of this disastrous time period is that the people who were the lawmen of the time were insanely corrupt. And they could be bought out. They yeah, they they could really do whatever they wanted, uh, within reason, right? If the town's minister had an issue with you, then you were in trouble. So at the time, High Sheriff George Corwin was the was the one who would issue warrants for arrest based on court's orders. By the way, if you ever uh read the play, Sheriff George Corwin, he has literally one line in the entire play, and it's like, yep, and that's it.

Kara 1:07:21

Sick.

Ed 1:07:22

Yeah. I don't know how much money you get paid for playing that part, but I'd do it. So from there, he would send out his family members to arrest the suspected witches and bring them to jail. Keep in mind the jail could only hold maybe about a dozen or so people, but at the height of the witch hunt, there was over 100 people stuffed in there. Once the suspect was thrown in jail for an undeterminate amount of time, keep in mind, today, if you get arrested, you have to be presented before a judge to face your charges within 24 hours, right? habeas corpus. This is where this stems from. Because like they would arrest you, they wouldn't even charge you with anything. They would just say, We're arresting you, and then like Tichiba, she sat in a jail cell for a year, I think a year and four months. And and they never really fully like she never saw a judge or anything for an undetermined amount of time. Uh, there were some people who were accused but never went before a judge for the entire year of the insanity, as you know, in the case of Tichibha. Your family literally had to pay for your stay in jail. They Corwin treated it as though it's like a hotel. Well, if you're staying here, then you've got to pay for it. Whereas today it's taxpayers' money. Uh, it got so bad that Corwin uh would help the court by having his boy spy on families and even couples who were engaged in um reproductive purposes, and if they were not following what was considered the proper proceedings on how to make a baby, then the couple could be arrested on the spot.

Kara 1:08:59

Oh, good.

Ed 1:09:00

Yeah.

Kara 1:09:01

That's good.

Ed 1:09:01

Yeah. And I get like at the time, if you were a farmer, your sons would be farmers. If you were a blacksmith, then your sons would be a blacksmith. But here, I don't know if it was a good idea that if you're a sheriff, then your all of your sons will take up that profession.

Kara 1:09:21

Okay.

Ed 1:09:22

So yeah, what he what Corbin would do is that like he could care less about the voyeuristic evidence. He just wanted to get people arrested because once you're arrested, who's at your home? Who's locking it up? Who's watching it over? So he would send his sons into your house and just rob you blind. Nice. And then he'll go out and sell it or or do whatever. So let's say you were thrown in jail and you came out like a month later, your house would be emptied out.

Kara 1:09:49

Okay, that's fun. Fun times.

Ed 1:09:52

So yeah, there's there there's a lot of sketchy stuff going on. So now let's go into the trials because my stuff was boring. Let's get into screaming children.

Kara 1:10:07

Um, one note. Yes, Mr. Paris, Minister Paris, he was, historically speaking, he was not well liked at all by any of um the churchgoers and parishioners to a point where they actually reduced the tax amount. That way his pay went down. And in a fit in a fury, he decided to preach to everybody that there's a conspiracy going on in the town, and it's all due to the devil's work, which stirred the pot a little bit.

Ed 1:10:38

That's oh my gosh, I completely forgot about that.

Kara 1:10:41

Yeah, so so I just wanted to throw a little bit of an extra oomph of it's all the devil's fault because he didn't get paid.

Ed 1:10:49

Because he was a douchebag.

Kara 1:10:50

Yeah, correct.

Ed 1:10:52

That's a good, that's a good add-on. I completely forgot about that.

Kara 1:10:56

Yeah. So he was he was a piece of work. Um, all right, so this is how the trials themselves worked. Uh, first, a person was accused. It could be anything outside of the realm of idealistic puritanism. Uh, the accused would then be arrested and interrogated by the magistrate, essentially, that they would torture them until they got a confession. Um, back to the accused part real quick. Anything outside the realm of idealistic puritanism could have been anything as simple as they went through their house and they found a book about mushrooms, and then they freaked out saying that they were a witch. It could be as something as stupid and tiny as that. Anyway, so they get interrogated, meaning a group of men would take them somewhere, torture them until they got a confession out, they would look through their home, all of that fun stuff, and then they would be brought into an examination. Uh, not just questioning, but they would be stripped naked, search for a physical mark like a mole or a blemish or a skin tag, whatever. Um, if the accused had anything like that, the witch hunters would call it the devil's teeth mark. Uh basically they believed that this mark would be a place where the devil sucked the accused blood after making a deal for witchy powers. Uh yes, this was a real thing. This is something that they really looked for.

Ed 1:12:08

Suck you by.

Kara 1:12:09

Supposedly they re-yep, they really believed it. However, I think part of it was an excuse to be terrible people. Anyway, if the magistrates on the local level were satisfied with their findings, they would send the accused up to a grand jury. If indicted, the accused would go to trial and be jailed and accused if found guilty. So that's the sorry, I'm fixing grammar. That is the um general pathway of being accused.

Ed 1:12:37

That that was the proceedings.

Kara 1:12:39

Yeah, thank you.

Ed 1:12:40

And and how they worked. And I think I think when they would investigate these women, I feel like there was no internet porn or anything like that. There was no adult magazines, there was none of that. I I have a funny feeling there was a lot of perversion going on.

Kara 1:12:56

Oh, yeah, easy. They they stripped in naked and pretended to look for marks that the devil sucked out of their bodies. It's stupid.

Ed 1:13:04

Um I also find it funny because there was one part, one of the uh accused, she and I her name is escaping me, but she was pregnant, so they couldn't hang her. So what they what they were gonna do is they were gonna wait for her to give birth to her child, hang her, and then start questioning this infant on you know, are you a child of God? And if they didn't like the answer, then they were going to kill the baby.

Kara 1:13:36

I believe her name was Elizabeth. I could be wrong.

Ed 1:13:39

Well, on the play, it's Elizabeth Proctor, but uh in real life, it I can't I I'll have to look it up, but I I remember when I was reading it, it was just like, are you kidding me? You're going to interrogate an infant to see if it's godly enough? How what what what is the logical reasoning behind this? Like, it blows my mind how far they were going to take this. And and I think the uh the everything ended before before the mom was going to be hanged and the baby was gonna be interrogated and all that stuff. Like it this was more at the tail end of this insanity, but that was literally their reasoning was you know, we gotta make sure that this is this isn't going to be the double incarnate.

Kara 1:14:25

Yeah. Alright, so we're going to move on to the accused. This is the longest of my ramblings, so strap in. Here we go. In March of 1692, the first three women were accused by the crazy little girls that we talked about earlier. They were Tichiba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. They were all sent to jail. Uh, due to a lot of finger pointing under torture, more people were accused after they were. Tichiba, um, she was an interesting case because when she admitted to everything, she admitted it very proudly, and nobody knows why. She admitted it confidently, proudly. She told all of these stories about meeting the devil and having familiars, and she talked about monsters and all of these crazy things. Um, and we don't know why she did it that way. Like, yes, she was under torture or she was being questioned very seriously, but even before she was tortured, she confidently went up there and she was like, Yep, I did it.

Ed 1:15:22

Um and she was just trying to make a mockery of it.

Kara 1:15:25

Well, we don't know why she did it though. Because she knew what the repercussions were. Maybe she felt like because she was a slave, she was going to die or get thrown into jail anyway, so why not make a mockery out of it? Maybe she truly believed it, we really don't know. Historically speaking, we don't know.

Ed 1:15:44

Well, I think the the the way that you could get out of not being executed is that you had to confess. You had to confess how you made your agreement with the devil, and then you had to accuse other people so they could so they could be ousted, and then I think you would have to either work or pay some sort of a fine or something like that, and you would be labeled as a as a former witch in town for the rest of your life. And I wonder if Tichiba's like, I don't want to die, so I'm just going to give them whatever it is they want to hear, and I'll I'll still get punished, but I won't be hanged.

Kara 1:16:23

Yeah, maybe.

Ed 1:16:24

So that that that to me that would probably be the most prevalent theory that would make sense. But yeah, it's interesting how she's like, I did it, it was me.

Kara 1:16:34

Yeah, I mean, she talked about evil animals and spirits, and she was talking about like symptoms that the girls had and explaining what she did, and like she went out of her way detailed, where the other women they were like, Yeah, sure, I did it, and pointed a finger, but like she she savored that moment. It was really interesting. We don't know much about Tichuba. We know that she was a slave to Paris. We don't know what happened to her after the events of the slave trials. Um, we know that she came out of the West Indies, more likely than anything else, but it I mean, that's all we really know. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, they were all sent to jail. Alright. So, due to a lot of finger pointing and torture, as I said, more people were accused. Uh, Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse were both accused and tried in March of 1692, despite them being devout churchgoers and society members. That was very interesting because now that's starting to turn heads like, oh, well, now they're just accusing anybody.

Ed 1:17:32

Yeah.

Kara 1:17:33

Well, some some people thought that. Other people were like, eh, we're just gonna keep going. And this one is really messed up. Sarah Good's daughter, she was four years old. Her name was Dorothy, and she was interrogated by these creepy crazy men. A four-year-old. Can you imagine these old men being like, Are you a witch? and blah blah blah. And she's like four. That's ridiculous. Anyway, in April of 1692, Rebecca Nurse's sister, Sarah Cloyce, was arrested. And the next week, Giles Corey, Martha Corey's husband, was arrested for protesting his wife's arrest. So he was like, Hey, you you you said she's a nur or she's a witch and she's not a witch, and I, you know, whatever. And then he was accused of being a witch. And Abigail Hobbes was accused, Bridget Mary Warren, and Deliverance Hobbes were all arrested and examined, probably at the mercy of finger pointing under torture. So that's the next week after Rebecca Nurse, nurse's sister. I'm sorry, the next week after her sister.

Ed 1:18:26

I love how this dumpster fire isn't a slow burn.

Kara 1:18:29

Oh no, it like once you hit the it's like a roller coaster. Once you hit the peak, it all just goes downhill.

Ed 1:18:35

This is like a dumpster explosion.

Kara 1:18:37

Oh, yeah, it's craziness. And I promise you, I had a lot of cool information about Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne that I did not write down, so I'm sorry, but we're gonna keep going. They're cool people. Yeah, they're cool people. Speaking of finger pointing torture, Abigail Hobbes, Mary Warren, and Deliverance Hobbes all confess to being watched, then accused e being witches, and then they accused even more people of being witches. The arrest continued in April of 1692 with Sarah Wilde, William Hobbes, husband of deliverance and father of Abigail, uh Nemia Abbott Jr., sorry if I butchered that, Mary Eastie, sister of Cloys and Nurse, Rebecca Nurse, Edward Bishop Jr. and his wife Sarah Bishop and Mary English. And then on April 30th, Reverend George Burroughs, that guy, Lydia Dustin, Susan Martin, Dorcas Hoare, Sarah Morey, and Philip English, Mary's husband, were all arrested. For the folks counting a home. That is 20 arrests in the month of April. Interesting note on George Burroughs during his trial. When he was up uh to be hanged, he decided that it would be a good idea to um what's the word?

Ed 1:19:41

He recited the uh Lord's Prayer.

Kara 1:19:44

He recited. Yeah. He was reciting the Lord's Prayer, and according to the witch hunters, nobody under the devil's influence could do so. He did it, and then people were like, holy crap, and then he died.

Ed 1:19:55

Well, well, Cotton Mather, he uh because he wrote the book on how to how to handle witches. And he wrote in that book that a person that is influenced by the devil physically cannot recite the Lord's Prayer. So Burroughs gets up there and he just recites it perfectly, because he actually knows it, and then like the whole crowd shut up, like, whoa, we made a huge mistake here. And then Cotton Mather then said, No, no, no, no. Even a priest, even a minister, can be altered in image only by Satan's uh effects, and yes, this is George Burroughs, but he's not George Burroughs, and it was a really weird form of logic that nobody was smart enough to follow along with or smart enough to call out that it's bull crap, and they hanged him.

Kara 1:20:51

Remember what I said about moving goalposts?

Ed 1:20:54

Yeah, yeah we are.

Kara 1:20:56

Moving goalposts. He's the king of it. Because so many people were being jailed due to torture finger pointing, folks began to evade and avoid arrests as much as possible, and warrants began to go out and they began to float around Salem. Unfortunately, during this time, Sarah Good died in jail on May 10th before she was prosecuted. A note on jails during this time, they are nothing like they are today. They were essentially giant barns filled with human poop. They smelled really bad, they were super dirty, you never got a bath, and you were surrounded by people who were just pooping and peeing all over the place, probably throwing up, getting sick. It was a cesspool, it was nasty. Gross. We don't like jails, especially then. Also, on an interesting note, up until the end of May, the proceedings were just investigative. Okay? They they were just looking into it, they throw them in jail, we'll figure it out later, that whole thing. The court wasn't really prosecuting anybody until Governor William Phipps ordered a grand jury to begin prosecuting arrested people who were already in jail. So he was like, we gotta do something with these people, they were guilty. We might as well start prosecuting them and putting them to death, right? So, like this William Phipps guy, I don't really like him. He's kind of a jerk. He has a redeeming quality, but I don't like him. Anyway, by the end of May, there were 62 people in these in this jail in Salem. The courts of Oyer and Terminer was minted to be the grand jury for the trials and the ones who would begin prosecuting in May. The trial before this grand jury was the first trial before the grand jury was Bishop. She was on trial for wearing black clothes and odd costumes. One of her coats was cut in two ways and had a mysterious third nipple that disappeared when double-checked by the magistrate. She was executed June 10th, 1692.

Ed 1:22:37

She was just ahead of her time. She was waiting for a roll and total recall to come in.

Kara 1:22:42

You know what the frustrating thing is? It was like the the people who investigated, they were like, oh, she has this third nipple and and all of this stuff and blah blah blah. And when they went to go check it again, it mysteriously disappeared, and they were like, Oh, it was the devil, they made it disappear. So she died.

Ed 1:22:58

Yeah, all because she was cosplaying.

Kara 1:23:00

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean she she wore black clothing and and she she had like a weird coat that was cut funny.

Ed 1:23:06

Yeah, she was she was America's first emo.

Kara 1:23:09

She she needs to be looked up to more. She was great. All right. After the execution, the court adjourned for 20 days and wrote to some ministers asking if they were doing the right thing. So they adjourned the court after they they murdered this old woman, and they're like, Is this the right thing to do? I this doesn't seem right. So they wrote to a bunch of deviled Puritan ministers and they're like, Is this doing are we doing it are we doing it? And Cotton Mather was the one who responded. He was like, Yeah, man, keep it up. You're doing great. Because it's Cotton Mather. So from June 30th to early July, grand juries endorsed indictments against Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susanna Martin, Martha Carrier, Sarah Wiles, and Dorcas Hauer. Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susanna Martin, and Sarah Wiles, along with Rebecca Nurse, all went to trial at this time, where they were found guilty and executed by hanging on July 19th. So we have one, two, three, four, five who were hung on July 19th.

Ed 1:24:09

And they were hanged because they would not confess. Because they were legitimately telling the truth. I'm not a witch. And that's why they were hanged, is because they wouldn't confess.

Kara 1:24:19

And remember, in Puritan society, you must not lie.

Ed 1:24:22

Yep.

Kara 1:24:23

So with Rebecca Nurse being extremely devout, that's probably why she was hummed.

Ed 1:24:30

Yep.

Kara 1:24:31

In August, more people were indicted. And Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, Sr., George Burroughs, and John Willard were all executed. My note disappeared there. That is so annoying. I don't know what happened there, but they were executed as well in August. In September, Giles Corey refused to plead at his trial and was killed by torture. They stacked rocks on his chest until he stopped breathing. The reason he did not plead at his trial is because he was a large landowner. He wasn't super rich, uh, but the land was worth money. And if he pleaded guilty to witchcraft to save his own neck, then by doing so, he would forfeit his land to the auction where the neighboring Putnams would be able to take it for pennies to the pound. So he knew this. And then if he refused to plead anything for a child, whether it be guilty or innocent, and died while under torture, he legally could not be guilty of anything, and all of his land and money would still go to his boys. So basically, in a nutshell, he knew if he pled guilty or innocent, either way, then all of his land isn't going to go to his kids. He also knew that if he didn't plead at all, they couldn't do anything. If you can't do anything with this dude, what are you gonna do? You're gonna force it out of him, right? That was the goal, at least. So what they did is they st it was torture by crushing, so they stacked rocks on a board onto his chest until he stopped breathing. And this guy was awesome. They continued to put rocks on him, he refused to tell them anything, and his last words was more weight, put it on me, lay it on me, more weight, more weight, more weight, and he never played.

Ed 1:26:11

Yeah, Corey was interesting because he was like, Hey, yeah, he's he he was a lawyer by experience. And one thing about Puritan society is that they were very sue happy, right? I bought a pig off of you and it died. Uh like two weeks later, I'm suing you for selling me a bad pig, right? There was a lot of little petty court cases out there where they would sue each other, and Corey was notorious for this. He he and he won a fair amount of these little petty lawsuits, but by doing that, he kind of became a lawyer. Like he understood how the laws worked, and and he knew that he was gonna die either way. So how would how was he going to handle his kid's inheritance? He's a pretty sharp dude. I think he was in his 80s too when he died. He was like 84, 85, or something crazy.

Kara 1:27:07

So 50 more people were found guilty, and eight more were executed in September. I think we're up to 19 executed in September.

Ed 1:27:15

Yeah.

Kara 1:27:16

Something like that. By the end of October, the court of Oyer and Terminator decided that they were done executing people. The primary reason for this was probably because that Phipps guy, his wife was executed. Or not executed, I'm sorry. His wife was accused. I jumped the gun there. His wife was accused of being a witch, and now he's like, okay, okay, okay. It's hitting home now, it's personal no more. I I like my wife, she's not a witch, like this isn't gonna happen anymore. Uh so he put a stop to it. That his is his one redeeming qual quality.

Ed 1:27:46

Yeah, he just let it go to 19 people before Yeah, yeah, you know.

Kara 1:27:53

So by January, October, yep, by January, a new court and grand jury was put into place for. For the remaining people who were jailed, three more were convicted and found guilty. They were Elizabeth Johnson Jr., Sarah Worswell, and Mary Post. These were the final three who were found guilty. Fortunately for them, Governor Phipps himself intervened and pardoned the final three, probably because he felt bad. By the time February rolled around, the court saw more people and voted them not guilty. So now that we have this new court, what's happening is they're looking at it from a more logical standpoint, and they're like, this is stupid, you're not guilty, innocent, innocent, innocent. Um, at the end of April, all other charges were either dismissed or the accused were found not guilty, and the trials officially ended.

Ed 1:28:42

Wow.

Kara 1:28:43

So there we have it.

Ed 1:28:44

Yeah. And I I think the only good that came out of this is when America was designing the Constitution or framing the Constitution, I think they looked at this event because there's so much in the Constitution about how you know you and all the procedures for being arrested and going before a court and getting an appointed lawyer, and you know, what's the purpose of a grand jury? Like, if you read that part of the constitution, you can see like, okay, this wasn't available at the time of the Salem Wish trials, and this wasn't available, and this wasn't available. It's like if you go down the list, it kind of it's heavily drawn upon how the Salem wish trials went sideways because of well, they had no training, they had no ide no idea of how laws really should work, and they had no idea of how you know how the legal system should be set up. So it's just it's just interesting, and I think it's the fifth is it the fifth um amendment and the Bill of Rights. I I can't remember, but yeah, if you go through and read the procedures on how somebody or how our our judicial system works, you'll see knowing what you know now about the settlement was trial is like, oh, chances are it was inspired by this event.

Kara 1:30:09

I think that and what they experienced in the monarchy, it was a combination of the two things.

Ed 1:30:15

Yeah, especially like when it came to representation, like you know, you you would get arrested and then you were sent back to England to face trial, you know, and and you look at the constitution, and now it says like, no, you are taken to the state upon which the crime took place, right? And none of this shipping somebody halfway around the world and and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, just for giggles, if if you guys really want a fascinating read, sit down and read that part of the constitution. It's the driest part of your life that you will never get back. But now that you know something about the Salem Witch trials, I think you would see there was a lot of inspiration in there. And and and I think this this was pretty much it, right, for the world. Like after after 1693, or we'll just say 1700, I think like the whole witch hunt craze pretty much stopped, didn't it? I don't uh the maybe there was like a one-off case here or there, but like this was the end of it.

Kara 1:31:20

Yeah. Yep. This was pretty much the end of it on a worldwide scale. Um it it it was like a gentle off because it's like a belief system, but um yeah, yeah. I mean it after after it died out in Europe as well as in Salem, there really wasn't a revival or anything of that nature regarding witch trials.

Ed 1:31:42

Well, uh what's interesting is that you still hear it to this day. Like it's a witch hunt. Like that's where the the the term comes from. No, yeah. You look at Oppenheimer and you know, the whole McCarthyism communist scare, the what is it, the red fear or better, better dead than red, and you know, Arthur Miller, the playwright, he wrote the crucible because he was being accused of being a communist, and the United States Congress was really overstepping its bounds. And while he was in Congress trying to defend for himself, he decided to take a drive over to Salem, and that's where he did all this research, and then he wrote The Crucible to be a critical lens on the McCarthyism communist scares, and you know, having to name rat out more people, and that was the whole purpose of the play was to be like, guys, this has happened before. You're using the same logic that these ultra-conservative, very hardcore religious folk, uneducated to a very high degree or low degree, uh just uneducated, like he was pointing a finger at Congress like you guys are behaving like it's 1692 all over again. Yeah, and then yeah, I mean, we still see uh witch hunt behavior happen to this day. It's just under a different appearance, a different guise, it's a different mode of communication, but it's just like when are we going to learn? It's just a never-ending cycle.

Kara 1:33:14

It repeats itself, what they say.

Ed 1:33:16

Yeah, someday we'll one of these days we will run out of things to accuse people on.

Kara 1:33:21

Yeah, I don't know if that's gonna happen. I don't know about all that. That's hopeful.

Ed 1:33:26

Yeah, there's there's we'll we'll always find a reason to blame somebody for something, especially in politics.

Kara 1:33:32

Anything we pigs that die.

Ed 1:33:35

I mean like I'm gonna go sue a pet shop because I bought a goldfish and it died.

Kara 1:33:42

And it died.

Ed 1:33:44

Yep, because of witchcraft. Sick.

Kara 1:33:46

Uh, just some general housekeeping things before we finish up here. Um remember if you want to send us a trash can fire, you can send it to us at thedaysdumpster fire at gmail.com. Also, our friend in your rep, if you're still listening, shouts. And you got anything?

Ed 1:34:04

Yeah, I got a little bit of homework.

Kara 1:34:06

Okay, homework.

Ed 1:34:07

Yeah. So, what I want you guys to do, our our lovely listeners, is the next time you're on a car ride with somebody, or you're sitting at the water cooler in the office and you are having a conversation about, you know, office gossip and stuff like that, go out and tell like four people about the podcast. Actively go out there and do that. And then, like, if you are a content creator as well, like you have your own podcast or or you're just starting out and all that other fun stuff, don't be afraid to hit us up on Days Demster Fire email because we want to get your name out and we want to get our name out. There's plenty of room for everybody on this planet to have their own podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, go out there actively tell people about it. Uh, be that guy who carpools and like your phone, you just take over their radio with your phone and just start playing it and be known as as that guy. If you need a good place to start, the emu wars, episode one. It's uh it really it really sets the stage for the days dumpster fire and how planned out things don't always go well. It doesn't it doesn't pan out the way you think it would.

Kara 1:35:26

Yeah, it's a little rough.

Ed 1:35:28

Yeah, so go out there, tell people about us. If you're a content creator, uh let us know. Let us know what we can do better on our show or what you like. I'm I I know there's gonna be haters out there like like gonna send us death threats because there's always somebody out there like that. But if you have ideas on on how to improve the show, and by not saying get rid of Ed, I would be greatly appreciative of that. So.

Kara 1:35:54

Alright.

Ed 1:35:55

On that note, I gotta get back and finish up my uh part two of the Hubble knees glasses.

Kara 1:36:01

Excellent. I will figure out.

Ed 1:36:03

I just realized that I still haven't got that out yet.

Kara 1:36:06

Yeah, I guess we should probably do that.

Ed 1:36:08

Any ideas on what you got coming up?

Kara 1:36:10

I think I want to do the Battle of Thales.

Ed 1:36:14

Oh, okay.

Kara 1:36:14

Or the Battle of the 300 Spartans.

Ed 1:36:18

Oh, the Battle of Thermopylae or something like that?

Kara 1:36:21

Yeah, that's one. Thermopylae, not Thales. Thermopylae. And uh, but I want to do it from the Persian perspective.

Ed 1:36:26

Oh, okay.

Kara 1:36:27

Um, so that's what I'm thinking about, because I've been drowning in Greek history and mythology for like a week and a half now, so I might as well go with it.

Ed 1:36:36

Yeah, you've done all the research already.

Kara 1:36:38

I I mean I'm almost there. We're actually coming up to that point in the PowerPoint.

Ed 1:36:43

And we should actually do another uh literal fire, like the fall of Rome or like the sacking of Rome or something like that.

Kara 1:36:50

Uh sacking of Rome is going to be a giant topic, which I am happy to do, but it's going to be an essay scholar thing. So wait until I finish that. Okay. I will even post it somewhere if anybody wants to read on. I don't, yeah. And then we'll go from there.

Ed 1:37:07

Okay. Cool. All right. Well, everybody, keep it a hot mess. Thanks for listening. Bye.