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I'm doing a project on Salem Witch Trials and this is very helpful! Thank you for citing sources

SALEM WITCH TRIALS

ALRIGHT SO ONE OF MY SPEECHES FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING ACTUALLY COVERED THE POSSIBLE CAUSES OF THE SALEM WITCH TRIAL. We’ll start with those facts! It was written in the form of the speech where I had to verbally site everything. I rewrote most of it so there are missing page numbers.

-Laura

POSSIBLE CAUSES OF THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS

Cause I:The possibility of the Salem Witch Trials being caused by ergot poisoning.

During the Salem Witch Trials, the girls who started the event claimed to see apparitions, experience pricking sensations and seizures, and paralysis.

Josh Clark in his article, “Were the American colonists drugged during the Salem witchcraft trial?”, discusses a type of ergot poisoning, “Convulsive ergotism attacks the central nervous system, causing mania, psychosis, hallucinations, paralysis and prickling sensations. It was these symptoms that [are reminiscent] of those exhibited by Elizabeth Parris – especially the mania.”

As you can see in the diagram below, ergot is the black part of the piece of wheat. Josh Clark goes on to say that “the [ergot] contains isoergine – the main ingredient in the drug LSD.”

Cause II: The possibility of the Salem Witch Trials being caused by boredom.

Life in Salem 1692 was very different. The Puritan life was a strict one and children were expected to behave as adults. Boys also had more freedom outside of the home than girls did.

Rosalyn Schanzer in her book, Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, describes how the girls would have been spending their harsh winter. The girls might have spent the unusually harsh winter knitting socks, boiling laundry, sweeping ashes off the floor, ladling porridge, making pies or puddings, making yarn, mending clothing and upholstery, and of course, there would always be time for reading the bible and saying prayers.

The strict lifestyle did not allow the girls to express themselves. Perhaps, it is not unreasonable to think they might have enjoyed the attention they gained from being inflicted. 

Discovery Education’s Salem Witch Trials: The World Behind The Hysteria discusses the possibility of the accusations being an outlet for attention, “It is no wonder that the young girls were… captivated by Tituba’s magical stories and fortune-telling games… activities [that] were strictly forbidden…fear and guilt… may have been one reason for their hysterical behavior. And at a time when young girls were forbidden to act out or express themselves, it is easy to see why they were so enraptured by the attention they received when they became ‘bewitched.’”

Cause III:  The Possibility of the Salem Witch Trials being caused by Religious Hysteria. 

The town of Salem was a struggling one. A good portion of the town were farmers and there was much of the dark wilderness or the great unknown to fear. It would be as if your hometown or a portion of it was suddenly cut off from contact to the outside world. Sermons of brimstone and fire certainly did not help either.

In her New Yorker article, “The Witches of Salem”, Stacy Schiff describes the danger Massachusetts had experienced around the time of the Witch trials, “[In 1676] King Philip’s War… [had] obliterated a third of New England’s towns, pulverized its economy, and claimed ten per cent of the adult male population. Every Bay Colony resident lost a friend or a relative; all knew of a dismemberment or an abduction. By 1692, another Indian war had begun to take shape… The frontier had recently moved to within fifty miles of Salem.”

With a harsh winter and the threat of danger near, it is easy to see why the town might have been paralyzed with fear and sought religious explanation to their problems.

Works Cited

Blumberg, Jess. “A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials.” Smithsonian        Magazine. Smithsonian, 23 Oct. 2007. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.

Clark, Josh. “Were the American Colonists Drugged during the Salem Witchcraft Trial?” HowStuffWorks. InfoSpace Holdings LLC, 18 Jan. 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.

“Salem Witch Trials: The World Behind The Hysteria." Salem Witch Trials - Learning Adventures. Discovery Education, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.

Schanzer, Rosalyn. Witches!: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2011. Print

Schiff, Stacy. "The Witches of Salem." The New Yorker. Condé Nast, 31 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

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