Salem Trials

[Vance R. Koven]

At 11:35 AM -0800 12/19/97, Gaffney, Edward wrote:

>I am not certain about the reference handy, but I recall reading a book back
>in the late 1970s (I think it is called *Salem Possessed* by two authors, I
>think a Boyer and a Nissenbaum) that was a masterful study of the social
>background of Salem Trials.  The authors explored the "noisome problem of
>the credibility of the witnesses" to which Vance refers.  They uncovered in
>a remarkable bit of sleuthing that there was a north-south [or east-west?]
>divide in the town that accounted for the biased and unreliable testimony.

Yes, in fact what was then part Salem and the location of the events giving
rise to the trials is now not in Salem at all, but in Danvers (miles
inland, i.e., west), which then was called "Salem Village" as opposed to
Salem Town (today's city of Salem). The trials themselves were conducted in
Salem Town. There were property and personal disputes among the villagers
and between villagers and absentee owners from the town; but I doubt that
accounted entirely for the charges. And, to return to the original point of
my post, personal credibility aside the charges leveled were not outrageous
based on the then-current (though waning) "scientific" understanding of
medicine and the spiritual component of psychological phenomena (to use
more modern terminology).

> Vance is right in suggesting that the issue in this trial was not why it
>was started, given the assumptions about scapegoating women prevalent in the
>legal culture.

I don't want to let this go unchallenged. There were men as well as women
charged, tried, and executed (in fact, most of the women were given lighter
sentences proportionately to their alleged offenses than similarly charged
men). The hysteria and processes were equal-opportunity.

You don't have a name like mine around here without having to learn at
least something on this subject. However, if I correctly interpreted a line
dropped into a post from Jim Maule, he may have a more direct connection to
relevant information on this subject.



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