Informative Speech Outline: 1692 Salem Witch Trials

Brooke Rice
Com 105- C
Spring 2015

Speech Outline

Topic: 1692 Salem Witch Trials

Purpose: After listening to my speech, the audience will have a better insight on trails, how they were started, what happened during the trials, the aftermath of the trials, possible reasons for the sicknesses the women exhibited, and why the trials occurred in the first place.

Thesis: One of the most famous cases of mass hysteria broke out in Salem, Massachusetts. The 1692 Salem Witch Trials forever changed our judicial system.

Introduction
1. When most people think about the Salem Witch Trials they see a group of women being burned at the stake with a group of puritans screaming at them to DIE! Did you know that no witch was actually burned? And one of
the accused wasn’t even hung he was pressed to death with stones.
2.
Growing up I was raised in a Christian household being taught of good vs. evil and God being the ALMIGHTY. However, as I grew older I started to form my own opinions on life and religion. I started to look into my family history and other religions. I shortly found out that I actually in fact came from a PAGEN background. After that I wanted to learn everything I could possibly know about Paganism. When most people think of Paganism they think of WITCHS or DEVIL WORSHIPERS… It's simply an umbrella term covering many different religions and belief systems. Upon doing all the research on Paganism I stumbled across stories of the Salem Witch Trails, and it very much struck my interest which lead to more research on the trails.
3. If you have not heard of The Salem Witch Trails, hopefully listening to my speech will help you understand a little more in depth on what actually happened during this time
period.
Body

1. Lets talk about the events that lead up to the trials.
a. Around January 1692 Betty Paris age 9 and Abigail Williams age 11 began having fits. These fits included body contortions, muster contractions, they would scream, and enter a trance like state for hours.
A local doctor by the name of William Greggs was unable to find any physical evidence of illness, so his diagnosis was that the girls were possessed, or bewitched. Soon after this diagnoses several other girls began to have similar symptoms according to history.com.
By February of the same year Salem Village began fasting and praying in order to over come the devil in this time of trial that was going on in Salem Village.
i. Around this time in February local lawyers began questioning these young girls as to who had bewitched them. The girls gave the lawyers three names… Tituba, a Caribbean slave, Sarah Good a homeless beggar woman, and Sarah Osborne a poor elderly woman.
Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne refused to confess once they were interrogated, Tituba on the other hand did confess. She said she has seen odd colored beats, and that a black man visited her wanting her to sign his book, and according to an article by Jess Bloomberg, Tituba stated “The devil came to me and bid me serve him”. ii. History.com states that Tituba likely confessed to avoid conviction and was threatened to confess or receive a severe beating. She even offered other names of “witch’s” practicing witchcraft in Salem Village.
With that hysteria spread through Salem like wildfire. With every accusation came interrogation, which would lead to a confession, and the confessions would lead to other individuals being named. If you didn’t confess you were most likely to be hanged.

2. Now lets talk a little about the trials themselves.
a. Governor Williams Phipps ordered a court of Oyer and Terminer, which means to hear and decide on these witchcraft cases.
i.
The first case of this special court was the Trial of Bridget Bishops. She maintained her innocence throughout the trial. She was an older woman known for gossiping in Salem Village according to Smithsonian Magazine according to her clamming innocent she was found guilty and on June 10th, 1692 she became the first person to be hanged in these trials. ii. After her hanging Cotton Mater a respected minister wrote a letter to the courts to disallow any evidence that came in the form of dreams, or visions. The courts ignored his advice and the hangings continued.
5 people in July, 5 in August, and 8 in September. One man in August refused to plead guilty or not guilty and because of his refusal they pressed him to death with heavy stones. Basically what they did was lay him on the ground and kept pressing large stones on him one on top of the other until he could no longer breath and died. iii. Cotton maters father Increase Mater the president of Harvard University gave a quote regarding spectral evidence. “It better that 10 suspected witch’s escape then 1 innocent person be condemned”.
Due to Increase Mater’s quote of the trials Governor Phipps dissolved the special court. The only reason he did it was because his own wife stood accused and the ply actually worked on the governor. After that only 3 out of 63 people were found
guilty.

3. In May 1693 the trials were stopped, but the damage had already been done.
a. All the prisoners were pardoned, but 19 people were hanged, 1 pressed to death, and several more actually died in jail. In all almost 200 people were accused of witchcraft.
These trials were finished but took a long toll on the families of those slain. The hysteria was over but would take a very long time for the wounds to heal.
i. Several judges that over saw the trials openly confessed error and guilt for their part in the trials. On January 14th 1697 the Mass. General court ordered a day of fasting and prayer for the tragedy that had occurred. ii. In 1702 the trials were declared unlawful and 9 years after the trials began the colony passed a bill restoring the rights and names of all those stood accused during the trials, and each person was granted 600 pounds as restitution. However; Mass. Itself did not apologize for the event until 1957 more then 250 years after the event. Even so we are still left with many questions many lives were lost many questions still surround this mystery.

4. What actually caused them to behave in the manor they did?
a. Linnda R. Caporael a Behavioral Psychologist in 1976 hypothesized that ERGO poisoning may have been the cause. It’s a fungus found in Rye and Wheat.
i. ERGO poisoning has been known to cause similar symptoms that the young woman in Salem exhibited.
It acts like LSD causing convolutions, vomiting, muscle spasms, and hallucinations. ii. According to the article Salem Possessed the writer believes that the witchcraft hysteria was due to social tensions and the loss of Salem land divided the Salem villages because some of the girls were unable to pick out the accused. They actually had to be shown in court who the accused was. iii. Those accused were from the East side of the village and the accusers were from the West side of the village. Leaving some to believe that neighbor quarrels could have played a roll.

5. We will truly never know what caused the girls symptoms nor will we know why those accused were actually accused. We can only look into the past and attempt to know what happened.
a. The controversy will continue to happen till we have defiant proof of what happened. I’ve given you the true events of The Salem Village, what happened to lead up to the trials, what happened during, and the aftermath of the trials.
People find this era captivating scientist, physiologists, and artist still study the trials, it continues to be a mystery and we will always have more questions then answers.

CITES
1. C. Hansen. Witchcraft at Salem (Braziller, New York, 1969).
2. Linnda R. Caporael Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem? (Science Vol. 192 (2 April 1976)
3. S. G. Drake. The Witchcraft Delusion on New England (Franklin, New York, 1866; reprinted 1970).
4. Smithsonian Magazine
5. History.com
6. HistoryofMassachucettes.org
7. salem1692.weebly.com/court-of-oyer-and-terminer
8. Edwin Clarke. Salem possessed. The social origins of witchcraft (Med Hist. 1976 Jan; 20(1): 86.)