The Growth Of Witch Hunts In The 17th Century

No one would deny that the 17th century was a century of witch hunts; thousands of women were accused and then subjected to tortures and interrogations such as being completely shaved so that the courts could ascertain if she had a witch’s or devil’s teat. Witchcraft was considered a crime against the church or state; an act of treason and a capital offense.” This meant that women found guilty of witchcraft or devil worship were put to death. The 1604 Act against Witchcraft and Conjuration was the most widely used document when trying cases in both England and the colonies of North America. This act was the law of the land until 1736 when England determined that witchcraft was a fraudulent practice rather than any real satanic practice. It
Psychiatry would once again bring into question the belief in witchcraft only this time from a mental standpoint. Psychiatry rose out of “the growth of mental hospitals during the early 19th century in response to changing welfare and penal policies.” The medical profession was beginning to look at the mind as an instrument that controlled the “hallucinations, emotions, and impulses behind abnormal social behavior.” For instance, in 1825, Richard Neal woke up one morning with the uncontrollable urge to kill the family cat. His wife told him to leave the cat alone, so he killed her. The neighbors came running and he shared with them that “his cat was possessed by witches and that they had transferred themselves to his wife.” The verdict when using psychiatry: Neal must have committed this crime due to “a delusion induced by insanity.” This is the biggest way that the 19th century differed from both the 17th and 18th centuries. People still believed in witches and the law said it was deceit. The 19th century said it was a medical condition, insanity. Of course, one had to prove the person was insane and many times this was
They even tried to prove that the Salem Witch Trials were some form of mental illness on the part of the girls. They believed the girls had schizophrenia. “This condition is generally associated with delusions of persecution and hallucinations in the form of hostile or critical voices.” This sounds like schizophrenia on the surface but these girls really believed they were performing witchcraft and that others were bewitching them. So, could a mental illness case stand in a court of law? By the late 19th century most witchcraft cases dealt with probate court. When a person died and left their money to someone other than their family, the family would contest the will using an insanity plea because their relative believed in witches. Owen Davies uses the example of Mason Lee of South Carolina. Mason left his $50,000 estate to the states of Tennessee and South Carolina, respectively. He left nothing to his family. When he passed away, his family contested it. They fought for seven years in different courts trying to prove that Lee was insane because he believed in witches. They based this on the fact that Lee was “plagued by witches and evil spirits.” The final judgment handed down by Judge Thomas Waties was that “a belief in witchcraft, although sometimes the symptom of a disordered mind, was not of itself any proof of it, as it had