00:00:00.160Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases and we're bringing you this podcast
00:00:10.120because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted
00:00:15.240and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.780I'm Zoe Vendetotsi and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches
00:00:22.780and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.500The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.600Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.240Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.460And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.
00:00:53.620Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:56.620this week we're on episode 31 and we have a very very special guest who we know our listeners from
00:01:02.700around the world are going to be intrigued to hear what she has to say before that we're going
00:01:07.880to do our topical witch news roundup Claire I believe you have some news from Tanzania that
00:01:14.160you can share with our listeners yes I like it's now become a topical witch news roundup I like
00:01:19.720it's like news round except from a lot a lot of time ago
00:01:24.880there's going to be some people going what's news round you do realize that zoe okay well i'm just
00:01:31.580gonna i'm gonna educate people on what news round was if you're from the uk you'll know what news
00:01:36.200round was and is in fact it still goes it was a program for children that told them what was
00:01:42.280happening in the news it was great it's still a great program and when i'm in school i often show
00:01:46.880it to my younger classes because it gives them a roundup of what's going on we should see if news
00:01:51.440round would cover our witches campaign clear oh no that'd be great that's sometimes can i just
00:01:57.200check john craven it's not any part of the news round anymore though is it was john craven no he's
00:02:03.420not on it anymore it's all just young people now they're all very young they're very young
00:02:08.380sounds about 100 they're young folk barely out of their teens
00:02:13.560no it's young people now but john was john craven was he news round for quite a long time
00:02:20.560yeah it used to be called john craven's new i feel the dad that's maybe before me
00:02:25.800we're significantly getting off piste to our actual we may need to edit this out no
00:02:32.160okay right anyway back on topic Claire stop stop it stop derailing my news mission here
00:02:40.440so Claire you've got some news about Tanzania though yeah well we were contacted by one of
00:02:46.060our listeners in Tanzania called Everard and he's been in contact a number of times to tell us
00:02:51.820various different things about witchcraft in his area and also keeping us abreast of the news and
00:02:58.440this particular piece of news is that the UK National Archive has a three-part podcast just
00:03:06.920being put down at the moment about trials in the UK. It doesn't just cover the witchcraft trials
00:03:13.340but the links to it which we will post are about witchcraft trials in the 17th century so there's
00:03:19.720some really interesting information there about the confessions that were taken from people,
00:03:24.540how they were taken there's in fact a warning on it saying you know if you don't want to know about
00:03:30.020people being tortured don't read this but so you can see that at the UK National Archive and also
00:03:36.080you can download their three-part podcast on trials which includes witchcraft trials from the 17th
00:03:42.480century. That's great no it's interesting because obviously I mean we're not the only podcast that
00:03:47.020does or has done stuff about witches it's interesting to see different people's take on
00:03:51.000the information and also people that have got a bigger budget than us have maybe got more access
00:03:57.580to things. I think the UK National Archives has slightly more access to things like archives
00:04:03.400than we do so they've gathered they've also gathered together papers so you can actually
00:04:09.140see digitally what's been written out in relation to these 17th century trials so
00:04:13.940it's fascinating to read I actually find it really really difficult to read because of the
00:04:18.240the handwriting but apparently if you get into the way of the handwriting it can be decoded pretty
00:04:23.960quickly. Hang on a minute do you mean to tell me that as a QC you're not writing on parchment with
00:04:30.320like a feathery quill in that similar style? Oh yes of course I am sorry I... God ruining all my
00:04:38.120illusions of of everything. Hiding my big biro behind my back. Pens in your wig yeah anyway okay
00:04:47.660well that's that's good and i think also it's a very useful resource because obviously a lot of
00:04:51.680people that are listening to this are very keen researchers so i think anything where people can
00:04:55.640then go and delve in deeper and find out about their own area or potentially if you've got an
00:04:59.340idea that they might be in some way related then that'll be another fantastic resource so that's
00:05:04.320brilliant and speaking of resources she said seamlessly segging in did you like that quite
00:05:10.380fresh though wasn't it um we we've had information from an email from the scottish government say
00:05:16.880that the info about the petitions they've re sort of organized them basically so the links if you're
00:05:22.380trying to follow them the ones that we were using before to get to our petition and all the other
00:05:26.780petitions are now broken so we'll put up new links for that now you can no longer obviously sign the
00:05:32.560petition and we have had some people asking us where they can sign but that's now obviously
00:05:36.460closed that stage of the campaign is done but you can go back and have a look and you can look at
00:05:41.320you know things like the government's response to it and that sort of thing and i presume the
00:05:44.960updates will then occur there so we'll put the links up for people for that one just to remind
00:05:49.820you that our campaign still is very much live and we're still weaving away on the different things
00:05:53.760that we're doing so it is really important that you keep keep abreast of developments because we
00:05:59.620may call on you again to help us with making our voices heard so that i think is that our topical
00:06:06.180news roundup for this week yes if you can think of us metaphorically shuffling the papers like
00:06:11.280the people at the end can use that's very good that's very good we're doing there so our guest
00:06:16.900today is very exciting because it's the thing i think that when we talk to anybody about witch
00:06:21.760trials or about witches more generally that this area this location is the one that people
00:06:26.880immediately hone in on and that is the area of salem massachusetts so our guest today is going
00:06:32.900to be fantastic so in preparation for that we thought what we do today instead of our usual
00:06:38.780remembrance for Scottish witches we thought we would read out the names of the Salem people
00:06:44.400if that's okay with you listeners so I've got here it's just going to be a big list of names
00:06:49.780because we're going to go into the story in more detail during the guest's appearance so the people
00:06:54.760that were executed by hanging were Bridget Bishop, George Burrows, Martha Carrier, Martha Corey,
00:07:03.800Mary Easty, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, George Jacob Sr, Susanna Martin, Rebecca Nurse, Alice Parker, Mary Ayer Parker, John Proctor, Anne Pedita, Wilmot Red, Margaret Scott, Samuel Wardwell, Sarah Wilds and John Willard.
00:07:29.340Giles Corey was pressed to death so he wasn't hanged and in prison one person was born that
00:07:38.200was Mercy who was the child of Sarah Good and John Potts III and then also there were some
00:07:43.700people who died in prison so those who died in prison were John Durrant, Lydia Dustin, Anne Foster
00:07:51.500Mercy who was the baby of Sarah Good unfortunately also died in prison, Sarah Osborne, the infant
00:07:57.960child of elizabeth scargan and roger toothacre some people also escaped or fled and i'm going
00:08:04.260to read their names out because obviously as we've talked about before people's lives were
00:08:08.000ruined and even if they survived they might have been banished so they were john alden
00:08:12.020daniel andrew mary bradbury elizabeth carey philip and mary english edward farrington
00:08:19.760mary green george jacobs jr and ephraim stevens so that's the names of the people that were
00:08:27.540executed or that died in prison or that escaped or otherwise fled from salem and without further
00:08:34.980ado we'd love to introduce you to rachel christ she is curator and also educator at the salem
00:08:42.780Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. I am delighted today to introduce our guest who
00:09:00.060is from a place that everybody immediately thinks of when we talk about our topic. So
00:09:04.960I'm going to introduce you to Rachel Crist, who is the Director of Education at the Salem
00:09:10.460Witch Museum. Hello, I'm so excited to be here. We're so excited to have you. Thanks very much
00:09:17.220for joining us. We're delighted to be able to talk to you about your experience of the witchcraft
00:09:23.860trials, which are very, very different from the ones we have over in Scotland. Can you tell us,
00:09:28.980first of all, about your job? What is it that you do? Sure. So my official title is Director of
00:09:34.580education but I wear a lot of I wear many different hats so as is the case often for small museums
00:09:41.620I do a lot of different tasks day to day so I work with students and teachers this year I've
00:09:49.320been doing virtual classrooms so that's been one of our pivots for the pandemic I've been doing
00:09:55.440zooms into classrooms across the country and I've actually had a couple of international zooms which
00:10:00.120have been fun so we've been doing a lot of get you to do my class oh yeah absolutely honestly
00:10:05.840amazing yeah we can totally yeah it's perfect it's been really fun um you know obviously this
00:10:15.140has been such a challenging year but some of the silver linings have been we've had to adapt
00:10:20.080to you know different kinds of technology we weren't necessarily using before so i'm having
00:10:25.960a great time meeting students and teachers from all over the country and i've been doing
00:10:29.920international classrooms as well. So that's been really fun. But in a non pandemic world,
00:10:34.980I do many other things. I do all of our social media and kind of social media outreach. I do a
00:10:41.100lot of our event planning. We recently this past month did an event about race and the Salem witch
00:10:47.940trials. Jill Christensen, who's our assistant education director, and myself spent several
00:10:53.320months really diving into that topic and did a whole presentation on it, which is actually
00:10:58.100recorded and free on YouTube if anybody wants to watch it. So, and then we also coordinate with
00:11:04.020other guest speakers to come in and do events. And another silver lining of the pandemic is we're
00:11:09.380doing virtual events now, which we had never done in the past, which has really just broadened our
00:11:13.880audience. And then, I mean, day to day, again, in a non-pandemic world, I train our staff to give
00:11:20.720tours. So I do a lot of training specifically over the summer to get our staff ready to talk about
00:11:26.740this very kind of complex, dense history. And I also do a lot of curation work. So we recently
00:11:32.800updated our exhibit, which is Evolving Perceptions. And I was the one who wrote that interpretive
00:11:38.400content update and so on. And I can keep going. It's a lot of different tasks, but it's definitely
00:11:44.480never boring. And it's a really just absolutely fascinating subject matter. And did you have the
00:11:50.380interest in the subject matter before you became involved in the job? Or did you get the job and
00:11:55.680then become involved in the subject matter? So I always really loved pop culture witchcraft. So,0.82
00:12:02.400you know, I was very much raised with Harry Potter and Wicked and, you know, these kind of
00:12:07.420different fictional witches. So, you know, there are Halloween costumes of me dressed up like a
00:12:12.800witch for years, which is kind of funny now. But historically, I didn't know anything about the
00:12:17.400witch trials. I didn't really know anything about the Salem witch trials until I was in college,
00:12:22.500working on my undergraduate degree. I was a history major and I didn't really know what
00:12:26.500I wanted to do with it. And I knew I loved gender history, but I needed to figure out a way to make
00:12:32.220money, you know, be, find a profession where I could use that. So I had applied to just a bunch
00:12:37.400of museums in Massachusetts and ended up being hired by the Salem Witch Museum. And I just fell
00:12:43.820in love with the subject as I think so many of us do. And now I'm, I think six years in working
00:12:50.140here seven years six years something like that and uh it's an infatuation that i think will last
00:12:55.360me a lifetime i mean it's an enviable and fascinating job you must have i mean what we
00:13:01.180see about salem and when we see it on the internet and stuff like that is it's not only the museum
00:13:05.980but the actual place itself is still steeped in the history the buildings the streets the names
00:13:12.780of places that must be a like living in a museum the whole area yeah salem's an amazing place to
00:13:20.120live. Salem is so interesting because there's so many layers to the history. So the witch trials
00:13:25.320are a very, very small period in Salem's larger history. Salem has so many firsts, you know,
00:13:32.520there's just, you kind of throw a rock and you hit something historical in Salem. And Salem has this
00:13:37.820really amazing history of the maritime trade. So there's a history of piracy connected to Salem.
00:13:44.440The industrial revolution has a huge impact in Salem. You know, it's just, you can just keep
00:13:49.280going and going and going and the witchcraft stuff is fascinating but it's really just a small
00:13:55.080portion of what Salem has to offer historically. On that very very point can you for the Witches
00:14:02.200of Scotland listeners tell us briefly about the Salem witch trials because I know with your
00:14:09.800knowledge on it we could probably have you back for five weeks in a row telling us about it but
00:14:15.040if you can explain to us briefly what what happened in Salem? Sure so the Salem witch trials
00:14:22.920are really interesting because in many ways they're the exception to all the rules in terms
00:14:28.100of colonial American witch trials. So witch trials had happened in the English colonies before Salem
00:14:35.080but they had not been as extreme or as intense and there really are few witch trials after Salem
00:14:43.180really no executions after 1692. It's really, this is like the last gasp of a different mentality,
00:14:52.460a different kind of society in some ways. So when you see witch trials before Salem,
00:14:57.240you see one person being executed, maybe as many as five or six, but it was rare and it wasn't
00:15:05.800particularly extreme, especially if we compare ourselves to a place like Scotland that had
00:15:10.580enormous witch trials. However, Salem, as I said, really just breaks all the rules. And that's why
00:15:16.880the word Salem is what we hear when we're talking about American witch trials, as opposed to
00:15:22.360Hartford, Connecticut, which also had a pretty serious witch trial a couple decades before
00:15:27.060Salem, but you never hear Hartford, you always hear Salem. And it's because Salem is just such0.87
00:15:33.000a strange series of events. So essentially what happens is in January of 1692, the daughter and
00:15:41.420the niece of the minister in Salem Village become ill with this strange and mysterious sickness.
00:15:49.520So these girls are falling to the ground, they're clutching their heads, they're making animal
00:15:54.460sounds, they're having what we might almost consider to be seizures, and it's really frightening to the
00:16:00.460adults in their lives. These are young kids, 11 years old and nine years old. So after a month
00:16:07.000goes by, they've tried all the usual remedies. They try praying and fasting. They call in a
00:16:12.760doctor. The doctor looks at the girls and says, I don't have a medical explanation for this
00:16:18.700behavior. However, it could be the effects of bewitchment. So in the 17th century, everybody
00:16:26.020believes in the devil everybody believes in witchcraft this was just something that could
00:16:31.020happen at any time so when the doctor says witches are the ones hurting these girls everyone kind of
00:16:37.300goes yep all right that makes sense so with bewitchment being the case that means you now
00:16:43.460need to find the witch so they essentially ask the girls who is hurting you do you know who the
00:16:49.600witch is and they come up with three names so those names are sarah good sarah osborne and
00:16:55.400Tituba. And these are kind of the usual cast of characters you would see targeted during a witch
00:17:02.220trial. These are three women who are social outcasts. They don't quite fit in. Sarah Good1.00
00:17:07.860is a beggar who was known to be kind of cantankerous. You know, she'd go house to house1.00
00:17:12.980begging. And if you didn't give her as much as she felt she deserved, she'd yell at you,0.97
00:17:17.300she'd swear, she'd mutter under her breath, all things that a Puritan woman is not supposed to0.99
00:17:21.440be doing. Sarah Osborne is a woman who had married beneath her station. She'd married one of her0.99
00:17:26.800servants. And she also hadn't been to church for some time because she'd been ill, which again is
00:17:31.720very concerning in a Puritan society. And then Tichva was a slave. So we don't know exactly
00:17:39.180where she's from, but we know she's a woman of color. So right off the bat, she's as low as you1.00
00:17:44.280can be in the Puritan social strata. So these three women were kind of the obvious choices for
00:17:49.860people who are consorting with the devil so they bring them in they have an examination
00:17:54.540sarah good and sarah osborne say i have no idea what you're talking about i am not a witch
00:17:59.060but tituba confesses she says yes i'm a witch you've got me and there are other witches in
00:18:04.860salem tituba probably confesses because she knows nobody's coming to her defense
00:18:10.420she was again a slave nobody was going to stand up in court and really you know
00:18:15.600defend her innocence. She also may have been beaten before her trial. But either way,0.97
00:18:21.560this is really what triggers the witch trial as now, not just one witch, there are other witches
00:18:28.240in the community, and they have to find them. So things really start to spiral out of control
00:18:33.460pretty quickly. Suddenly, anybody you've had a problem with, you've had a dispute with over
00:18:39.240borders, territory, I think you stole something from me 20 years ago, or people who have done
00:18:46.540something socially taboo, like yell at their husbands, you know, publicly, you know, have an
00:18:52.940argument or something scandalous, so on. These are the people who really start to get targeted during
00:18:58.820the witch trials. And things really start to spiral out of control pretty quickly. The other
00:19:04.020big thing to keep in mind here is massachusetts bay colony had lost their charter in 1684 which
00:19:10.560meant that they didn't know what their legal system was going to look like they're waiting
00:19:14.860for their new charter to tell them how their courts are going to operate and who their elected
00:19:19.280officials are going to be but they don't have it until may of 1692 so finally the charter arrives
00:19:25.940they get it but now there's literally dozens and dozens of people in jail awaiting trial
00:19:31.220so they have to set up an emergency court to deal with these witchcraft suspects and
00:19:37.700because it'll take some time to implement the charter they basically create something called
00:19:42.720the court of oyer and terminer which means to hear and to determine which is an emergency court
00:19:48.660now because it's an emergency court they're allowed to do things that they normally would
00:19:53.280not have been allowed to do so basically they can accept evidence that would never have been
00:19:58.740allowed in an English court before this. It's never allowed again after this. And basically
00:20:04.060it becomes impossible to defend yourself against a witchcraft accusation because the evidence that
00:20:09.480they're using is things like looking up into the rafters and saying, I see the specter of Rebecca
00:20:15.840Nurse. You can't see her, but I can. And that's how I know she's a witch. And that was enough
00:20:22.060evidence to convict you for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. What is the logic on that
00:20:27.900then if you are saying i can see the specter of a witch but none of you can see what i can see is
00:20:34.400that person not kind of saying that they are also a bit witchy if they can see something nobody else
00:20:39.600can see so it didn't make sense even in the 17th century this was really controversial there's
00:20:46.500debates right off the bat at the beginning of that year about how maybe we shouldn't be using
00:20:53.460spectral evidence there's no uh there's not a lot of basis for this this is kind of sketchy like
00:20:59.440there's letters being written by ministers pretty early on saying we respect the court we respect
00:21:05.660you as gentlemen of Salem but maybe don't use this spectral evidence and for whatever reason
00:21:12.820they go against that recommendation and they use it and people are mad people are saying I can't
00:21:19.380defend myself against spectral evidence. What are you doing? And before this time, it was actually
00:21:24.760really hard to convict someone for witchcraft in colonial New England. You needed a lot of evidence
00:21:29.720to bring someone through the court and get a guilty verdict, which is why witch trials had
00:21:34.820been pretty tame in England and its colonies. So yeah, it really leads to things spiraling out of
00:21:41.260control very quickly and there is grumbling about it the whole time however they push forward and
00:21:49.400there are ultimately four dates of execution 19 people are hanged and one man is pressed to death
00:21:56.580which is essentially a form of medieval torture that is really again a symptom of how extreme
00:22:02.560Salem had become this kind of torture had never been used in the colonies before it's never used
00:22:08.100again after this it's very much a symptom of how intense the witch trials had become because
00:22:13.920there's these two kind of camps of the magistrates who are digging their heels in and saying we're
00:22:19.920doing what's best in the interest of the colony there are witches around and we have to find them
00:22:24.620and then on the other hand you have this growing body of people who are saying
00:22:28.500okay maybe there are witches but you're executing people who are not witches you're executing them
00:22:34.980on false evidence so all of this has basically gotten to a point in october where the governor
00:22:41.620realizes they can't go on like this so the governor of massachusetts whose wife had recently
00:22:48.940been named as a witch so basically uh she she's never you know brought in for trial she's never
00:22:55.700arrested but one of the afflicted names her based on this spectral evidence and that's enough for
00:23:01.580the governor to say okay i know my wife is not a witch so if she can be named by spectral evidence
00:23:08.200that means maybe other innocent people have been named too we got to reconsider this so he just
00:23:14.040bans the court of lawyer and terminer months more go by though because they're still now they need
00:23:19.820to really set up the formal court that's in line with the trial or with the charter a new court
00:23:25.460finally reconvenes in January of 1693. So keep in mind, people have now been in jail
00:23:31.500through an entire summer and winter. We get to January, the court convenes, which is the
00:23:37.420Massachusetts Supreme Court of Judicature, which is actually the same Supreme Court we use in
00:23:41.760Massachusetts today. So the first trials that that court saw were witchcraft trials, which is super
00:23:47.280interesting. So they reconsider the cases, but the difference is this court no longer allows
00:23:53.400spectral evidence. So without spectral evidence, you really don't have a case for any of these
00:23:58.340people. And ultimately, most people are considered innocent, received innocent verdicts. There's a
00:24:04.940couple of people whose guilty verdict stands, but the governor then steps in, issues, reprieves for
00:24:11.520all of them and says, you know what? You're all innocent. This is done. This is over. And slowly
00:24:17.660the jails start to empty. Although you actually couldn't leave jail until you had paid your bill.
00:24:23.400because while you were in jail you were charged for your chains you were charged for the food
00:24:28.340you consumed you were charged for any clothing you took from the warden so several people went
00:24:33.520deeply into debt in jail during this time and at least one person dies in jail after having been
00:24:39.300declared innocent but her family couldn't come up with the money for her bill that's the Salem
00:24:44.020Witch Trials in 10 minutes or less first of all thank you so much that is an absolute whistle
00:24:49.460stop tour through the ceiling which has I had heard of spectral evidence I'd also heard and
00:24:56.420please let me know if this is wrong that there was evidence that people could be in two places
00:25:02.520at the one time they could give the impression that they were lying in their bed asleep when
00:25:07.900they were actually attending a coven meeting or something like that and so people could actually
00:25:12.720have witnesses to say we know that person was in her house and we know that person was in her bed
00:25:19.360we saw it but that still wasn't enough evidence because the proof was that that person could be
00:25:26.120in two places at once and that was the proof of the devil working yeah so that's basically the
00:25:30.960logic of spectral evidence like you can so the whole idea of spectral evidence is a a witch is
00:25:36.840capable of projecting out this ghostly form of themselves that can then cause harm material harm
00:25:44.340to people at great distances from them. So again, this was controversial. It's not like everyone was
00:25:50.540like, oh yeah, that makes sense. You know, these were reasonable, rational people, but the fear
00:25:55.400was just so intense during this period. And this is a whole separate conversation, but there's just
00:26:00.640a lot of stuff going on in Massachusetts during this period that's causing enormous waves of fear.
00:26:06.680There's wars going on with the indigenous inhabitants that are causing really bloody,
00:26:11.480bloody casualties on both sides of the conflict. They've lost the charter. There's fights going on
00:26:17.280about borders and territories. There's something called the Little Ice Age going on. There's
00:26:22.160really cold winter. So it's just this perfect storm of events that's reached an edge in January
00:26:29.420of 1692. So when people say witches, everyone kind of naturally jumps on and says, well,
00:26:36.420that's why things have been so bad for this long. We got to find the witches and we found the
00:26:40.880problem and things are going to go back to normal and of course that's not what happens but that's
00:26:46.320the logic of the time it's so common we've spoken now and are speaking to people all over the world
00:26:52.300and it's just the same story every time it's it's so incredible that different cultures and
00:26:58.640different places are all like things are really bad we've got to find somebody to blame and if
00:27:05.560we blame them and we deal with them things will get better for us it's just a story that keeps
00:27:10.220repeating over and over again we in fact just interviewed somebody who is an advocate for
00:27:15.960people that have been accused of witchcraft in um african countries and you know as as recently
00:27:22.340as i think it was two days ago that that that he broke the story about a six-year-old girl
00:27:26.940that's been thrown out of school and therefore just out of education altogether because she's
00:27:32.100been accused of being a witch you know and i think that he'd been saying to us that in
00:27:36.440in sort of the time of covid that there's people that are looking for somebody to blame and
00:27:41.340scapegoat for that and there's been an increase again with witchcraft accusations because of that
00:27:46.260so it's amazing here we are in 2021 and it's the same sort of side of human psychology it's bizarre
00:27:53.700yeah so we we end our museum with the last thing our visitors see we call a witch hunt wall
00:28:00.080And it's a formula we use to break down historic witch hunts and also contemporary examples.
00:28:07.160So the formula is fear plus a trigger equals a scapegoat.
00:28:11.660And obviously in Salem, that works out very nicely.
00:28:15.500We have fear of, you know, all of these things that are going wrong and then fear of the devil.
00:28:20.540And that's triggered by the outbreak of illness in Samuel Parris's home.
00:28:25.980And that leads to a scapegoat where 150 innocent people are accused of witchcraft.
00:28:31.240But we provide three other additional examples of how we can see that playing out in a modern sense.
00:28:37.760So the examples we present are the fear of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II that leads to forced Japanese internment.
00:28:47.940We talk about the McCarthy hearings and blacklists during the Cold War, which is probably the most famous contemporary example associated with witchcraft or the witch trials because Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible.
00:29:00.020And then we also talk about the scapegoating of the gay community during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s when AIDS was referred to as a gay disease and gay cancer and so on.
00:29:09.480And those are just three examples. We stop in the 1980s, but there's obviously considerably more contemporary examples. And since 2017, we've created an interactive component of this exhibit to get people thinking about how this relates to our lives today.
00:29:26.820So if you go to our website, which is SalemWitchMuseum.com, under the History and Education drop-down menu, an extension of our exhibit, which is about witch hunts.
00:29:37.720And you can submit an example you think fits that formula.
00:29:41.680And so we've been collecting this information since 2017.
00:29:44.620We collect it on postcards and online.
00:29:47.180And it's been really interesting to see how people interact with this term today, how people interact with the formula.
00:29:54.040some people really understand it really get it you know a scapegoat is a group of people who are
00:29:59.320innocent who are assigned blame during a time of great fear some people though take it in a very
00:30:05.980different direction and really kind of don't get it but as long as people are writing in and
00:30:12.260thinking about the formula you know that's the important part it's interesting the way that the
00:30:17.180word and we Claire and I've talked about this in previous episodes it's interesting the way that
00:30:21.480the word witch hunt is used now and it's quite often i've noticed i've not done any sort of
00:30:27.120academic study on this this is just purely anecdotal and through social media but it's
00:30:32.380amazing now how witch hunt is often used by male politicians when ordinary people voters shall we
00:30:39.760say shall we call them are unhappy with them doing rubbish things so then you know they're like you
00:30:45.480know be be responsible be answerable and then the male politician says it's a witch hunt
00:30:50.460you know it's a witch hunt it's you know and you know what i'm referring to here but i'll not open
00:30:55.640up that entire can of worms just now but we are having a similar situation just now which i think
00:31:00.280is actually quite relevant and is on point with what you're saying um which is that we we've got
00:31:07.740a situation just now with the leader of scotland who is referred constantly by people that don't
00:31:14.280like her as a witch she's constantly called a witch and I think it's partly because it's really
00:31:20.760really easy shorthand it's mostly because of that because we've all got this connotation of what a0.77
00:31:25.040witch is in a really negative way and also because witch is so close to the word bitch but it's not0.96
00:31:30.660offensive in the same way that bitch is it's not as obviously misogynistic but I would argue it's0.98
00:31:36.260just as misogynistic which is strange which is strange because the word bitch in the modern day0.98
00:31:42.080carries more offense than the word witch and the word witch means against the background of calling0.99
00:31:48.380a woman witch is like you're a witch and by the way 400 years ago we used to burn you yeah yeah
00:31:54.820it's being more socially acceptable to say yeah well so coming from an academic background i can0.99
00:32:01.720tell you that is 100 correct you could easily write a dissertation on that topic specifically
00:34:28.040everybody believes in the devil. But because we're starting to see the advent of the scientific
00:34:33.160revolution and the age of enlightenment, people are really starting to debate how you can bring
00:34:38.200someone into a courtroom and definitively prove they're a witch. So that's really happening in
00:34:43.140the background of the Salem witch trials. And then during the Salem witch trials, things absolutely
00:34:47.580spiral out of control to a degree no one had experienced before. So in the immediate aftermath,
00:34:53.180there is considerable public awareness that something had gone wrong and there had been
00:34:58.320a miscarriage of justice. And that's, you see that in the primary sources really right away.
00:35:03.840And the government really digs its heels in and says, no, no, we did what we had to do because
00:35:10.080there really was a threat of witches and it was a public safety hazard, but maybe we did accidentally
00:35:17.760accused some people who were innocent. You know, there's even that little bit of acknowledgement,
00:35:24.360they won't acknowledge that people who were executed were innocent, but they do say
00:35:28.600maybe some people were arrested who shouldn't have been. So the fact that that can be stated
00:35:35.180right away really shows the environment that we're coming into in 1693. But then as the 17th
00:35:42.540century comes to an end, you start to see demands by survivors for a more formal acknowledgement
00:35:48.860of their innocence. So the first person to come forward is Elizabeth Proctor, who's the wife of
00:35:54.620John Proctor, who's executed. And she had been pregnant in 1692, which is why she is saved from
00:36:01.620hanging. They delay her execution until after she's given birth. And by the time she's given
00:36:06.800birth, the witch trials have come to an end. But she comes to the court in the late 17th century
00:36:13.040and says, I'm still seen to be dead in the eyes of the law. I need help. I can't. She's in the
00:36:20.480middle of a fight with her husband's children. So her stepkids about the terms of his will.
00:36:25.760And she basically is getting nowhere because she's still seen to be dead in the eyes of the law.
00:36:31.240And she goes to the court and says, you need to do something about this. I can't live like this.
00:36:35.360did you say she's dead in the eyes of the law what what do you mean dead you mean formally
00:36:41.360not recognized as a person anymore so that's how she describes it that's her language from the
00:36:47.720petition so she this is where the legal system of the 17th century gets really complicated
00:36:53.540to the best of my understanding so she's issued a reprieve but because she had been convicted
00:37:00.600she's still on the books as a witch and for others who had been convicted they basically
00:37:08.600need this extra step that really clears them of all charges formally so the next person to come
00:37:14.560forward who petitions the government she says the fact that this is still lingering in her record
00:37:21.000means she's susceptible to being accused of witchcraft again and she needs the government
00:37:26.860to make a formal declaration that says we were wrong you were never a witch this you know is a
00:37:33.980miscarriage of justice and so on so it's very complicated we've actually spent a lot of time
00:37:39.500talking about this recently and specifically the legal system of the 17th century but to the best
00:37:44.480of my understanding that's what she means so they this then starts to stir up more and more relatives
00:37:52.100so by the time we get to the early 1700s people are like regularly petitioning the court saying
00:37:58.700you need to do something about this my relatives my you know whatever my sister my daughter my
00:38:05.040neighbor they were erroneously accused of witchcraft and you need to recognize them in some
00:38:10.660way so some people are petitioning for reparations payments they say you know this is the money that
00:38:16.680I spent dealing with the witchcraft trials and you need to do something about it. They finally
00:38:22.800get some amount of reparations and some names are cleared in 1711. But it's really only the people
00:38:31.440whose families are around nagging the court for it. So people who had been issuing those petitions
00:38:38.240asking for recognition. For the remainder of the 18th century, there's petitions going into the
00:38:45.120court still right up until like the eve of the american revolution people are petitioning the
00:38:50.080court who are now children and grandchildren of those accused during the so much trial saying
00:38:55.020you have to do something more you know whatever it is reparation payments formal acknowledgement
00:39:01.600so on and it all kind of gets set aside in the late 18th century for various reasons but
00:39:09.680essentially the american revolution is the thing that really starts to sweep it to the side
00:39:13.960And from that point on, it all kind of settles until we get to the mid 20th century. So in the 1950s, descendants of Ann Pudiator, who was one of the women executed in 1692, they come forward and they say, you know, our great, great, great grandmother never received the formal recognition of her innocence that she deserves.
00:39:36.660and you need to do something about this and they fight with the court and eventually
00:39:40.800in 1957 the court comes up with a declaration that says Ann Pudiator and certain other persons
00:39:48.220are cleared of all charges but because they didn't actually name the other people
00:39:53.640who were executed or you know whose names had yet to be cleared they're still you know waiting in
00:40:01.380this limbo land and it takes until 2001 for every single person to formally be named and that
00:40:08.420happens on October 31st 2001 the last batch of people are finally declared innocent of all
00:40:16.760charges so it's a long process but it is ongoing there is actually one person whose name was never
00:40:24.780formally cleared her name is Elizabeth Johnson and she kind of just gets missed in the records
00:40:30.460And it was only recently that somebody realized her name had never been included.
00:40:35.920And so there's a legislator going through right now that's trying to have her name cleared of all charges.
00:40:42.280And we actually got a message earlier this week that it looks like it's going forward finally.
00:43:16.360who is the Holocaust survivor and a Nobel laureate, came and gave a speech at the unveiling of the
00:43:21.820memorial. It was really an amazing affair. I'm told I wasn't there. Our current executive director
00:43:26.540was very involved in the Tercentenary, as was our previous executive director and previous
00:43:32.420education director. So our museum was very, really in it during the Tercentenary. The memorial is
00:43:39.120really beautiful. It adjoins the old Baring Point Cemetery, which is one of the oldest cemeteries
00:43:45.500in America. And some individuals, not many, but a couple, including a judge who were involved in
00:43:51.400the Salem witch trials are buried there. None of the accused witches, but some people with
00:43:56.100connections to it. So the idea was that's a very poignant place to put a memorial.
00:44:00.480And then in 2017, another memorial was erected in Salem at Proctor's Ledge, which is where the
00:44:06.720hangings took place. So we actually didn't know with certainty where the hangings took place until
00:44:12.300very recently. There had been speculation for a long time that it was this area of Salem that's
00:44:17.780known as Gallows Hill. So the popular lore says it took place at the summit of Gallows Hill.
00:44:24.400A historian had come forward in the early 20th century and said perhaps it took place on
00:44:29.400Proctor's Ledge, which is a little bit further down on this. It's the same hill, but it's just
00:44:33.600a lower ledge. And he kind of gets ignored for whatever reason. He gets swept to the side.
00:44:39.240And then Marilyn Roach, who's one of the leading historians of the Salem Witch Trials today, kind of rediscovers this in the 21st century.
00:44:48.380And she basically, along with a group of other historians, came together and confirmed that Proctor's Ledge would have been where the hangings took place.
00:44:57.300So in 2017, a memorial was placed there, which stands today.
00:45:02.340How do the memorials look? What are they?
00:45:04.600so the memorial in downtown salem is a square essentially and in the front of the memorial
00:45:13.280on the ground are the last words and some of the victims that are cut off on either side which is
00:45:19.640supposed to represent how you know these people were silenced essentially and then there are these
00:45:24.920stone benches that jet out around the perimeter of the rectangle i guess is the shape with the name
00:45:32.420and the execution date of the 20 people who were executed, including Giles Corey. So the idea is
00:45:39.100the benches are there for you to sit and quietly reflect on the memorial. People also frequently
00:45:44.260leave flowers and things like that, sometimes handwritten notes there. And then the Proctor's
00:45:49.660Ledge Memorial, which has the names of the 19 people who were hanged, is similar in that it's
00:45:54.600this beautiful stone memorial. It's an ark. It has the names of each of the 19 and a tree was
00:46:00.420planted there as well. Farcter's Ledge is kind of awkward because it's in the middle of a residential
00:46:05.760area because we didn't know that's where the hangings were. So it's actually kind of hard to
00:46:11.100get to parking wise and it's not a very big memorial but it was really important to everyone
00:46:17.100that something was erected there to you know really commemorate the spot. I'm so glad though
00:46:23.320that they've decided to do it in any event. What do you think of our campaign? What do you think
00:46:29.080of trying to get an apartment and a memorial for the Witches of Scotland?
00:47:46.360We had a good amount of international signers.
00:47:50.280I mean, the majority were absolutely Scottish,
00:47:52.500but i think it helps for the government to see that the eyes of the world are watching as well
00:47:57.280i think that's really helpful but we also think it's really important that the rest of the world
00:48:01.360also sees that we are talking about modern day issues with witch trials and witch accusations
00:48:07.620and that you know that internationally we work together to make these things stop you know and
00:48:14.160to to have people like you're saying with your interactive wall about people thinking about
00:48:18.260why do these things happen and actually interrogate the impulse that we have and you know to not go
00:48:24.160there to not blame other people for misfortunes yep absolutely it's so important it's so relevant
00:48:29.860especially because when people hear the word witch they often think well like okay we don't believe
00:48:34.960in witches anymore this isn't you know this is a time when people were barbaric and gullible and
00:48:41.380you know all these things and it's like no no first of all people are still being executed for
00:48:46.320witchcraft today. Second of all, these were people who were the same as us. They have the same
00:48:52.000fears and worries. They fell in love. They had relationships. They felt jealousy. They felt
00:48:58.460excitement. These are humans with human emotions and the tendency to scapegoat that they experience
00:49:05.260then we do today frequently with other words substituted in. Instead of saying witch, we say
00:49:11.480you know terrorist instead of saying uh you know which we say you know whatever it's just it's
00:49:17.880something that you see happening again and again and again and it's not gonna stop you know until
00:49:23.720we really shine a light on it one angle i think that people use to sort of minimize somewhat what
00:49:30.740happened particularly in salem which i think has been debunked but i want to just talk about this
00:49:35.440briefly is people saying that it was caused by ergot poisoning and that that there was i think
00:49:42.940it was a bacteria that in the bread and the grain that then caused people to basically go bonkers
00:49:49.240and and that's what it was but i think that's been pretty roundly debunked now hasn't it
00:49:54.420oh yeah so the the ergot theory is something that haunts us here in salem in perpetuity i think for
00:50:01.020the rest of time but uh essentially this was a theory put forward in the 1970s actually by an
00:50:07.420undergraduate student who is a science major writing a history paper and she basically
00:50:12.840speculated perhaps the affliction was caused by ergot poisoning so ergot is a fungus that grows
00:50:19.800on rye or wheat and when you ingest it you experience basically uh a psychotropic effect
00:50:25.860so you'll it's almost like if you took lsd you know you'll have hallucinations you'll see things
00:50:30.740You'll also become very, very sick, and it really messes with your stomach and your digestion. You know, it poisons you, essentially. So she had speculated maybe that's why the afflictions began and spread. And that theory was debunked immediately by historians.
00:50:47.540So within a year, historians of the Salem Witch Trust had come out and said, this doesn't make sense if we apply it to what actually happened, though, because if it was ergot, it wouldn't be just one or two people in a house.
00:51:01.420You know, everybody would be eating the same bread.
00:51:04.400You know, it's not like you'd see one person come down with the illness.
00:51:08.180Again, everybody's eating the same bread.
00:51:10.660You also see more and more people becoming afflicted over a larger geographic area.
00:51:15.600So the affliction starts in Salem, but then by the time we get to the summer, it's in Andover, which today is a 40 minute drive away. So you see a specific group of people in Andover pop up with an affliction. That doesn't really make sense.
00:51:31.240And then you also, as we get to the summer, see people being able to turn the affliction on and turn it off. So people who are becoming afflicted when it's convenient and then going about the rest of their day and they're fine. And that's where we start to see fraud come into the story where you can definitely see some people accusing people of witchcraft for personal gain or for whatever, because of peer pressure or whatever the reason. But you see that clear fraud.
00:51:58.100So despite the fact, though, that this theory was debunked pretty conclusively by the historical community, it is really latched on in public memory.
00:52:08.920And you see it even today purported as fact.
00:52:12.120You'll hear documentaries that are supposed to be historical documentaries saying it's the Argot theory.
00:52:17.860This is why it happened. You'll see websites and things like that.
00:52:21.960sometimes i'm sad to say even you hear it on tours in salem you know some of the you know
00:52:27.160walking tours not most of them but you know it kind of slips its way in and it's because it's
00:52:33.180such an easy explanation you know it would be so great if it was just this clean easy
00:52:38.200medical explanation nothing more darker insidious here it's just people got sick and they0.96
00:52:45.200were silly puritans who didn't understand medicine and that's why things spiral out of control and0.97
00:52:50.620that's unfortunately very much not the case it doesn't seem to be yeah it would be it would be0.97
00:52:56.940lovely and very comforting if we could just use those sorts of excuses for effectively excusing
00:53:03.660what human behavior does but uh thoroughly thoroughly debunked rachel we could listen to
00:53:09.520you for hours and hours and it's zoe's and i so we're going to travel the world aren't we
00:53:15.960oh so much traveling world and we are definitely definitely going to come to the museum and take
00:53:23.340part and it would absolutely absolutely love to do that so we we really do hope one day we get to
00:53:28.140meet you in person perhaps when we're not all masked up but thank you so very much for coming
00:53:34.280to speak to today we very much appreciate it taking time out and taking time out from the
00:53:39.060work you do with students and I think it's so amazing that in the education system in America
00:53:46.340that allows some opportunity to find out about these sorts of things because as Zoe and I have
00:53:51.400spoken about at length the Scottish system does not teach us our own history so people are finding
00:54:00.880some people are finding out through our podcasts I mean we are finding out through our podcast
00:54:04.880about the number of people that were involved and you know the areas that were affected but
00:54:11.380it's so good that at least some schools in America have the opportunity to get here from you because
00:54:17.380you've got a really really important story to tell so thank you so much for coming to speak to us
00:54:21.540today. Thank you this has been so so interesting for me it's funny Jill our assistant education
00:54:28.440director and I have been saying the same thing of when the pandemic's over we're going to travel
00:54:32.360the world and go to all the places that we have an interest in um so someday yeah someday we
00:54:38.700scotland is 100 on the list and maybe there'll be a memorial to visit by that time so so we
00:54:45.360definitely hope so we look forward to meeting up with you and bringing you to the memorial
00:54:50.020yeah so hopefully you'll be able to bring me to the memorial when i come so great i look forward