Around 150 people were arrested for witchcraft accusations between 1692-1693 in Salem, Massachusetts. The charges were serious and 19 people were executed in the ensuing trials.
How were these "witches", executed? Any were burned to death at the stake as a common punishment for witches convicted in Europe? Salem, which was at the time a part of the Province Massachusetts Bay, was an English colony.
No, witches in England's American colonies were not killed this way.
"No one was burned at Salem." They hanged them instead," Elizabeth Reis, professor at Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York, and author of " Damned Women" (Cornell University Press 1999).
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England and its American colonies were a rare exception during this period, at least when it comes to burning witchcraft suspects. Emerson Baker, a historian at Salem State University, said that "burning at the stake wasn't used as a method of execution of convicted witches in Salem, or anywhere else in the American colonies, or England." (Oxford University Press 2014).
"Witchcraft was tried in England and its colonies as any other capital crime. Baker explained to Live Science via email that capital crimes were punished by death by hanging. "Meanwhile on the European continent, witch cases were tended to be tried in ecclesiastical court [a court run and controlled by the church]. Witchcraft was considered heresy when it was brought up before an ecclesiastical tribunal. Baker stated that the punishment for anyone convicted of heresy is burning at the stake.
In continental Europe, the ecclesiastical courts saw burning at stake as a way of purifying the soul. Peter Hoffer, a distinguished researcher professor of history at Georgia, said that burning was used to purify convicts and to expose conspiracies. He is also the author of "The Salem Witchcraft Trials : A Legal History" (University Press of Kansas), 1997. Sometimes, church authorities in Europe feared that people would conspire with the devil to harm them.
Burial and memorial
Recent historical research has revealed that a location now known as "Proctor's Lea" was the site where Salem's convicted were hanged. Salem built a monument in 2017 to honor those executed at this site.
The bodies of the hanged victims were found near Proctor's Ledge. According to eyewitnesses, the bodies were dumped in shallow rocky crevices on the ledge below the shallow soil. Many references are made to family members removing bodies at night and burying them at home," Benjamin Ray, a professor-emeritus of religious Studies at the University of Virginia, said. Ray wrote "Satan and Salem: A Witch-Hunt Crisis of1692" (University of Virginia Press 2015).
Ray pointed out that efforts have been made to locate the bodies of hanged prisoners, but they have not been successful. Ray stated in an email that "Ground penetrating radar" indicates that there are only these crevices. There is very little space for bodies and no such places have been found.
Original publication on Live Science
