In 1692, 14 women, five men and two dogs were executed for witchcraft in Salem. That spring there had been 400 people accused. If we know this history primarily from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, it is easy to forget the scale of these strange events. Miller portrays a small, claustrophobic world, where a handful of girls accuse a handful of their elders. In fact, there were reports of some 700 witches flying around Massachusetts, the youngest aged five and the eldest aged 80. One village after another imploded, with children informing on their parents and husbands on their wives. In The Witches, the American historian Stacy Schiff has found a way brilliantly to recreate this strange and fascinating story as it unfolded at the time.
Children were accused of witchcraft and ended up confessing to events that were no less convincing than a bedtime story
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