I felt it was a bit heavy on psychology and feminism-but I guess a book on the Salem with trials is bound to be. Still , I enjoyed the more mundane explanations for what happened and liked the narrative style. ( )

This book is subtitled the 'full story' and I had hoped for more, but it is a relatively slim volume. On the plus side, it is a good summary, with a chronology at the back, of the main events which led to the out-of-control witch hunt that consumed Massachusetts in 1692. That witch hunt led to hundreds of people being imprisoned in appalling conditions - and made to pay for the privilege, given that the justice system was modelled on the one used in England - with nineteen hanged, and one pressed to death with weights when he would not enter a plea. The colony also suffered enormous upheaval, with goods seized, children left abandoned because their parents were in jail, land uncultivated, and families reduced to penury even when victims were later exonerated.

I have read previous books on the Salem trials, including Starkey's 'The Devil in Massachusetts', which the author condemns as fiction - it would have been helpful if she had said why she holds that opinion. Her own book, as does many others, puts forward the view that the witch craze began with bored adolescent and pre-adolescent girls in the house of Salem Village's minister, Samuel Parris, dabbling in fortune telling and then getting in over their heads, leading to accusations directed initially at women who occupied the lowest rungs of the community. As the situation took on its own momentum, more accusers, including older women and even one or two men, climbed aboard, and pious church members were apprehended as suspected witches. Eventually charges were directed at their menfolk too, and at prosperous merchants and their families. Those with a higher standing in society were able to bribe their way out of jail and in some cases fly to far off places such as New York to await the frenzy's climax and burnout, but the majority had to endure appalling conditions and treatment, some dying in jail before they could even come to trial.

The author makes a couple of useful points which I don't recall seeing before. First, that Parris' pair of married slaves were actually Native Americans, rather than black people - so many books do not make that distinction and give a starring role to Tituba, the female slave, as presiding over the fortune telling sessions and teaching the girls some kind of Caribbean voodoo. Second, the means of fortune telling was actually rooted in English practice: namely, keys and a sieve. I encountered this method in 'Religion and the Decline of Magic' by Keith Thomas, which I read recently. So as the author points out, far from teaching the girls magic, Tituba was a witness, perhaps unwilling, to the girls' own meddling in magic they already knew about. When they accused her and two other local women of bewitching them, she 'confessed' as the only means to stop the beatings by her small minded and money grasping master, and she stuck to her story when it became clear that those who confessed earned at least a stay of execution.

Another positive aspect of the book is the attempt to put into context the social and political situation of Salem Village, given the various difficulties, such as the suspending of the colony's charter, then being renegotiated in England, and the ongoing attacks by Native Americans who had caused heavy loss of life in more outlying parts of the New England colony. (Although I appreciate that the book was published in the 1990s, to read constantly of "Indians" in this context did become a little irritating after a while.) This did make clear that the community felt under threat from a number of directions, exacerbated by the internal problems which beset the Village - long standing rivalries between the Putnam family and their allies who were Parris' sponsors, and other families who had had land and inheritance disputes with the Putnams. The author shows how the witch hunt provided the perfect opportunity for a senior member of the Putnam family to settle old scores, through the means of his young daughter Ann who was a leading member of the accusers.

There is some attempt also to convey how stultifying and frustrating the very restricted lives of girls and women in particular were in a Puritan society where no self expression or even light hearted amusements were countenanced, as all such things were condemned as ungodly.

It is also made clear what a self-serving bunch of hypocrites most of the ministers in the colony were, especially Cotton Mather and Samuel Parris. One man only changed his mind about the witch hunt when his own wife was accused. Men like these kept the persecution going in the face of more clear and cool headed scepticism, and persisted in maintaining they had done nothing wrong when the hunt was finally wound up.

I do find a few issues with this book however. The author bends over backwards to exonerate the accusers, or at least most of them, despite showing that two were involved in fraud, jabbing themselves with pins, biting themselves or using pieces of torn sheet that the father of one had supposedly torn from the invisible clothing of a 'spectre' (most of the 'evidence' against the supposed witches were their shapes which tormented the accusers while being invisible to everyone else). Hill also doesn't make enough of the incident at the tavern where the girls called for a particular 'witch' to be hung, but didn't bother to put on their usual act of fits, convulsions and the like - when the tavern keeper's wife and another bystander called them liars, they said that they must have 'sport', in other words, diversions or amusements. So sending people to their deaths was basically a game to them, and this is hard to reconcile with the author's assertion that most of them were genuinely hysterical and believed they were bewitched. Especially since one who tried to recant was then accused by her ex-colleagues and intimidated into withdrawing her confession and rejoining their ranks.

Also, it is natural that a lot of the evidence is sketchy because court records were lost, and only copies made for other purposes survive. However the author attempts to fill in a lot of the gaps with speculation and a sort of pop psychology as to why people acted in a particular way. At a distance of four centuries this has many perils. People of that time genuinely believed in spirits, devils, and that human beings could change shape and fly through the air if they had become witches. So it is pretty difficult to enter into that mindset, to say the least. The author does tend to draw on modern psychology for explanations where there is no extant evidence, and to make parallels with recovered memories (there had been Satanic abuse scandals around the time this was published, where the memories were shown to be false ones implanted by therapists).

On the whole then, for me this is a 3-star rating. ( )

"It was no accident that Satan strode forth from God's house."

Finally, an author that puts the blame on those in charge (Salem's ministers), rather than the girls or the accused or the wars with Native Americans. From the beginning, the "afflicted" girls are manipulated at home for personal gain. They cannot write, they are silent and obedient, with no outlet for growth. Now, combine that with a strict and terrifying religious upbringing, and you have a recipe for a weakened mind with a dark need to assert itself. Then enters the idea of witchcraft, which is introduced and feared at home. After all, if a person is distracted by their neighbor, that's one less pair of eyes on the leadership.

Also,I had no idea how deep Salem factions went. In the beginning, Rev. Parris had an unsteady position in Salem, not liked by many. When his daughter Betty and his niece Abigail start having fits and accuse their slave Tituba, it's a bad look for him. So, he invites over his most powerful ally, Thomas Putnam, to have a look. To create a witness and a deflection. Conveniently, Ann Putnam is the next to be bewitched. She is Thomas' daughter and she accuses Sarah Osborne. Osborne's sons were Thomas' nephews. When Sarah contested her son's inheritance, she was basically taking away Putnam family power.

And that' s just one example! Hill shows their skills as a researcher by sharing all dirt laundry in Salem. Land disputes, unpaid debt, marital discord, all of it. A common statement from the "afflicted" was "I saw the apparition of___I did not know her/his name then" until that poor individual is dragged to the courtroom. None of the judges are trained in law, they're church leaders or merchants with personal beefs with the accused. It was a guilty until proven innocent. This book had all the opportunities to be hard to follow, but it wasn't at all. Hills does an excellent job here. ( )

In 1692, hundreds of people in Massachusetts were accused of witchcraft. 18 were hanged for it, and one was pressed to death when he refused to speak at his own trial. Frances Hill takes a close look at exactly what happened in this Puritan-settled area to allow this to happen.

This was really good. There is so much detail in this book. It starts off by describing the kind of world these Puritans lived in, the politics that was happening at the time as Salem Village was trying to separate from Salem Town, and more. There is quite a bit of information Hill brings forth about the “afflicted” girls and their lives and families, as well as the lives of the accused, some of whom were elderly and/or very upstanding members of the community and in the church. With so many people (afflicted and accused) added as it goes on, it can get a little confusing as to who’s who later in the book, but overall, it’s still very good and well worth the read. ( )

This is an excellent account of the Salem Witch Trials, a book I would recommend to anyone interested in the subject. Beyond recording and analyzing the events of 1692/1693, the author draws interesting paralles to our modern-day witch hunts. There is a timeline at the back of the book (perhaps this should be in the front), which is helpful as Hill tends to skip back and forth in time, which might be confusing for some readers, although it didn't bother me. My one criticism is that while there are copious notes, they are not annotated, a pet hate of mine; otherwise I would have rated it higher. ( )