Salem Part 2: The Witch Trials

We're back, and we're ready today to chat about the drama, deceit and devilry involved in the Salem Witch Trials! From Abigail and Betty's affliction to the role of race and gender, the anatomy of hysteria, death by crushing and the accusation of a four-year-old baby who was chained up in prison, we're dissecting the anatomy of hysteria piece by piece. Plus, because this is Hot History, drawing parallels to the present digital witch hunts. I'm so excited to finish this series for you guys; please also find the hilarious Joe Hegyes here https://www.instagram.com/joehegyes/?hl=en! Shout out to our incredible researcher Gracie McCamish and editor Jamie Rose for pulling this together. If you're wanting more Hot History you can follow along on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/hothistoryclub/?hl=en, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@hot.history?lang=en, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://substack.com/@hothistoryclub, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@hot.history and of course, right here! 'Til next week, Ainslie x

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• 1:00Speaker 02

  All right, divas, so we are lighting our sage today to cleanse this space before we get into the Salem witch trials, because it covers some really, really heavy subject matter, including racism, misogyny, and really the ideas of religious autocracy that we see in things like The Handmaid's Tale, for example. But, as heavy as it is, the Salem witch trials started with, I don't want to say comical, because it's obviously not funny, but kind of like, delusional, nonsensical things like egg whites, cold weather, and basically a family feud. So as much as this is a deeply political story, and the impact that it has is so huge,

• 1:45Speaker 02

  it starts with kind of gossip and frivolity and tricks, which just fed every single person in this region's worst qualities and worse fears. So, the burning of sage today here is not just performative. We're gonna need it to deal with the level of drama incoming. So roll that whimsical, medieval theme.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Hi, guys, and welcome back to Hot History, your corner of the internet where we cover all the things in history that you probably should know, but don't. I'm Ainslie Harvey, your hot historian here, joined today by my own familiar, Governor the Westie, because we are ready to continue our series on the Salem witch trials by getting into all of the details, all of the drama, the accusations, and the Puritan crazed hysteria in Salem itself. So last week, in kind of part one, if you haven't gone and watched it, by the way, definitely go and do that, we covered the history of witchcraft, exactly what a witch is, how the trials in Europe mounted, and of course, the role of Imalius Malapocaram and the church

• 3:04Speaker 02

  in spreading hysteria, plus how the colony of Salem actually came to be. But today, we are covering the trial and the hangover that comes as a result of this. So let's jump right back in by doing a quick recap on the difference between Salem Town and Salem Village, because this is absolutely central to the story. So, Salem was founded in 1626, but was formally built in 1629 when a larger group of people began to inhabit the area, particularly Puritans, who, as we said last week, were the kind of radical Protestants that wanted to purify the Church of England of practices that they believed were too Catholic, and basically just kind of build a society governed by

• 3:47Speaker 02

  strict biblical principles, which they practiced at the First Church of Salem. Now, this was located in Salem Town, which was the more mercantile centre focused on things like shopkeeping and trading, and as such was wealthier than Salem Village, located about five miles outside of town. This was made up of the farming and agricultural families, who tended to be both poorer and more radically pious. But, like, I do want to be clear here when we're talking about the difference between these two, yes, the village was, you know, kind of more conservative, but this is like one big, you know, puritanical society. So, this is essential to why the witch trials were so successful in Salem versus anywhere else.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  So this radicalism, guys, really is the backdrop of our story, which kicks off in 1689, when Salem Village decides that it no longer wants to be affiliated with the First Salem Church, and as such, formed its own distinct church in the village. Now, you and I listening to this today may go, you know what? Fair enough. Like, who wants to go trekking the five miles from the village to the town all the time to go to church, or consult religious authorities? Which, again, this is a Puritan society, so this would have been a common occurrence. It's quite a bit to travel. But, for the workings of Salem as an entire community and region, this was a big fucking deal, okay?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Basically, the equivalent, I always think of it like this, is if your group of friends was like, "Hey, diva, we're gonna go do our own thing, and have our own rules, and our own kind of party at this new place." And it's all made worse by the fact that the owner of this new place was an extremely controversial minister by the name of Reverend Samuel Parris. So, he's our first character in this story, okay? And absolutely essential in how the witch trials came to be. Not just because he is very orthodox and kind of, you know, like this strict religious figure in the village, but because the first accusations of witchcraft started in his very home.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  So let's get into it, guys, by jumping up to 1692, which is where we're going to stay for the most of this episode, and focus specifically now on the home of Reverend Parris, who, as we said, is relatively new to the village, having initially pursued a career as a merchant in London and Barbados, but eventually decided to join the ministry. As Salem Village Church's first ordained minister, he has zero tolerance for spiritual weakness in his own congregation and in his own home, which included his wife of 12 years, Elizabeth Eldridge, their three children, Thomas, Betty, and Susanna, and most importantly to the story here, his niece Abigail, and servant Tituba.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  So that's the Parris household, okay, who really are supported and championed by one of the biggest forces in Salem Village: the Putnams. Yes, you see, my divas, even amongst the smallest rural backwaters, local politics runs rife, and for Salem Village, the Putnams were a real and present force. Headed up by Thomas and his wife Anne Senior, the Putnams are one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Salem Village, thanks to their extensive land holdings and prestige as one of the original farming families in the region. So like, this big agricultural family with money and influence and heritage and, you know, all those kind of things, who are pushing for an even greater divide from Salem Town,

• 7:27Speaker 02

  which again, is more mercantile in nature. And as part of this push, the Putnams really rally behind Reverend Parris and his strict religious practice as a kind of figurehead for this division, right? We've got our own church, we've got our own minister, like, or reverend, like, we should be separate. But, the Putnams weren't the only family of note in Salem Village, for there was also the wealthy and commercially successful Proctor family, who also owned substantial property, but unlike the Putnams, generated large parts of their wealth thanks to their strong connection with Salem Town. So, just within this kind of small village, right? We have two opposing families and two opposing economies, with the Putnams representing

• 8:11Speaker 02

  the more agrarian and very conservative methods, and the Proctors, the more commercial kind of economy that was linked with Salem Town. Which means that we have one side who wants greater division, and the other side wanting further integration. And this is important here, guys, I know it seems kind of like boring, but it is important, because what is essentially a family feud, ends up becoming the very beating heart of the Salem witch trials, which historians Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum make note of in their book Salem Possessed, saying, quote, "The agrarian faction viewed their commercial rivals, the Proctors, not merely as political opponents, but as morally defective individuals."

• 8:54Speaker 02

  And while, yes, the anatomy of these trials and kind of the hysteria that comes with it is more complex than simply kind of family feuds and neighborhood rivalries, this Proctors versus Putnam, agrarian versus commercial, Salem Village versus kind of Salem Town, all underpins what is about to happen next. Which brings us back to Reverend Parris's home in January 1692, where the first use of magic and witchcraft seems to be at play. So as we said, the Parris's have three children, one of whom is nine-year-old Betty, who is very close with her 11-year-old cousin Abigail, who, come 1692, is staying with the family as she is orphaned.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Now, these girls spend all of their time together, guys, which given they lived in a wildly radical Puritan household, meant they would sew, spin yarn, prepare food, clean, tend fires, and help in the gardens, but they were never unattended or let loose. Because if Reverend Parris or Elizabeth weren't at home, the girls would be watched over by their servant Tituba. Now, as we said earlier, Reverend Parris wasn't always a reverend, he was a former merchant and spent a lot of time in Barbados, which is where he first met Tituba, an enslaved person assigned to his household along with a man named John Indian. Now, we do not know a lot about the origins of either of these people, but it is largely

• 10:22Speaker 02

  believed that at least Tituba was indigenous to a region in South America or the Caribbean, with historian Elaine Breslow believing that Tituba in particular was potentially connected to the Arawak or Lakono peoples around what is now modern Venezuela. This working theory is really that she was taken from here, transported into slavery in Barbados, and taken by Parris to Salem with John Indian, who she actually ended up marrying. And Tituba is an important figure in this story, guys, because she is Salem's first witch. Also, she was accused. And this all really stemmed, as the story goes, from her watching over Betty and Abigail while the rest of the family were away.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  The girls were reportedly bored, and Tituba, looking to entertain them, suggested they try the egg and glass trick, which basically involved cracking the whites of an egg into a glass of water and kind of seeing what shapes it would form, which were often then interpreted as signs of the future, kind of like reading tea leaves. Now, according to Reverend John Hale, who was involved in the Salem proceedings, the egg and glass, also known as the Venus glass, was used to discover, quote, "what trade their sweethearts should be of." And this was a phenomenon popping up not just in Salem, but in the surrounding villages, particularly amongst young girls at the time, again, who were kind of saying, "Oh, you know, what's my future husband gonna do for a job?" Which is relatively harmless. I mean, think about when you poach an egg, for example.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  It's basically the same thing, like what these whites do in this water. But for the radical Puritans, this was seen as an act of folk divination and fortune-telling, which was strictly forbidden. So it's a bit naughty, right? It's a bit spooky for Betty and Abigail to be doing this, something which goes to a whole other level when the egg whites wind and fold into the shape of a coffin. An omen of death and suffering, like that, like, um, wolf thing in fucking Harry Potter, right? Which would ultimately prove fruitful, with young Betty Paris soon becoming afflicted with an unknown, undiagnosable, ungodly affliction.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  At first, she was absent-minded and aloof, staring off into space without the ability to respond to anyone. And then came the howling and animal noises, as she complained of bites on her flesh, hammering in her head, and ultimately broke out in contorted-like seizures. Seeing this, the Reverend and Elizabeth are shocked, obviously, but hoping this was kind of a fever-like illness as a result of the cold January Massachusetts weather, kind of go, you know, "We're gonna wait and see." However, soon after this, 11-year-old Abigail is also struck down with the same affliction. So the Parises are kind of like, "Okay, this is serious," they rally, and they spend four weeks, a whole month, guys, fasting, praying,

• 13:20Speaker 02

  and feeding the girls all sorts of, like, weird home remedies, while their conditions only worsened. After four weeks of this, their conditions continued to go downhill, and it got so bad that the Reverend had no other choice but to call for a doctor. And so William Griegs paid a visit to the Paris house, where he concluded without a shadow of doubt that Betty and Abigail were suffering from the evil effects of witchcraft.

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• 14:17Speaker 01

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• 14:26Speaker 01

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• 14:47Speaker 02

  Noting they had been touched by, quote, "the evil hand," the Reverend believed he could keep these supernatural forces within the confines of his home. After all, guys, he is the fucking Reverend, right? Like, quite literally, the supreme religious authority in the region, who can combat supernatural spookiness. But this is Salem Village, and any small town, just like this one, means that news spreads like wildfire, which meant that neighbors began visiting the Parises to observe the girls, after which, by pure coincidence and happenstance, the affliction, like an oozing postule, leaks out beyond the Paris home to take 17-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard, the doctor's niece,

• 15:30Speaker 02

  and most importantly, 12-year-old Anne Putnam Jr. So now, my divas, one of the village nepo babies has been struck. And with four active cases of the evil hand at play, answers were needed. And this was something Betty and Abigail were happy to do, giving them the name of Tituba. Now, when asked about this, they start recounting the story about the egg and glass, which FYI, guys, I do want to be really, really clear here, is almost certainly fucking bollocks. All the evidence in this is literally bollocks, but there is no proof in this particular incident that Tituba ever introduced the girls to this, or that either of them even actually did it.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  But it didn't really matter. It was the word of two little white girls in the Reverend's household against an enslaved woman of colour. And so Tituba was examined on the 1st of March at Ingersoll's Tavern, after which she was taken to jail for further interrogation. During this time, Anne Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard are also questioned, telling the Reverend they were plagued by terrible attacks from invisible spectres and apparitions, which we largely translate to kind of ghosts today. Although some historians speculate that Reverend Paris actually beat Anne Putnam to get this information out of her, which also coincides, just like so many coincidences here, guys, with two other women being named as witches, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  So I'm just like, kind of collectively, when you hear me call the Saras, I'm speaking about these two divas. Sarah Good was impoverished and known to frequently beg from neighbours with a reputation for being rather quarrelsome, while Sarah Osborne was older, ill, had been involved in an inheritance dispute with her late husband's family, and as such, rarely attended church. So last week, when we spoke about kind of the stereotype of older, exiled, menopausal, isolated, difficult women being witches, we are seeing this brought to life right here. So these three women are interrogated at Ingersoll's Tavern, like we said, where Magistrates John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin examined them, as did Hannah Ingersoll, the tavern owner's wife, who checked the women's bodies for the witch's mark.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Now, this was obviously, guys, like, such a fucking sham, because there's no definitive mention of what the witch's mark is, okay? It's not like in Barbie Princess and the Paw Paw, where the princess has the little, like, crown birthmark, okay? This witch's mark, as it was called, could be anything, from moles to unusual freckles to rashes and birthmarks or discolorings, which means my dermatitis and psoriasis divas would have been stripped to jail, okay? But Hannah, she's a girl's girl. She's like, "These divas are all completely normal human women. There's absolutely nothing to worry about here, just regular old kind of freckles and, you know, skin rashes from it being fucking 1692," okay?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  But they were still suspicious, and both of the Saras maintained their innocence throughout all of this. However, in a very surprising turn of events, Tituba confessed to witchcraft, admitting she had experienced visions of the devil. Now, hearing this, the entire village is set alight, okay? Including Reverend Paris, who, I do want to note, was cautious of kind of jumping on the witchcraft kind of bandwagon, and instead told the community to, quote, "wait upon God." But after this, he really is convinced that evil is at play, and as such, sends nine-year-old Betty off to live with his friend in Salem Town, in the hopes that being isolated from the other afflicted girls

• 19:05Speaker 02

  and kind of away from the centre of this witchcraft and magical accusations, that she would improve. Now, whether this was out of genuine concern, because Betty was seriously ill, or he's kind of looking around and maybe thinks this is a bit sus, and doing a bit of a test, thinking, you know, "If I remove one, let's see what happens," we don't know. But what we do know is that Betty remained in Salem Town for the trial, where she does make a rapid recovery back to normal. But Abigail, her cousin, okay, slightly older, 11 years old, the orphan, she does no such thing, guys. In fact, with Betty gone, her illness progressed rapidly.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  So much so that when an ex-Salem village minister visited the Paris home sometime in mid-March, he actually found Abigail running around the room claiming to see the spectre, again, the ghost, of a woman named Rebecca Nurse, who was allegedly forcing the devil's book on her, which you guys will remember, again, if you've listened to last week's episode, um, you know, kind of is an essential part in the formation of the ideas of witches, is this devil's pact, the signing of the devil's book. So they're really leaning into this now. So Tituba's confession here was the fuel that lit the witchcraft believers beyond all measure. And after Abigail ran right up to the family fire and pretended to fucking fly,

• 20:32Speaker 02

  even the most sensible of adults were convinced that this was witchcraft. Which then left one big question. If Tituba has confessed, is she the only one? Well, according to her, no. In fact, when she confessed to seeing the devil, she did so with the very immediate providing of a list of other witches in Salem. Now, before we keep going into kind of who the rest of these women were and why Tituba is kind of grassing them up, we have to stop and talk about the complexities of Tituba being the first person accused of witchcraft, because it really is impossible, when we are looking at this situation, to separate her position as an enslaved indigenous woman in a white Puritan community from the accusation of witchcraft.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  So firstly, guys, yes, she was accused alongside two white women, which at face value may suggest that race isn't as big a factor here. But both of the Saras were targeted because they were highly vulnerable and did not fit the ideals of Puritan women, versus Tituba, who likely was targeted for her race, which in the almost 350 years that have passed since then, has been questioned and dissected a million ways. So let's unpack this. Now, as we already spoke about before, historian Elaine Bresslaw believes that Tituba was potentially connected to an indigenous group of people in what is now modern Venezuela. But at the time, she was identified merely as Indian,

• 22:01Speaker 02

  with the original March 1692 records saying, quote, "Tituba, an Indian woman brought before us." Now, I want to be clear, this doesn't necessarily mean like she is Indian, as in from the subcontinent of India, but rather as a term used for indigenous people. Something these colonizers also used for Native Americans. Hence, cowboys versus Indians. And this is actually an invaluable piece of evidence for us to squash a big rumor which emerged after the witch trials around the time of the Civil War and beyond, that Tituba was actually a black woman. In this, her use of witchcraft and black magic was used to prove her race was sinister and sinful.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Something that Arthur Miller's 1953 hit, "The Crucible", didn't help by calling her, and I do quote here, guys, directly from the text for the historical context, "Tituba, a Negro slave." Now, if this were true, her race as a black woman would have been noted directly by the authorities versus as Indian. So this is just wildly incorrect and like plainly racist, right? There's also the false claim that Tituba herself was from Barbados, which, as we know, is where she was enslaved first under Reverend Paris, not where she was born. With the link here being that she learned the art of voodoo and black magic, which were considered a part of the Caribbean world at the time.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Hello, Tia Delma in Pirates of the Caribbean. Which, when we do think about it here, guys, Tituba, Tia Delma, not a big jump here. And again, this is all fabulous storytelling, but it's fundamentally untrue. She wasn't black, she wasn't from Barbados, she wasn't a voodoo master, and there's no evidence to suggest she ever did or encouraged Betty and Abigail to do the glass egg trick. So this accusation of Tituba being the first witch really is dripping with prejudice, which originated in the home of Reverend Paris, where Tituba, as an enslaved person, was already actively being treated as a kind of, you know, second-rate human by all of the household members, including the girls.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  So when it came time for them to level this accusation, Tituba, as a non-white enslaved woman, was an easy person for them to throw under the bus. They're kind of prejudiced already to think of her in this way. And I do want to note, guys, this was largely led by Abigail, who notoriously acted with such brutality and such prejudice in the trials that historian Frances Hill describes her as, quote, "quite without mercy." Now, she, of course, guys, is just a child. And a lot of the witch trials in Europe as well were based on the testimony of children who simply adapt to the environment and the beliefs of the society that they're raised in,

• 24:53Speaker 02

  which, for Salem, was a place already obsessed with Satan, witchcraft, and spiritual warfare. Again, remembering, she is literally living in the home of the Puritan reverend, which I guess begs the really big question here. Why did Tituba confess? Well firstly, Reverend Paris later acknowledged that he had, in fact, beaten Tituba during her March 1 interrogation to obtain this confession, which was recorded in the trial documents, with Paris saying he, quote, "beat her and otherwise abused her." So absolutely confession under duress here. But I also think in this, guys, Tituba is a clever cookie, okay? Aldeve's not dumb.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  And she knows of all of the people in Salem Village, she is the most vulnerable. It's what made her the easiest target for Betty and Abigail, as she really exists at the intersection at this point of race and gender and enslavement and foreignness, which makes the accusation easy for these people to believe. And I think if we are being honest, guys, and looking kind of at Salem, um, and at the way that these puritanical societies operate and the kind of belief and religious system around that, they wanted this to be true. They were desperate, they were begging for it,

• 26:18Speaker 02

  because it ultimately meant that their fears and therefore their faith was justified. So Tituba's confession is really just like giving the authorities what they wanted, which made it far safer for her to confess than to deny. So why then, I suppose is the next question, did she drag these other innocent women into this? Well firstly, I do think it's a little bit of kind of take your own medicine here, right? She's kind of going, "You want to accuse me of witchcraft, which, given my race and gender and kind of enslavement, is easy for you to do? Well, how about I accuse your very white, very puritanical, very stock standard neighbour? You know, how do you like those apples kind of thing?"

• 27:01Speaker 02

  But the bigger factor, and this is what makes her really smart, guys, is that she knows by making the threat of witchcraft bigger than herself and kind of becoming the catalyst for exposing this satanic conspiracy, that she will be saved, because a witch who confessed could provide testimony, which is exactly what Tituba did. Telling magistrate John Hawthorne that Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were involved in Salem's hidden witch network, Tituba also claimed that she and the Saras could travel supernaturally and had seen supernatural figures and animals, including, and she was very precise here, guys,

• 27:41Speaker 02

  um, "a black dog, a red cat, a black cat, a yellow bird, and a strange hairy creature." So a lot of very interesting details in Tituba's kind of testimony here, which again, to me, shows, one, like this was all obtained under duress, she's just talking nonsense, and two, it's all fucking BS, right? But it does also show, I think anyway, that Tituba made a real concerted effort to make this invisible threat, right? This kind of words on a page seem far bigger than just herself, to essentially make her testimony and therefore her life more valuable, which she drove home by telling the magistrate that a mysterious man, who was interpreted as the devil,

• 28:24Speaker 02

  had shown her a book containing the names of people who served him. And while she wasn't able to provide any new names to them, she did claim there were nine people. At this point, so we're like mid-March 1692 now, Reverend Paris is so deeply alarmed, especially because this all originated in his house, that he said to the whole village in a public sermon, quote, "The devil hath been raised amongst us." This, as you can imagine, was the spark that lit the pyres that shone from here to the moon and back. And soon Salem Village was engulfed by hysteria. This then saw Sarah Good move to Salem jail with Sarah Osborne,

• 29:09Speaker 02

  where their questioning continued despite maintaining their innocence. It also saw Elizabeth and Abigail temporarily recover from their sickness, as though the kind of capturing of these three initial witches had released the girls from their evil hold. But Anne Putnam Jr. remained very unwell, and under pressure from the reverend and her parents, she started making her own accusations. First, Anne claimed to see the ghosts of a local woman and new member of the congregation, Martha Corey, an accusation which shocks many, as Martha at this point is highly respected and very, very pious. Like, guys, if you're looking for like a snapshot of a stereotypical Puritan woman, it's Martha Corey.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Which really led to this break in the pattern of who we consider to be a witch. Remember, Tituba and the Saras, they're not the stereotypical Salem woman. But Martha absolutely was. So this is a huge shock and really reinforces the idea that any woman could be a witch. Next on Anne's hit list was Rebecca Nurse, the 71-year-old, highly respected member of the Salem community, whose allies were endless. So much so that friends, neighbours, and family members immediately stepped up to testify for her innocence. Anne also claimed, which is just like so fucking sick, I reckon it's probably the most diabolical thing out of all of this, um, because these girls really do have so much to answer for, but this is so fucked.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Anne says that Dorothy Good, the daughter of the already accused Sarah Good, was also now haunting her, which may have made sense, given the relation. However, Dorothy Good was four years old.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  A fucking toddler. Like, what? I, I, I can't even, I can't even like make sense how like this, this baby could be haunting people.

• 31:02Speaker 00

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  Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. The biggest accusation of this, though, came not in Martha or Rebecca Nurse, or even four-year-old Dorothy, but in one Elizabeth Proctor, which is when our family feud comes back into question here, my divas, because Elizabeth is the matriarch of the Proctor family, which means that a Putnam has now publicly accused a Proctor of witchcraft. After this point, it then just really becomes politics, politics, politics. Because guess what?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  The other girls, Abigail and Elizabeth miraculously regained their affliction and began leveling accusations at Elizabeth as well. Things then went from bad to worse for the Proctors when one of their own servants, a woman named Mary Warren, also began to have fits, claiming she too had seen the specter of a local farmer named Giles Corey. Now, he was formally accused of murder and not overly well-liked, so there could be some motivation for this accusation. But John Proctor, the daddy, right? He's not hearing of it. Watching how this hysteria has gripped the town as these young girls spread their nonsense like some kind of fucking contagion,

• 33:16Speaker 02

  John and the Proctors stood firmly on the opposite side of this crisis, believing this behaviour to be fraudulent. And according to contemporary reports, he threatened to whip any servant or member of his household who claimed to be afflicted. As such, Mary Warren made a full recovery and her accusation of Giles was dismissed. Not that it really helped him much because he too was later called in for questioning, uh, and he was actually killed in like the most brutal way of anyone, but more on that later. After this, more and more girls seem to become inflicted, including one of the Putnam servants who claimed to be visited by, quote, "the great black man", i.e. the devil, who wanted her to be his servant.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  And pausing here quickly, guys, like, I think it's pretty obvious, right? This is all made up and it's a big fucking performance. But you do have to take your hat off at some points to these girls for the creativity. Like, there's dark men, there's mystical ghosts in rocking chairs, Tichuba, right? The nine marks in the devil's book, like, these divas were born 300ish years too early because they'd have made amazing screenwriters, alright? So at this point, it's mid-March 1692, so we're only three months into this year. And the affliction has mainly taken girls. But around this point, it takes its first woman, Anne Proctor Senior.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Reporting spectral torment, she is followed by several other adults who report they too are infected with the mysterious illness. All the while, Elizabeth and the dreaded demon herself, Abigail, have truly regained the affliction and the person that everybody is now pointing their big old red fat lying fingers at is Elizabeth Proctor. So just to recap here at this point, we have Tichuba, who's confessed, the Saras, who are in jail and say they're innocent. We have Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse and Dorothy Good, who also claim innocence, although again Dorothy's fucking four, so how could she claim innocence? Um, and they're all arrested between March 21st and 24th.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  And now we have the wife of one of the most prominent families in Salem Village, who outwardly opposes these trials, accused by all parties. Something which could not go unpunished. And so Elizabeth Proctor was arrested on April 4th alongside another woman also named Sarah. So how many Saras in this fucking story? In response to this, as you can imagine, John Proctor flies off the fucking handle, guys. Outwardly calling the girls and now the women frauds and liars while at his wife's public examination on April 11th, which was basically like a big forum where these women were kind of asked questions and their bodies examined for witches' marks. But it didn't really matter. They were all going to prison regardless.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  At this examination, John refused to simply sit and watch, making such a show that the afflicted girls present began falling into fits around the room, claiming that John Proctor's specter was attacking them, like he's literally in the room with them and they're like, his ghost is getting me. Like, what the fuck? Anyway, this then leads to his own arrest and imprisonment. Like, honestly, anyone who basically calls out this injustice at this point is just getting locked up straight away. Including, guys, anyone who really stood against the Putnam's, which included the whole Proctor household, like we said, who were all but gutted at this point. Okay, both parents in prison, their three children, Benjamin, William and Sarah Proctor, also accused, as was John's sister Mary and many of their associates who, guess what, divas,

• 36:53Speaker 02

  also supported the more mercantile push to integrate with Salem Town. So again, we come back to this kind of family feud and clashing of economies and commerce and politics between the village and the town. This led to more than 50 men from Salem Village Town and the surrounding areas signing petitions, saying they do not believe the evidence against the Proctors, nor the accounts of the women afflicted, which led to even more conflict and accusations in the regions, which by the end of May, reached such a fever pitch that Governor Sir William Phipps had to intervene on May 24th by creating the Court of Oy and Termina,

• 37:33Speaker 02

  which is basically just a legal phrase, meaning to hear and determine, I think it was, to really deal with this mess. Right, there is an enormous number of witchcraft cases now on the docket and all of these people are just kind of sitting in jail, taking up space. And this is where the trial element kicks in here. So like, we're, we're kind of midway through the year now and only just getting to a trial. That's how much drama and just like gossip and, and accusation and hysteria is building in the first half of the year. But we are in the trial now, guys, and this was presided over by William Stoughton, the Lieutenant Governor, who became Chief Justice alongside Samuel Seawall and John Hawthorne as judges.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  The trial proceedings mainly took place in Salem Town Hall. However, there were exceptional changes of venue when there was more interest in the public, um, for certain cases. For example, Martha Corey, the kind of respected diva we were talking about earlier. Her examination took place at the Salem Village Meeting House because so many people wanted to attend, but that's kind of later. For now, the first woman to take the stand on June 2nd was Mrs. Bridget Bishop, a 60-year-old, twice widowed woman who was known for two things, guys. Firstly, quarreling with her neighbours and secondly, being incredibly quick-witted, something she maintained throughout her entire sham of a trial. So how did these things work?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Well, the key debate at the heart of the witch trials is what constitutes evidence. Because as we've heard so far, all these claims are really propped up by the testimony of these girls seeing ghosts, which was known as spectral evidence. Now, this was paramount in the prosecution with Abigail Williams and Putnam Junior, Elizabeth Hubbard and others, all claiming Bridget Bishop's specter had attacked, bitten and choked them. They even went so far as to imitate and mimic kind of Bridget's movements, like the copycat game, right? In the courtroom to drive the point home. So when I say sham and when I say these girls have a lot to fucking answer for, I absolutely mean it.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Another piece of evidence in Bridget's case, which has really lived on in legend and kind of taken a life of its own, is that of John and William Bligh, who had previously worked on Bishop's property and claimed to find small dolls, or as they called it, several poppets made up of rags and hogs bristles with headless pins stuck into them inside the walls. Now, it's key to note, this is all 100% alleged and no poppets were found and the Blighs were actually allies of the Putnams, but it didn't really matter here, guys. Salem, as we said, was out for blood, and so Bridget Bishop was the first to be tried, found guilty and hung on June 10th, 1692, at Proctor's Ledge on Gallows Hill.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Now, this was a major moment, okay? The first, like, execution, the first death of a witch, which ignited both further bloodlust from the community, especially the Putnams, and major blowback from the court, with one judge, Nathaniel Saltonstall, resigning from his position because he was so appalled by the conduct in the courtroom, with 12 ministers of the colony advising the court, a mere five days after Bridget's execution, not to rely on spectral evidence. But this was ignored and the trial proceeded. After Bridget came five other women, including Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Good, who were tried and executed under spectral evidence, which leads to one of the most dramatic and, like,

• 41:08Speaker 02

  badass notorious moments of the entire trial, which I think actually inspired Sarah J. Maas to write that scene in Akamath where Nesta, spoilers, where Nesta is thrown into the magical cauldron and she, like, sinks down, pointing a finger at the King of Highburn, okay? Chilling and obsessed with this. Sarah Good did something so similar, so she was one of the three original accused, and she basically gets straight up onto the gallows, she stares Reverend Nicholas Neis, who was there, kind of proceeding over the executions, um, she stares him dead in the

• 41:48Speaker 02

  eye, guys, smack bang, and says to him, "You are a liar and I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take my life, God will give you blood to drink." Obsessed, guys, I fucking love Sarah Good. These were her last words, with her and the four other accused co-conspirators meeting their end in the noose. But Elisa Devoe went out with style, okay? And she's calling out, being like, "Fuck you! You wanna send me to death? God will haunt you back." After this, um, display, and kind of at this point, we've got, what, five, six, seven or so executions under, like, the belt here, it's just a fucking free for all, okay?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  There are another five accused hanged in the next four weeks, including, guys, John Proctor, a death that was shocking to both Salem Village and the town, given his prominence, and of course, guys, to his own family. For while Elizabeth escaped the noose, thanks to her being pregnant, the idea that, like, one of these great men of this region could be struck down so easily and no one really intervene, showed the injustice of this court and the, kind of like, real grip that the hysteria had on the town of Salem. Everybody's like, "I can't believe this is fucking happening, this is just insane," right? But John's death had little shock factor in comparison to that of George Burroughs, to which I hear you say, "Who the fuck is that?"

• 43:18Speaker 02

  And it's a fair question, there's so many names in this and so many accused, but he was the former Puritan minister of Salem Village from 1680 until 1683. And he basically, after this, finds himself in debt to the Putnams, and despite paying it back in full, he's dragged back to Salem from where he was in Maine and accused of being the witch's, quote, "ringleader." Now, this isn't a neighbourhood busybody, okay? Or an unhoused woman, or a politically opposed man. This is a man of God, the minister, or former, anyway, minister of the village. And so this is a huge claim to level, and one which really kind of fell through when

• 44:03Speaker 02

  it came to his execution, because he stands up, kind of like, does the opposite of what Sarah Good does here, he stands up before everyone and recites the Lord's Prayer without a single error, okay? He's spitting bars, right? Something that was deemed impossible for any witch to do. So this absolutely generates some real doubts amongst the crowd present, but not enough for his acquittal. With Cotton Mather, the most stupid fucking name ever, Cotton Mather, you serious? What are you, a fucking builder bear? Right? Cotton Mather, a prominent Boston minister and author who was a staunch believer in witchcraft, kind of telling everyone to calm down and, like, get on with it, saying

• 44:45Speaker 02

  to them, quote, "The devil has often been transformed into an angel of light." So he's like, "It doesn't matter if he's a minister, he's still a witch, like, fuck him." And so George is hung. Now, by this point, guys, it is September, which is without a doubt the deadliest period in Salem history, okay? With September 19th bringing the trial of Giles Corey, who we said is kind of this 71-year-old older man who was formally accused of murder, and he's kind of not very well liked, plus there was the kind of previous almost accusation of him by a member of the Proctor household, that was dropped. It's all kind of very confusing as to how Giles Corey, like, kind of gets wound up

• 45:27Speaker 02

  in this, but eventually he's brought back in for questioning and accused, okay? But he refuses to enter a plea when he's kind of asked by the court, "Are you guilty or are you innocent?" And he's like, "I'm not gonna fucking tell you," like, this is a sham. So as such, his punishment for this is to be taken out to a field near the Salem jail and subjected to torture by pressing to death under heavy stones, which, as it suggests, is where he is literally, like, laying down on this flat stone and more weight is pushed upon him before, until he kind of confesses, which he refuses to do until the very end, which is probably a good point for us to stop and discuss the use of torture and the

• 46:08Speaker 02

  methods of execution in Salem, because there is a lot of exaggeration and misinformation out there. Now, as we already said in the Tichube example with Reverend Paris, physical violence and torture were used on the accused to obtain confessions, as was deliberate misleading legal questioning, with magistrates such as John Hawthorne questioning suspects publicly and repeatedly, with questions that often assumed guilt rather than tried to establish it. For example, we know from the court reportings that he would ask questions like, "Why are you hurting these children? Who else is working with you? And how long have you served the devil?" So basically, like, legal entrapment here, which is how Tichube's account, I think, anyway, becomes so wild, right?

• 46:53Speaker 02

  There's all these coloured animals and devil's marks, and it's all a product of this back-and-forth style of questioning, which is also how the confessions of other witches' names were obtained.

• 47:03Speaker 00

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• 47:31Speaker 03

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• 48:03Speaker 02

  The next part, though, is not legal, and arguably, obviously, other than torture, the most fucked up and creepy element, which was the physical examination of the accused's bodies for unusual moles, scars, growths, or, quote, "witch's teats," which were believed to be the places on the body where a familiar spirit might suck on, just like fucked up, right? And stupid and nonsensical and all the things. And these searches were deeply humiliating, often in the presence of other people, after which these people were loaded up and sent back to prison, where they spent months in extremely poor conditions, with some of them even being chained or restrained, including,

• 48:45Speaker 02

  and hold on to your hats here, people, the four-year-old Dorothy Good, a preschooler, chained to a fucking wall. And like, I really wanna take a minute here, guys, to acknowledge and say that, like, the crucible and things like American Horror Story coven, you know, are a bit silly, and they kind of make Salem seem kitschy and kind of drama-filled and all in all, a bit nonsensical and like, hee hee, with these little girls kind of making accusations about egg yolks and whatever the fuck. But this was brutal, and not only a miscarriage of justice, but a miscarriage of humanity, which we see in the case of Giles and the stone crushing, a method of torture that was apparently never used before or since in colonial New England.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  And the reaction to this was shock, with whispers of his death being very clearly unlawful starting to spread, but still, guys, it was not enough to put a stop to the madness. And so eight more people were executed on September twenty second, including Martha Corey, which really at this point is the nail in the coffin. Appalled by this conviction, Increase Mather, the son of Cotton Mather, again, another stupid fucking name, called basically a big meeting of the ministers to warn them yet again against using spectral evidence, calling directly on Governor Phipps, the guy who ordered the Court of Oyer and Termina in the first place, to put an end to this, writing, quote, "It

• 50:13Speaker 02

  were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned." And he has a point, one that even the most radical folks started to resonate with, as twenty-six days later, Governor Phipps dissolved the court with the lower house passing, quote, "an act against conjuration, witchcraft and dealing with evil and wicked spirits," which still had witchcraft as an offence punishable by death, but lessened the penalties for minor acts of magic, like using it to find love, to fortune tell, or, um, to unsuccessfully try to harm another person with magic, which like, I don't fucking get, are we in Hogwarts? Like, it's okay to cast some spells and use some magic, but like, if you are a witch,

• 50:56Speaker 02

  which you'd have to be to do that anyway, then it's all good? Or it's bad? I'm confusing myself here, like, this is just nonsensical, right? It's stupid. And at this point, we are at the end of sixteen ninety-two, when the general court decides that in the new year, the Massachusetts Superior Court will try to get to the bottom of this, and they're gonna meet for a special session to oversee the remaining cases of those left waiting in jail, with the express note that the new court will not accept spectral evidence as part of this. This ruling allowed Tituba to be freed alongside, thank God, four-year-old Dorothy Good, who was released to her father, but still many, many members of Salem Village and the surrounding areas remain locked up and under suspicion of witchcraft.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  So what happens in sixteen ninety-three with this new order? Well, despite not accepting spectral evidence, the Superior Court still condemned three of the fifty-six people accused of witchcraft who hadn't yet gone to trial, with Chief Justice Stoughton signing their death warrants alongside another five who were previously convicted by the Oyer and Termina Court the previous year, who kind of hadn't been hanged yet. But guys, Governor Phipps, he finally decides to do something good, he comes in clutch in the end and issues reprieves for the eight scheduled for execution, before allowing any and everyone accused of witchcraft to go free, once they paid their jail fee. Now, for those who could kind of scrape their pennies together and pay this, it's fine, right?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  They go on and they live the rest of their lives in Salem Village, kind of, you know, trying to put this behind them. But the majority of the remaining accused by this point were incredibly poor citizens who couldn't afford this, and as such, often died in prison, like seventy-nine-year-old Lydia Dustin, who was cleared for her charges but had no funds to be released. So even after the kind of last execution from the trials and kind of this pardoning has happened, the Salem witch trials are still taking lives, which by the beginning of sixteen ninety-three totaled to over two hundred people being accused, a hundred and fifty plus being arrested, fifty confessions, nineteen hangings, and of course, Giles Corey

• 53:09Speaker 02

  being pressed to death, with the impact of this hysteria reaching around ten percent of the entire Salem Village population. Which begs the big question, and the one that I've kind of been holding my tongue on the most here, guys, what the fuck happened to all those girls who made these accusations? Chief amongst them, Abigail. Well, Betty, as we know, was sent to Salem Town and made a full recovery, and while she never apologised for her role in the witch trials, she seems to have integrated herself back into the community, marrying Benjamin Barron, a tradesman associated with the town of Sadbury in Massachusetts around seventeen ten. Together, they had several children, and she died in seventeen sixty at seventy-seven years old.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  As for her father, Reverend Paris, the trials deeply damaged his reputation, and he eventually left the ministry in sixteen ninety-seven. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Hubbard, the eldest of the first accusers, and like we said, the niece of the doctor, she largely disappears from the surviving historical record, with some evidence of a Hubbard woman around her age marrying and later dying, but there's no real proof that this was Elizabeth, who also never apologised. Someone who was genuinely remorseful, though, was Anne Putnam Junior, who at twenty-seven years old asked to be readmitted into full communion within the Salem Village Church, and made a public confession of her role in the trials, saying, quote, "I desire to

• 54:33Speaker 02

  be humbled before God," and that she had been, quote, "deluded by Satan for her accusations." And while she stopped short of saying, "I lied," she did specifically express remorse over the death of Rebecca Nurse, saying, quote, "I desire to lie in the dust for what I have done," and asked repeatedly for forgiveness from Nurse's family and others who she helped accuse. So Anne Putnam Junior really does seem to develop an understanding of what her actions did and the impact they had on many, many lives, which she expressed before her death only ten years later at thirty-seven. This was something that one Abigail Williams never did. In fact, aside from knowing she never apologised, we know very little about what actually happened

• 55:18Speaker 02

  to her. She literally vanishes from the historical record altogether after sixteen ninety-two, with no mention of her life, her marriages, her children, her wellbeing, or even her death, as though she herself was one of these kind of great spectres that she claimed to see. This, of course, is not true, but I do find it ironic that we know so much about the lives and deaths of the victims, but very little of the perpetrators here. So if that's the people, right, the kind of individuals involved, what about the government? After all, how does a region recover from something so rampant and so traumatic? And what happens to the legal system as a result of this?

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Well, five years after the trials, in sixteen ninety-seven, the Massachusetts General Court made public apologies to the victims, with twelve of the original jurors on the Court of Oyer and Termina signing a statement of apology, as did Samuel Sewell, the serving magistrate in sixteen ninety-two, who personally read a statement of shame to the congregation and asked for God's forgiveness. The following year, a new minister was elected to Salem Village, the twenty-two-year-old Joseph Green, who was also determined to fix these rifts, even going so far as to kind of rearrange the seating plan in church, so families of the accusers and accused had to sit side by side. This was icy at first, but eventually tensions thawed, with Anne Putnam Junior giving her

• 56:43Speaker 02

  confession in seventeen oh six, like we said, which did kind of help reconciliation. Still, though, the stain of such a horrific period lingered, something the village and town folk tried to aid in seventeen fifty-two by kind of rebranding under a new name, they became known as like the Danvers Region, and this did work for a while. But in nineteen fifty-three, Arthur Miller released The Crucible, a play which centres on the Salem trials. But it is no historical retelling. This is laden with mass exaggeration and flat-out lies for dramatic effect, from calling Tituba a black woman who practised voodoo, to making Abigail and John Proctor have an affair,

• 57:24Speaker 02

  and then she runs away with all of his money after he's killed, like, it's, it's all very dramatic, and you know, it's entertaining to kind of watch and read, but it has all really muddied the historical reporting on the trials, with the play's success only growing in the years that passed. Like, I, for example, don't know if it's the same internationally, but we studied it in school, and fair enough that this was in the context that Miller had written, um, about the Salem trials to kind of draw comparisons to the behaviour of Americans in the fifties with communism and kind of the red terror taking hold of society, which again, he compares to the witch trials in Salem. But the effect of the narrative was immense, so much so that in nineteen fifty-seven,

• 58:06Speaker 02

  the state of Massachusetts formally apologised for the trials, and even though they'd all been dead for hundreds of years, the accused were formally pardoned. So that's Salem and the trials, okay, looking at the people involved, the beliefs of the town, how the drama kind of goes down, and the aftermath in Massachusetts specifically. But what about beyond? After all, more than any of the witch trials, which, well, most of them were far more brutal and bloody in Europe, Salem seems to have the biggest effect. So how did it change the rest of the world? Well, from the seventeen hundreds onward, we start to see the repealing of many of the laws which prosecuted and punished witches all over the Western world, so well beyond just kind of Salem or the USA.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  And while this didn't mean people stopped believing in witches, it did mean the standard of proof for prosecuting them changed. This all coincided with the increase in education and legal training, plus, of course, the wee old thing called the Scientific Revolution. And even though this began far earlier, around the time of Copernicus in the late fourteen hundreds to early fifteen hundreds, it shows society is now reaching a place of greater reasoning, which the events in Salem, particularly, guys, the crushing of Giles Corey, helped make happen. The other reason Salem has such impact comes down to the breadth of its victims. For while the first accused did tend to be outcasts or marginalised women, which we see in most of, you know, Europe.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  The big dogs also faced serious accusations. After all, guys, let us remember, in Salem, there were two village church officials, five ministers, four ministers' wives, and even the governor's wife, Mary Phipps, who were also accused, which really makes Salem the best example of how hysteria can take hold and lead to absolutely devastating consequences. But just because we understand this and made the necessary steps to end public witch trials, doesn't mean the treatment of marginalized women, or just kind of general suspicion of all women, stopped. In fact, since the end of the trials, the term witch has been transformed.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  No longer a term of the supernatural, but rather weaponized to encompass difficult, scheming, troublesome, bitter women, who usually fall into two camps, okay? The first of which, pretty standard, right? We have the old, ugly, bitter, manipulative, malicious woman, evoking the familiar cultural image of the crooked nose, the wrinkles, the shrill voice, and black clothing. And the point of using this term to categorize these women specifically, is to essentially turn female aging itself into something threatening, right? Something to fear, which recalls all of those same principles we spoke about last

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  week in 15th century Europe, with menopause and this idea of kind of drying up of menstruation, diminishing women's values. Because guess what, guys? Despite the fact 500 years have passed since then, we still value fertility and youth above all, because the basis of society is patriarchal. As such, women's roles within that society are linked to having babies. So if you can like no longer have those babies, you are marginalized, right? As this difficult, jealous, bitter other. Which is not only just like the most fucked up thing to say, okay? That women only have value because we make babies, but even more fucked up that this

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  was the view 500 years ago, in which the stereotypical old kind of witch was established, and that we still hold now, 500 years later. 500 fucking years. I mean, it's insane. Even Meryl Streep made mention of this in this clip here.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  When I was 40, when I turned 40, I was offered three witches in one year.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  And it was sending me a signal, I felt, about Hollywood and how they felt about people turning 40.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  So I felt bad and I, and it made me sort of, I had like a little, my back up, you know? And so, no, I didn't want to play them.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  So she does kind of, you know, make light of it, which is largely the only way it is digestible, but it's just fucking diabolical. And guess what, my divas? It actually gets worse. Which I will just say here, I don't want this episode to be a whole kind of defeat us, we're all fucked, we've made no progress thing. Because we have made progress and I feel like I really have to look at the world through a non-defeatus lens, given how much time I spent in the past, otherwise I'd just be fucking depressed all the time. But I will say this has been a really hard series to research and dig into, because of just how systematic this issue still is. Like the kind of parallels and comparisons that can be drawn are just insane.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  Because we do see this every day, day in and day out. In Australia, for example, I remember, I think I was in about year six at the time, so maybe 10, um, we had our first female prime minister, her name was Julia Gillard. And she was the victim of a campaign called Ditch the Witch, a movement which led her to ultimately deliver this absolute fucking banger.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The leader of the opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the leader of the opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror. That's what he needs.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  But that's just Australia, I hear you say. You guys have a rampant misogyny problem, which we do. So here's another example. Ex-UK Prime Minister Theresa May, she went viral for having a quote witches' cackle. Now, you're still probably thinking, you know, from last week, this is the country of the witch-mad King James VI, so of course this kind of impact still lingers. And perhaps you're right. So let's jump over the pond to the US, where Kamala Harris's laugh was blasted on social media for its quote crazy, exaggerated, inappropriate, and cackling nature. Which is exactly what Hillary Clinton experienced on social media when she ran for president, seen wearing a black hat and riding a broomstick. But, you know, maybe you're thinking, it's 2026, we're better than that now.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Okay, well, let's come back to Australia, where very, very recently, the ex-Victorian premier, Jacinta Allen, was also depicted in AI photos, wearing a witches' hat, with the sign, ditch the witch, on a fucking mobile billboard truck, which was driven around Melbourne, one of our biggest metropolitan cities. And I mean, just to drive home, not that we really even need at this point, but just to drive home how deluded this is, even fucking Beyonce has faced witch accusations, guys. And still people think there's no misogyny problem in 2026. Honestly, I can't even sit here and tell you there's no witch problem, because according

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  to recent reporting out of the UN, there has been a solid rise in women killed for witchcraft in the last decade, especially in Ghana, where they still exile women to so-called witch camps as punishment. Now, you may be thinking, whoa, let's pump the fucking brakes here, okay? We're not talking about rural Ghana or kind of tribal religious systems, we're talking about the modern Western world at large here, diva. And yes, I will grant you, okay? The last woman killed for witchcraft in the Western world was in 1782. But even without the physical punishment, the impact of the term witch is still life altering today, with modern research findings like that of academic Jennifer Burtall, showing that women who violate feminine ideals can face harassment in the workplace, leading

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  to job loss. Something that one 19th century suffragette by the name of Matilda Jocelyn Gage recognized, saying persecution of witches has nothing to do with fighting evil or resisting the devil, but is merely good old fashioned misogyny in action, with the express aim of repressing the intellect, influence, and therefore power of strong women. One key example like I always think of, and perhaps for our international listeners, this may not make as much sense, but for the Aussies here, I'm sure you will know, one of the media's most prominent, favorite fixtures is a woman called Abby Chatfield, okay? She is a podcaster, she's an author, and really like a social commentator in her

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  own right, who constantly speaks on her ideas of feminism, power, um, kind of, you know, dynamics in relationships, and her own treatment in the media, which is nothing short of a modern day witch hunt, guys. I am so fucking serious here. The amount of words that get put into her mouth, or like removed from quotes, which make her look fucking deranged, is insane. It genuinely scares me. Because now, the digital sphere is the new Salem village town square, and social media is the noose these media companies use to vilify these powerful women. But it's not all bad, guys, okay?

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  I said we weren't going to be fully defeatist here, and we have reason to celebrate. Because we do have women like Abby, who despite being a part of this digital witch hunt, refused to be silenced. So many others come to mind, Jamila Jamil, for example, and before them, we had the likes of Matilda Jocelyn Gage, who even back in the 19th century, suggested we needed greater media literacy and awareness of the derogatory nature of the term, saying that instead of reading the word witch on a page, we should read the word woman instead. And yes, once again, guys, I will say and make caveat, because I know people are going to be in my comments saying it, men were also accused of witchcraft. But as The Guardian says, these days when we say witch, we do almost exclusively mean

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  women, with any association with men long gone in culture today, and instead, used and linked to other words like whore, which intend to police women and shame them into socially prescribed behaviour. Which is why so many incredible women have fought really hard to reclaim the term. I know there's lots of kind of other podcasts and social people who will say, you know, hey, bitches and witches and things like that, but there are entire feminist activist groups, including WITCH, standing for Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, which was established in the US in 1968 to adopt witch imagery as a symbol of rebellious female power. Pop culture has also been essential to this fight, with fabulous witches being written

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  into books, TV, films, and stage, from Hermione Granger to Elphaba, both incredibly smart and powerful characters, to Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the Owen Sisters in Practical Magic, which FYI, guys, Practical Magic 2, I think, comes out this Friday, um, so I'm definitely going to be going to see that, who give us these kind of non-threatening, almost mundane, I guess you could say, look at the life of witches, which helps normalize the term. Then, of course, we have our supernatural divas, from Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Bonnie Bennett from The Vampire Diaries, and of course, guys, just all of the incredible herbalists, and midwives, and scientists, and gals, right back to the

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  beginning of time, who have helped transform the term witch from the idea of something wicked, to one which is linked to power as a result of resistance to conformity. To which, I say, my divas, get out your cauldrons and broomsticks, because we ride at dong. Which brings us to the end of another episode of Hot History, guys. Thank you so much for listening along to this first series that we've done. I have loved digging into this with all of you. And make sure to come back next week, because we are finally going to do the long-awaited, much-requested, multi-part deep dive on the Romanoffs, okay? Taking up all of September, which means that you will get seven episodes of Hot History

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  this month versus the normal four. That is how much I love you guys. So make sure to tune in this Friday for that first part, which will focus on the rise of the Romanoffs, from the first to the final zah. Until then, if you are looking for some more hot history, you can find us on Instagram and Substack at Hot History Club, and on YouTube and TikTok at hot dot history. As always, guys, it has been a pleasure getting down and dirty in time with you, and I will speak to you all next. No, wait, this week, guys, this Friday. Thank you so much, guys. Love you. Bye.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  This episode of Hot History was recorded on Derekland, always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

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