I’ve seen history shows about the Salem witch trials and the accusing girls’ hysteria, but the narrative usually ends with the end of the trials. What happened to the accusers later? Did they recant or insist they told the truth? Were the girls shunned, or did people try to forget what had happened? —L, via e-mail
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None of the accusers was tried, punished, or publicly reprimanded. Early in the trials one witness, Mary Warren, tried to back out and suggested that the accusations were bogus. Her reward was to be sent to prison as a witch herself until she miraculously escaped the devil’s clutches, confessed to her witchery, and was allowed to rejoin her fellow perjurers. Another accuser, Ann Putnam, made a public apology 14 years later—she asked the local parson to read a prepared statement in which she claimed she’d been deluded by Satan. A halfhearted measure, you may say, but none of the other girls did even that much.
Restitution was meager and long in coming, especially considering that even those found innocent had to pay their jailers for keeping them in prison. Owing about two shillings sixpence ($37.50) per week, many of those released had to mortgage their farms, borrow money, or sell themselves into indentured servitude. Philip English claimed 1,500 pounds in damages when his property was confiscated by sheriff George Corwin but was denied compensation. English got his revenge in the end, though. When Corwin died in 1697, English seized the body, holding it till the sheriff’s family paid him 60 pounds 3 shillings ($18,045). After English himself died, the Salem colony paid his heirs 200 pounds in compensation.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration by Slug Signorino.
