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“I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink!”

This curse was uttered by Sarah Good, who took her defiance to Gallows Hill where she was hanged alongside four other women on July 19, 1692, as a witch.

Witch hunts began in Europe in the 11th century and reached their peak from 1500 - 1660, when between 50,000 - 80,000 suspected witches were killed. 26,000 of those executed were in Reformation Germany (Protestants were more likely to embrace the Biblical commandment: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”) Between 75 - 80% of those accused were women, though in Denmark, Hungary, and England, nine out of ten accused of witchcraft were female. Women were thought to be spiritually as well as physically weaker.

The Salem witch crisis began in the household of the local Puritan minister Samuel Parris when his 9-year-old daughter Betty began acting strangely, dashing under furniture and twitching in pain. Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, attempted to relieve the girl’s suffering by making a witch cake, mixing the child’s urine into rye and ashes and feeding it to a dog expected to indicate the witch responsible for Betty’s suffering. This intervention was unsuccessful and Parris was infuriated when he heard of it, railing that Tituba had used “the devil’s own means to reveal the devil’s presence”—employing sorcery to catch a sorceress. Soon two other young girls, 11-year-old Ann Putnam and 17-year-old Mercy Lewis, along with a woman named Mary Walcott also became “afflicted,” their bodies contorting as they screamed of being bitten and pinched. When the local doctor diagnosed them as being “under an Evil Hand” the hunt for witches began.

On February 29, 1692, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were arrested and examined for “witches teats,” a little nipple through which they were supposed to nurse their demonic familiars. After being beaten by her master, Reverend Samuel Parris, Tituba became the first to confess to witchcraft. Like others who confessed, her life was spared, though she was sold to another master.

As the numbers of the “afflicted” continue to grow, both the young and the old were subject to arrest. Seventy-one year-old Rebecca Nurse, an invalid, steadfastly denied any occult involvement. “I can say before my Eternal Father I am innocent,” she declared. She was among those executed on July 19th, 1692, along with Sarah Good, whose four year-old daughter, Dorcas, was also accused. Dorcas was imprisoned with her infant sister, who soon died.

By the time the witchcraft scare ended in the fall of 1693, 185 people in Salem, Salem Village (now Danvers), Andover, and 23 other communities had been accused of sorcery. Fifty-nine of them were put on trial, 31 convicted, and 19 executed by hanging. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed under stones in the effort to extract a confession. He died two days later still protesting his innocence.

As in Europe, women were far more likely to be accused of witchcraft than men. The odds that an accused person was female were 1 in 1.31 (76%). Despite the accusations among the very young, only one person who was put to death, 38 year-old Sarah Good, was under the age of 40. And the odds that accused women were either married or widowed were 1 in 1.47 (68%).

Carol F. Karlsen, author of The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, studied all of the New England witchcraft cases from 1620 - 1725. She discovered that the women most vulnerable to accusation were those who had inherited or who stood to inherit an estate directly: women without brothers, sons, or without any children. The amount due them varied widely; some were wealthy and some very poor. Out of 267 women accused of witchcraft in New England during that period, “women from families without male heirs made up 64% of those prosecuted, 76% of those found guilty, and 89% of those executed.” Standing in the way of traditional male inheritance was dangerous indeed.

The excesses of the Salem hysteria virtually ended witchcraft trials in America. The last known case was in Pungo, Virginia (near today’s Virginia Beach), where Grace Sherwood was tried in 1706. She was subjected to the “water test” by being bound and thrown into the water. If she floated, she was guilty, as the water would reject a witch. If she drowned, she was innocent, though dead. Grace Sherwood floated and was imprisoned for eight years before being released. In 2006, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine pardoned her. “With 300 years of hindsight, we all certainly can agree that trial by water is an injustice,” Kaine wrote. “We also can celebrate the fact that a woman’s equality is constitutionally protected today, and women have the freedom to pursue their hopes and dreams.”