Salem Witch Trials – Ingliando

On this day in Salem, Massachusetts, Governor William Phips ordered the establishment of a Special Court of Oyer and Terminer (to hear and to decide). It was an attempt to bring order to the growing paranoia during what would later be known as the Salem Witch Trials. In January that year, three young girls, including the local priest’s daughter, started having fits and contorting their bodies. The blamed their behaviour on three women, one of whom confessed that she had sold her soul to the devil. The paranoia spread quickly and more than two hundred people – mostly women – were accused of witchcraft. Twenty were executed. It was only in July 2022 that the last convicted Salem ‘witch’, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., was officially exonerated.