Bridget bishop family and background
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Bridget Bishop
Woman executed during Salem witch trials
Bridget Bishop | |
|---|---|
Bishop, as depicted in a lithograph | |
| Born | Bridget Magnus c. 1632 Norwich, England |
| Died | 10 June 1692 (aged c. 60) Salem, Colony of Massachusetts |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Other names | Wasselbe, Wasselby, Waselby, Wasselbee, Wesselbee, Magnus, Magnes, Hayfer; Goody Oliver, Goody Bishop, Bridget Playfer |
| Criminal charge(s) | Witchcraft (overturned), conspiracy with the Devil (rehabilitated) |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Criminal status | Executed (10 June 1692) Exonerated (31 October 2001) |
Bridget Bishop (née Magnus; c. 1632 – 10 June 1692) was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692. Nineteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. Altogether, about 200 people were tried.
Family life
Bridget's maiden name was Magnus. her sister Mercy, her father John, and her mother Rebecca adopted the last name Playfer, Bridget's paternal grandmother's maiden name. She was married three or possibly fou
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Bridget Bishop
Bridget Bishop (died 1692) was a tavern keeper whose wild temperament and flamboyant dress enventually caused her to be tried and hanged for witchcraft.
The seventeenth century was a time of great religious excitement both in Europe and America. The turmoil over religious beliefs may have led to the search for witches, which reached a high point in the colony of Salem, in present-day Massachusetts, in the late seventeenth century. It had been widely believed even before the Puritans left England that witchcraft was a well-practiced profession in Europe. (A witch, it was thought, made a pact with the devil in exchange for supernatural powers.) In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, thousands of people, mostly women and children, were tried and sentenced to death for this crime in Germany.
Witchcraft in history
Witchcraft had been a crime long before the trials in Massachusetts Bay Colony. The ancient Hebrews and Romans were convinced that some people had the power to enchant others or take the shapes of animals, and they believed that these people obtaine
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Bridget Bishop, Hanged, June 10, 1692
Hysteria, wrongly accused for a crime you didn’t commit, tried, and hanged; try and picture what life was like in Salem Village, 1692. The people of Salem Village had to face an immeasurable number of elements that constantly worked against them: unpredictable weather with no protection against the bitter New England cold, performed back-breaking daily chores their farmland needed, and maintained the mindset of the Puritan religion: the fear that the devil exists and might very well walk among us.
The courts during that time functioned completely different than the ones we know today, and allowed the inclusion of spectral evidence. Spectral evidence was when the witness would testify that the accused person’s spirit or spectral shape appeared to her/him in a dream at the time that their physical body was at another location. It was because of this “evidence” that 19 people were hanged and one man was pressed to death during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
The first person to be tried, found guilty, and hanged on June 10, was the innoce
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