♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein and today I'm gonna be in conversation with Stacy Schiff, who is a distinguished historian, Pulitzer prize winner, and we're gonna talk about her book The Witches.

We're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith auditorium of the New York Historical Society.

So what prompted you to want to write a book about the witches of Salem and the witch trials of Salem, 1692?

SCHIFF: I think we all are very familiar with the words Salem witch trials, um, I'm not sure we all know what they mean.

At least that was my understanding.

I was a little awed by my own ignorance and I'm from small town Massachusetts.

So to some extent, there was a correcting of misconception, a feeling that we don't really understand this seminal event in American history.

Um, I had been thinking a lot about women's voices and how women are strangled and how their voices are mutilated on the historical record and this is one of the al, very, very rare examples in which women are essentially running the show, and not only are women running the show, but adolescent girls are running the show.

And other than maybe Joan of Arc there isn't, really isn't a moment in history where the, the, the small and the meek are really acing it over the great and the powerful.

And then it was pointed out to me years after I'd written and published the book that actually while I was working on it, I had an adolescent girl in my household.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Uh, which gave you more trouble, the book or the adolescent girl?

(laughter) SCHIFF: Because this is being televised I'm not going to answer that question.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

(laughter) So, let's talk about, uh, how you get information on this.

Were there a lot of documents from the, the witch trials?

Or how did you go out and dig up the, the facts to, to do this book?

SCHIFF: There, there are about 1,000 pages of documentation about the trials.

Um, the lovely thing about them is that they are extremely texturally rich.

Um, the less lovely thing about them is that we don't have the court records, um, which is one of the great mysteries of the whole episode.

Um, so we have testimony, we have arrest documents, we have depositions, um, we have the jailer's records which are particularly compelling.

We don't actually have what happened in the courtroom.

So you're working really with, um, a mutilated record.

Um, you're also working with, um, a year which went missing from many accounts.

Ministers, um, sermon books were, just jump over those nine months.

Um, collections of letters jump over those months.

RUBENSTEIN: What was the biggest surprise to you when you did your research about the witch trials?

SCHIFF: I think I was surprised at what an accelerated pace everything moves.

It's very quick.

The, the, the first signs of witchcraft break out in January.

Um, essentially the epidemic is over by October.

Moves very quickly.

It moves not just through Salem, but through 25 communities.

So the extent of it is rather staggering.

Um, the way the story mutates, um, is also very staggering.

It begins as simple quotidian witchcraft and it ends with essentially a plot to subvert America.

Um, and the number of people involved is staggering, as is the number of descendants from people who were involved in Salem witchcraft.

RUBENSTEIN: So as a result of the Salem witch trials, how many people were actually tried?

SCHIFF: We know that there were accusations of between 140 and 180 people.

RUBENSTEIN: And how many were convicted?

SCHIFF: 19 hang, more than that are convicted, the number is somewhat vague, um, not everybody who is convicted ends up hanging because the court is disbanded before that happens.

RUBENSTEIN: How many were executed?

SCHIFF: 20 in all, 19 by hanging and one by, uh, more Medieval method if you can say that there is something more Medieval than hanging.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Let's talk about the genesis of some of this.

Um, in Europe, were there in the 1600s, 1500s witch trials or witchcraft in Europe?

SCHIFF: Um, it would be difficult to say which country had the worst record in terms of, um, convicting witches.

Witchcraft was, um, almost universal in most countries in Western Europe.

Russia actually executes witches.

Sweden executes witches.

Germany is a for, Scotland, almost every country has a record of persecuting witches.

RUBENSTEIN: And the theory is that there are witches that are doing bad things to humans and we need to punish them?

And that's, was, there were trials and other kinds of punishments in Europe for a long time?

SCHIFF: Um, there are hundreds of years of trials.

They, they generally track fairy closely with reformation ideas.

Um, the idea is that, yes, in a, in a largely feminine way one can work evil on someone else.

There's an extremely precise literature on the subject and much of that literature is being read in Salem in 1692.

RUBENSTEIN: So was this men saying women are doing bad things?

Or could men also be witches?

SCHIFF: In Salem, you'll have men and women and children and dogs accused of witchcraft.

Um, one of the more interesting parts of Salem's epidemic is that although many people are accused and many people are convicted, the mastermind is a man.

So you have a wizard at the center of this, this great satanic conspiracy.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So tell us who the Puritans were?

The Puritans were the people that came to Massachusetts Bay Colony, is that right?

SCHIFF: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: And where did they come from?

SCHIFF: They come from the, basically the, the Eastern parts of England.

And, and they come as, as people who essentially would like a, a bottom up rather than a top down church and with them is imported from the parts of the counties of England from which they come, the, the idea of witchcraft.

RUBENSTEIN: And why were they called Puritans?

SCHIFF: Because the church is not, in their minds, sufficiently pure post reformation.

They mean to make it more pure.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So they came over in the 1600s more or less?

SCHIFF: 1620s, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So most of the people I guess were in the Boston area.

But where was Salem?

How far is Salem from Boston?

SCHIFF: Salem is about 25 or 30 miles from Boston.

Salem where the, and this is a, a, a difficult distinction, Salem where the witchcraft breaks out is, is a village and Salem town which is five or seven miles away is a larger metropolis of 2,000 people.

RUBENSTEIN: Were the Puritans in Salem any different than the Puritans in the rest of Massachusetts?

Or were they all basically the same believers in certain... SCHIFF: They're all believers... RUBENSTEIN: Religious practices?

SCHIFF: They're all believers in the same doctrine and the, and it is in a funny way that very homogeneity that makes this epidemic take off with the force with which it takes off.

RUBENSTEIN: So was there, is there something about the, uh, Puritans in Salem that made them have more witch trials or witchcraft concerns than any other parts of Massachusetts?

SCHIFF: Um, Salem village itself, because it is suffering from various tensions of its own, on which I'm happy to elaborate, yes.

There is generally a correlation between Orthodox thinking and witchcraft accusation in the sense that a witch is a biblical construct, um, the bible tells us, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

And that is something which is prosecuted according to biblical law.

So where biblical ideas are most entrenched is where you see most witchcraft persecution... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

SCHIFF: In America.

RUBENSTEIN: So in what year did they decide in Salem that there was some witchcraft going on?

Was that before the trials, a year or two before?

SCHIFF: Prior to 1692 there have been about 100 witchcraft cases.

No one has been terribly eager to convict until that point.

The conviction rate is about 25%.

There've only been six people who have lost their lives to witchcraft, one of them just several years before Salem, and which is very instrumental in what happens.

But there's been no embrace of persecution until that point.

The idea of witchcraft is there but no one is particularly eager to sort of take this to court.

RUBENSTEIN: So what was the precipitating event that the, that led to the witchcraft trials?

SCHIFF: So in, in, at the end of an extremely cold winter in a household that was under siege, in a minister's household that is under siege, two little girls, one 11 and one nine, complain of what we today would call conversion disorder or, or some kind of hysteria where their, their skin is prickling, they're screaming, they're writhing, they're paralyzed and they're falling into trances.

And these are symptoms which, um, by the standards of the day were known to be, were known to correspond to enchantment or to witchcraft.

RUBENSTEIN: So they didn't say this is a psychiatrist kind of issue, we'll take you to a psychiatrist, they said that children are basically having witches doing this to them?

SCHIFF: You know, no one immediately jumped to the conclusion, no one wanted to jump to the conclusion.

Remember this is a Minster's household.

So you're pro, it, it's a particularly embarrassing to have an outbreak of witchcraft, a witch is in, in league with the devil.

It's a little embarrassing to have that happen in your household when you're the village minister.

Um, so no one, no one rushes to that conclusion.

A doctor is brought in, medicine in Massachusetts in the 1690s was as primitive as you imagine, and people are very, the, the minister Samuel Parris is very hesitant to say this is witchcraft.

But ultimately he runs out, for various reasons, he runs out of options.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So after a couple children are blaming witches for their problems, do other children follow suit?

Or who else complains?

SCHIFF: There's an immediate contagion, both to the symptoms, um, which is terrifying obviously to the people in the village, and to the accusations.

The girls will name three names.

Um, they name essentially three people who are on the outskirts of the community in a way.

Um, and other people will immediately start naming names.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So the people are complaining about problems they're having, they're saying it must be due to witches and it must be something we need to do about it.

But how do they decide who to blame?

How do they, do they have a trial and say we're gonna go get to the bottom of this?

Or how do they know who's to blame for this, uh, witchcraft?

SCHIFF: Um, there are hearings which are held immediately, um, to determine, the girls are brought in, the girls are deposed.

Um, there is a certain amount of behind the scenes adult configuring of the, of the record.

You can sort of see there's one particular family where you can see a little bit of magic being worked behind the scenes as to, you know, "Here's a name you might wanna suggest".

I mean there's a little bit of, of adult suggestion that's going on.

But essentially a panel of justices of the peace are seated to take witchcraft testimony and to try to get to the bottom of who is responsible for these afflictions.

RUBENSTEIN: And how long does this go on for, the taking of testimony?

SCHIFF: Um, it goes on for quite a while because it snowballs very quickly so that immediately, so three people are immediately named, the third of those is Tituba the slave in the Parris household.

And Tituba tells this amazing story of, um, a, a strange creature who's appeared in the house and who's tried to recruit her and she's flown to Boston with him.

And she just totally blows up the narrative, it's an extremely colorful story.

And once she has planted that idea, grown men begin to walk home at night and see creatures rustling by the side of the road.

I mean, everyone seems to suddenly see something.

RUBENSTEIN: Who were Increase Mather and Cotton Mather?

And what was their involvement in this?

SCHIFF: Increase Mather at this point is the, probably the greatest intellectual I guess is what we would say in Massachusetts.

He's a, he's the president of Harvard College, he is an esteemed minister, he's, um, pretty much the person you go to for advice of any kind.

And Cotton Mather is his immensely gifted, brilliant, handsome, tall 29 year old son, descended on both sides from eminent ministers, and who has been the person who has watched the previous witchcraft, outbreak, which was several years earlier, take off and written a best selling book on the subject.

And he will be the person to whom everyone goes over the course of these months, um, for advice.

He's the person who essentially controls the Massachusetts literature on witchcraft at this moment.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So they are brilliant people but they do believe in witchcraft?

SCHIFF: Um, and there is the heart of the matter.

A brilliant person by definition believed in witchcraft because a brilliant person had read his scripture and had read every one of these texts on the subject and knew that witches existed.

Because a witch existed as clearly as did heat or light.

I mean a witch was a fact of nature.

And you have every biblical, um, you have every piece of scripture to, on your side, you have every one of these fabulous witchcraft texts on your side, um, you have arguments like all these other countries that have had witchcraft persecutions.

How could all of these different cultures at different times have come to the same conclusions?

Obviously witchcraft must be real, right?

Why else would everyone have come to this crazy idea?

So there, so inherent in this is a sense of piety that not only does a witch exist but by, but by exposing the witch, you have actually done your God given duty.

RUBENSTEIN: And while this is going on in Salem, are people in Boston watching this?

Or they don't know what's going on?

Or what about the other colonies?

Are the witchcraft trials breaking out elsewhere?

SCHIFF: You know, one of the most disappointing things about, um, the 17th century is that there were no newspapers yet.

So news travels very slowly.

Boston is clearly watching, the more so because Boston, um, authorities begin to sit on the witchcraft court as the summer moves on.

It, the rest of the colonies don't yet know what's going on.

Ultimately New York will hear about it and in fact New York will voice an opinion on the subject later.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

So ultimately it's decided in 1692 to actually have trials, right?

And how many people, again, did they try?

SCHIFF: There the number is somewhat vague.

It's something like 127 people.

RUBENSTEIN: And each person gets a, his or her own trial?

SCHIFF: Each person is tried separately.

It's unclear, because again we don't have the trial papers, if the defendants sat in the courtroom for the other person whose trial was taking place that day.

But each person does have an individual trial.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

Do they have lawyers?

SCHIFF: There were no lawyers in Massachusetts in 1692.

Isn't that an astonishing concept?

(laughter) Um, they didn't believe in lawyers.

Now, that doesn't mean that they couldn't, they had, these are very litigious people.

They've been having trials for every possible thing.

And actually one of the beauties of the record, you don't have the trial records, but you do have decades, um, of trial papers for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The records and file of the quarterly courts.

And you have all of the intimate detail of what these families have done to each other and who has sued whom over the previous years, which sheds a great deal of light on what happens in 1692.

RUBENSTEIN: So you have a trial.

You don't have lawyers.

Is there a prosecutor who presents the evidence against you?

Or how does that work?

SCHIFF: There's a chief justice who is William Stoughton who's basically the driving force of the court and is, and who is a, has his own reasons to, um, be seeking a prosecution in fact in this case.

And it is one of the, there, there's no voir dire, there's no cross examination, hearsay is admissible, I mean, every standard that we think of, there's no reasonable doubt, everything we think of as modern law was, did not exist.

However, it was Stoughton's job as chief justice to instruct the jurors.

He could also tell the jurors what he thought they should vote.

RUBENSTEIN: So the chief justice who's presiding, he asks the questions of the witnesses?

SCHIFF: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: And the witnesses are people that are complaining about witchcraft, right?

SCHIFF: The witnesses are the victims of the, of the witches.

But remember the, in the room at the same time, and I should say the, the courtroom is, is the, is as disorderly as one can possibly imagine.

It's mayhem in the courtroom.

And in this very disorderly courtroom you have the afflicted girls who at this point are many in number and are writhing and tossing themselves about and screaming and pulling pins out of their skin and showing off the bite marks on their arms.

And it's as good as proving that witchcraft exists because the evidence is right in the room.

It's like having the corpse in the courtroom.

RUBENSTEIN: So when, uh, the judge is asking people questions, witnesses, they say, "I've seen witchcraft," or, "I've been hurt by witches."

How do they know to blame person A or person B because you really don't know whether those persons were involved?

How did they do that?

SCHIFF: There was this concept called spectral evidence, um, which we will find aston, we find astonishing but at the time was less so.

The idea being that, um, the evidence of the crime was only obvious to the victim.

(laughs).

So, if the girl said, "I know that it was Rebecca Nurse who did that to me," the court would believe it had been Rebecca Nurse who had afflicted her.

And in fairness, as the defendant stood in front of the courtroom, if she perhaps raised her eyes to the ceiling, the girls would raise their eyes in, in unison.

There was a certain choreography between what the defendant was doing in front of the court and how the girls reacted.

RUBENSTEIN: And the principle problems that witchcraft, uh, brought upon the people complaining was it what?

They had physical ailments or mental ailments?

What was the principle charges that they were doing to these people?

SCHIFF: You know, the beauty of witchcraft is that it accounts for absolutely anything.

Anything.

So it might have been that you, that someone had lost a child because of witchcraft, it might have been that you had, had broken into someone's bedroom at night, this was always for women, and had suffocated a man in his bed.

That happened a lot in Salem.

Um, it might have been that you moved the trees.

I mean many, you know, a man comes home from the tavern and the trees aren't where they were supposed to be, that must be witchcraft.

Um, so all of these things were attributed to the people on the, who, who were essentially being tried at the time.

The girls are generally complaining of bite marks and assaults and things which have been, which have been done to their, inflicted on their bodies.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So let's suppose somebody says, a child, "My mother did something, she's a witch," and the judge says, "Well, sounds reasonable to me," um, they send it to the jury, does the jury meet in secret session for a long time?

Or how long does it take for the jury to say, "Yes," or, "No?"

SCHIFF: It appears from, for example, the first, the first victim, who's Bridget Bishop, the first women to be tried, um, it goes, it seems to go very quickly.

And she's tried one day, she gets the verdict that day, and she hangs a week later.

So this is clearly happening at quite a, quite a clip.

It's a lot of time, it's a lot of testimony, many, much of the witchcraft court is coming from elsewhere.

They're assembling a lot of witnesses.

This is a, this is a big production.

So they're moving, they're moving quite rapidly.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so after somebody has been tried, the jury comes back and let's say it convicts.

Does the judge ever overturn or judge actually if they say, "The person's innocent," the judge says, "No, I think the person's guilty?"

How does that work?

SCHIFF: This is a court with a 100% conviction rate.

(laughter) Um, which is, which is a record of its kind.

There's one case in which the jury comes back with a, "Not guilty," verdict and that's the case of Rebecca Nurse, she's a 71 year old, um, great grandmother.

She has eight children, they seem to be on good terms with each other.

This might have been what got her into trouble.

And the jury comes back with a, "Not guilty," verdict.

And Stoughton sends them back to deliberate again.

And they can't quite make up their minds, they come back, they wanna hear some further evidence, she says something which is vaguely self-incriminating, she's deaf and she really can't hear what they're asking of her, they go back and they return with a, "Guilty," verdict.

Um, and actually her family, this is the one case where a husband actually stands up for his wife because husbands tended to say, "I always knew my wife was a witch."

(laughter) Um, in this case the husband, um, goes to the, goes to the governor and gets a reprieve for Rebecca Nurse.

The reprieve is overturned.

So she's actually convicted several times.

RUBENSTEIN: So if you're convicted, um, do you go to the court of appeals or something like that?

How do you appeal what they, the judge decided to do?

SCHIFF: The only appeal is the one I just mentioned.

There aren't, there is no other... RUBENSTEIN: So no appeals?

SCHIFF: There is no other instrument in place for which... RUBENSTEIN: And... SCHIFF: With which to appeal.

And by the way, no one's going to believe you at this point because everyone has bought in.

There's, there's really, I mean, you are immediately, even before your trial, once you are accused you are immediately a leper to the community.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's suppose you're convicted.

Does the judge say, "I wanna see the, more information about whether it, the penalty should be death or some other penalty," or did they make the decision right then and there that the penalty is execution?

SCHIFF: There was no other penalty, and the only person for whom there is a different penalty is the, one man who is accused who refuses to enter a plea with the court.

And it's his way of essentially protesting the entire, the entire summer.

And when asked to enter a plea he will not answer the question, you know, "How do you plead?"

And he is, you know, ignominiously crushed under boulders, um, instead.

And that, he's the only person in America who is ever killed in, by that means.

RUBENSTEIN: So the others who are convicted, they're, they are hung?

Is that how they were killed?

SCHIFF: They, they all hang.

RUBENSTEIN: And is it the same day?

Or they get a reprieve for a week or so?

Or what, how does that work?

SCHIFF: Some people who are convicted, and this is why the numbers don't line up, get reprieves for various reasons.

One reason is pregnancy.

If you confessed you generally did not hang.

Only one person who confesses ever hangs.

And that's another reason for the accelerated pace.

Once people start confessing, obviously the thing balloons, because people confess and then they accuse someone else in the course of their confession.

And so other names get, it's like, it's like lobbing a, a piece of shrapnel with your confession.

RUBENSTEIN: But if you confess what happens?

Do you... SCHIFF: You end up, you end up in, in prison, which was a, was a better alternative anyway.

RUBENSTEIN: In others words, if you confess you go to prison?

SCHIFF: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: Not, yeah, they don't, they don't kill you?

SCHIFF: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And how long are you in prison for?

SCHIFF: Some people spend that entire summer in prison.

At the finally, as things, as skeptics begin to speak up and as people begin to realize that there is a miscarriage at work here, people begin to be let out of prison slowly.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

There's, is there anything like the ACLU coming along saying, "Hey, hey this isn't fair, these trials aren't really, uh, adequate?"

Or does that happen?

SCHIFF: No.

Be, for the, for this reason.

For so, for such a long part of this, the people feel like they are participating in, um, a useful and important exercise, and one that is binding the community together.

There's a wonderful line in Saul Bellow where he basically says, you know, "A scandal is a great gift to a community," and, and this is proof of that.

RUBENSTEIN: So when people are hung, is it done publicly?

Are people forced to go watch?

Or people are not allowed to watch?

How does that happen?

SCHIFF: It's, it's done very publicly and as a moral lesson.

So it is really done with the greatest amount of ceremony possible.

It's done, um, at a very visible place.

The idea was to attract a large crowd and for children, in particular, to see this as a, as a, as a model of some kind.

RUBENSTEIN: So you have young children testifying against their parents and their parents, and say the mother in one case, is hung and the children sit there and watching their mother get hung?

SCHIFF: You know, one of the puzzlements of that year is how families could possibly have recovered afterward.

Because yes, some of these children then went back to households where they have convicted a, they had been instrumental in convicting a parent or, you know, brothers sat down to dinner tables where they had con, where they had accused sisters.

Um, and we don't have any idea of how those families fit those pieces back together again.

But yes, the idea was to hang someone with as large an audience as possible, to leave the body there for a certain period of time, and to, every minister from miles around was at that hanging.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, at what point did people begin to say, was it in the 1690s or maybe the next century, uh, "This was a mistake and we shouldn't have done this?"

Does that happen anytime soon?

SCHIFF: It took a very long time.

And, and that's one of the most fascinating things about Salem.

I mean there are any number of events in history which didn't happen until many generations after they really did.

So the answer to your question is in the early 18th century, in 1711, a board is seated to discuss how, how the community can make amends to the families who have lost members in, in the trials.

RUBENSTEIN: And eventually are the people who were found to be witches and hung, are they pardoned in some way?

Or somebody says, "We made a mistake, uh, we give 'em some compensation," or they just give 'em a pardon?

SCHIFF: There is compensation handed out in the, in those years.

Sometimes people mention it's handed out irregularly, which is to say someone who accused her mother might have got compensation herself from time she spent in prison.

Um, but full pardons are not issued until many, many years later and some of them in the 20th century.

RUBENSTEIN: So after the Salem witch trials of 1692, did, did witchcraft trials more or less fade from the United States and, or were there trials in other parts of the country?

SCHIFF: It's very sporadic and there's nothing along these, nothing of this sort of flash flood, epidemic proportions.

Um, during the Constitutional Convention there's a witch being dragged through the street outside while, um, the convention is sitting.

So the belief certainly survives.

And Cotton Mather, he's the one person who afterwards, on the record, will, will say, really, um, what, you know, it does, it was actually a great help to the community, it filled the pews, um, it enlivened the young folk, um, you know, the devil got no subjects, God got new convictions, and really no one of merit was lost in the process.

RUBENSTEIN: So in the early 1950s, Arthur Miller, distinguished playwright, uh, wrote a play called The Crucible and it was about the Salem witch trials.

Uh, was it controversial that he wrote such a play?

And what was his point in that play?

SCHIFF: As he tells it, Miller says that essentially he was, um, fed up with the moral paralysis, what an interesting expression that is today, the moral paralysis of the left during, um, the McCarthy years.

And, and he saw a real parallel between what was happening when the McCarthy hearings and Salem.

And he, and several friends will say to him, "You know, it's not really an exact parallel because there are communists but there were no witches."

Um, but off he goes to Salem to investigate, and he visits Salem in 1952 and the play is produced very quickly, I think in 1953.

Um, it's not an immediate hit.

It seems like a very didactic history, you know, it's like, seems like a costume drama in some way.

The language is very stilted, he, he worked very hard on concocting a sort of new kind of, new kind of Old Testament language.

I mean only when it really becomes allegory does the play take off.

RUBENSTEIN: So the message that you, um, want to deliver to people about the Salem witch trials is what?

SCHIFF: You know, as I said, people were very slow to raise their hands.

They do so anonymously and very quietly at first.

And I guess that would be my, that would be my takeaway, is you wanna be that person.

I mean you wanna be the person who doesn't see what you believe but believes what you see.

And buying into the Orthodoxy, taking these unasked questions that are being dealt to you at face value, is extremely dangerous.

I mean I think that's what Salem does for us.

It gives us this, this vaccine against doing this again.

RUBENSTEIN: I wanna thank you for a very interesting conversation about the witches and, I appreciate you giving us this time.

SCHIFF: Thank you David.

RUBENSTEIN: Thank you.

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