Analysis Of Darya Mattes Accused Children In The Salem Witch Trials

In 1692 a great tragedy swept through the small Massachusetts village of Salem. Several girls became ill with what was assumed to be witchery. These girls went on to accuse scores of people of witchcraft, holding in their young hearts the guilt of having condemned at least nineteen people to death and forever tainting the reputations of many others. In the vast amount of the accused were children, often times only implicated in the charges of witchcraft because their mothers were accused as well. Many of the children involved in the trials were able to grow up and marry, although their lives were not easy. Unfortunately, the babies who were born while their mothers were in prison were often stillborn. Kathy Weiser provides short biographies …show more content…
Darya Mattes strongly expresses this common trend in the essay “Accused Children in the Salem Witchcraft Crisis”. Mattes points out the extreme lack of evidence against the children implicated in the trials, stating that “the only evidence offered against the children was spectral” (Accused Children). Marc Callis highlights several of the written reactions to the Salem Witch Trials, and it is a common thread that after the trials spectral evidence was deemed by almost everyone to be an unlawful means of evidence (The Aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials in Colonial America). This information only shows that the trials were wrong and should have been stopped before they took the lives of a score of men and women and ruined the lives of the countless …show more content…
Some were unable to regain any of the land that they had owned before conviction, leaving the family destitute, as in the case of the Proctor family (Persecuted Proctor Family). Elizabeth was unable to take back the property that she and her husband John had owned before they were convicted of witchcraft. Because of the conviction she was stripped of her rights and was viewed as dead in the eyes of the court. John’s son from his previous marriage was able to buy the land and then resell it to his younger half-brother (Weiser, Witches). The youngest person to be implicated in the Salem Witch Trials was four year old Dorcas Good. Her mother was one of the first women accused in the trials and Dorcas was also accused of “pinching, biting, and choking” (Weiser, Witches) the much older and larger girls who were responsible for the accusations. Dorcas eventually confessed to being a witch and said that her mother was one as well. Dorcas would be held in jail for over eight months, she would suffer severe psychological damage from the possibly torturous time that she spent imprisoned (Weiser,