Every October, Salem, Mass., fills up. One Saturday this fall brought more than 100,000 tourists. They come for the witch trials of 1692-93, when 19 people were tried and executed. Brickell Bellows, reviewing Marion Gibson's Witchland in Wednesday's Journal, widens the lens. Salem was one chapter. Around the world, as many as 60,000 accused witches were killed between the 14th and 18th centuries. The scary part of this book is who got accused, and who got paid.
Ms. Gibson, a professor emeritus at the University of Exeter, focuses on Britain's panic of the 1640s and early 1650s. Civil war had torn the country apart. Hundreds of thousands died. Food ran short and sickness spread. Neighbors turned on neighbors. In the Suffolk town of Framlingham, the parish church paid support to injured veterans and widows. Many townspeople thought that cost too high. So they accused women on the charity list of witchcraft.
The names are real. Margaret Wyard and Mary Scrutton lived on parish payments, the welfare of their day. Mary Becket was a widow. The parish had helped her for more than ten years. Then she was pushed into confessing and locked up. Confessions came under duress. Bodies were searched for marks. In Framlingham alone, dozens went on trial.
The man who sent the bill
Then there's Matthew Hopkins, who called himself Witchfinder General. He and men like him roamed the countryside. They charged the towns they visited “expenses and fees,” and Ms. Gibson says the money was a clear motive. Their method, “watching and walking,” was sleep deprivation. The spell broke slowly. A businessman near Newcastle named Ralph Gardner denounced a 1649-50 trial in that city that ended in 16 executions. He compared the council to the Spanish Inquisition. After 1650 the wave began to pass in England. Scotland saw a big resurgence in 1661. The last execution in Britain came in 1727. In 2022 Scotland's government formally apologized to the nearly 4,000 people accused there between 1563 and 1736.
Our read
This is a Halloween story with a very modern shape (Insurance/Consumer Protection · M11). The accused were the people costing the parish money. The accusers were paid by the visit. Nobody in Framlingham said that out loud. They didn't have to. The incentive did the work. The same shape shows up today whenever someone gets paid to find a problem with your money. A free review that ends in a product. A fee that grows with how scared you are. A stranger who shows up in the first year after a death with urgent paperwork. The widow on the relief roll was the easiest target in the 1640s, and the newly widowed are still the easiest target now.
The concrete thing is the person who'd sit beside your spouse if you weren't here. This week, name that person, write it in your plan, and tell your spouse the rule. Nobody signs anything money-related alone in the first year, and anyone paid per finding gets a second opinion. Ms. Gibson's book is 352 pages and $30, cheaper than one bad meeting. The umbrella gets found before the first drop. Bring the name and we'll put it in the plan.