Poppets

• Poppets were small dolls created to look like a miniature person. They were part of some folk magic traditions in which a person would attempt to cause harm to enemies by making poppets in their images and then damaging them in some way. According to author K. David Gross, Ph.D., believers thought that sticking pins into a poppet was one way of achieving their malicious aim.
  
  

Background

• The village of Salem on the Massachusetts coast was founded by British settlers in 1629. In 1689 a new clergyman, Samuel Parris, arrived in the village with his family and their Caribbean slave Tituba. Three years later, the University of Missouri School of Law's website says, Parris’ daughter Betty began to behave strangely and within a few days several of her friends exhibited the same behavior. Local people suspected that witchcraft was responsible and suspicion fell on Tituba.
  
  

Trials

• Several women, including Tituba, were arrested and brought to trial. First to be tried was Bridget Bishop, a local innkeeper whose lifestyle – including drinking, playing shuffleboard, marrying three times and arguing with her husbands in the street – earned the disapproval of her Puritan neighbors. John Bly testified to the court that he had found several poppets “made of rags and hog bristles” in the wall of the cellar in Bishop’s house. Headless pins had been inserted into the poppets. Bishop was unable to explain why the poppets were on her property and protested her innocence.
  
  

Executions

• The poppets were a key piece of evidence against Bridget Bishop and contributed to her guilty verdict. Bishop was hung at Gallow’s Hill outside the village on June 10, 1692. She was the first person to be executed as a result of the trials, but she would be followed to the gallows by 18 more, while Giles Corey was pressed to death with heavy stones in September for refusing to submit to trial. At least four more people, and possibly as many as 13, died in prison while awaiting trial.