- Title
- Physical examinations no. 1 and no. 2 of Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Proctor, Alice Parker, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Good
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- Creator
- ["Massachusetts. Court of Oyer and Terminer (Essex County)"]
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- Date
- 02 June 1692
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- Description
- Physical examinations no. 1 and no. 2 of Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Proctor, Alice Parker, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Good. Hand #1 unidentified; hand #2 Stephen Sewall; hand #3 unidentified (Rosenthal 271).
Annotation text from the Salem With Trials: Restoring Justice exhibition:
The court arranged for a group of people, mostly of the same gender, to perform full-body physical examinations of each accused person. The experience must have been unspeakably terrifying for the accused. These acts of physical and psychological abuse were done in search of evidence that familiars, small animals or spirits acting as witches’ assistants, were feeding off of the accused. Examiners looked for witches’ marks or teats and reported back to the court. The descriptions of the findings in these documents are quite graphic.
On the morning of June 2, a male surgeon and a jury of nine women performed the search of six accused witches. They discovered “preternatural excrescences,” or unnatural growths of flesh, presumed to be witches’ teats on Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, and Elizabeth Proctor. Hours later, the afternoon examination by the same group turned up no evidence. Despite these contradictory outcomes, all of these women were eventually condemned to die.
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- Is Part Of
- ["Massachusetts Court of Oyer and Terminer records (DEP 01)"]
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- Format
- ["legal instruments","judicial records"]
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Physical examinations no. 1 and no. 2 of Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Proctor, Alice Parker, Susannah Martin, and Sarah Good
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