After World War Two Americans. The Crucible Blame Words 2 Pages. Several young girls claim to be afflicted by witchcraft. Ann Putnam only has one child causing her to feel calamity. Putnam used witchcraft charges as an excuse to blame others for her struggles with not having more children.
Putnam accuses Rebecca nurse for the witchcraft against the deaths of her children. The reason why she accused Rebecca nurse was because Rebecca nurse has 11 children and 26 grandchildren. For example the blamed Rebecca nurse and Tituba.
And yet, each would wither in my arms the very night of their birth. So when the witch trials started she believed the deaths were caused by witchcraft. When Mr. Putnam visited Betty they noticed that their daughter was in the same state as Betty.
Putnam starts to get ideas after seeing Betty. Ours is open. After visiting Betty Mrs. She continues contentious saying her children were killed from witchcraft. And mark this proof! Last night my Ruth were ever so close to their little spirits. Ruth is Mrs. Putnam is just lying so people believe her as she feels. When Reverend Parris demands to know what the girls have done the previous night, Abigail does not tell him everything. How does Abigail initially defend the girls behavior in the woods?
She says that they were dancing and Tituba was singing, and no witchcraft was being done. Abigail drank blood to try to kill Elizabath Proctor. What tragedy occurred in Mrs. Seven of her children died before they were a day old. Abigail was fired for having an affair with John Proctor. Proctor admits to the affair in court. His wife knew about it, and obviously did not want Abigail around the house.
Parris leads the church in which Putnam is a member. The controversy was a long one, going finally to the General Court for settlement. It was decided against Endicott. Nurse, to be sure, was only indirectly interested in the suit. Allen was the principal, and he kept his promise to defend the title. Thomas Putnam became involved in the suit. Some writers allege that Nurse thus incurred his hostility, and that this was one of the incentives to the subsequent prosecution of Rebecca Nurse.
It would seem that Putnam, if anything, was united with Allen and Nurse in fighting Endicott. It is far more likely that the Topsfield controversy engendered ill-feeling between the Village people and the Nurse family.
The Topsfield controversy Nevins mentions was a dispute that began in when a portion of disputed land in Topsfield that a number of Topsfield residents had already settled on was made a part of Ipswich by the General Court.
The dispute culminated in John Putnam and members of his family meeting the Eastys and the Townes on the disputed land where they got into a heated argument.
Whether this dispute resulted in the Putnam family accusing Rebecca Nurse of witchcraft is debatable, but some historians speculate that it did. We cannot imagine the cause of the alleged complaint of witchcraft.
She appears to have been an amiable and exemplary woman, and well educated for the times in which she lived. We suspect, from an examination of the charges brought against her at the courts, that she had several times severely rebuked the accusing girls for their folly and wickedness, when meeting in their circles. In this way, she probably incurred the displeasure of Ann Putnam and her mother — her principle accusers. Nurse denied all of the accusations, stating during her examination on March I am an innocent person.
At the end of her trial in June of , Nurse was found not guilty by the jury. The verdict was not surprising as Nurse was well-liked in Salem and 39 people had risked their lives to sign a petition in support of her. Stoughton suggested that perhaps the the jury had not heard Rebecca make an incriminating statement when another prisoner was brought in to testify against her.
When Fiske later questioned Rebecca as to the exact meaning of her statement, she would not reply. Fiske waited briefly, then returned to the jury, and soon came back with a verdict of guilty. Stoughton sentenced her to be executed on July 19, On July 3, just days after Nurse was convicted, she was taken to the church and publicly excommunicated, according to the book Salem-Village Witchcraft:.
The following day, at the request of the Nurse family, Fiske gave a statement explaining why the jury changed their verdict to guilty:.
I Thomas Fisk, the subscriber hereof, being one of them that were of the jury the last week at Salem-Court, upon the trial of Rebecca Nurse, etc. Photo Credit: Rebecca Brooks. The citizens of Salem doubted that such a pious woman could be guilty of witchcraft. This made them wonder if any of the other accused witches were possibly innocent. The accusations continued throughout the spring and into the summer but opposition to the trials began to grow. By the autumn, the court banned the use of spectral evidence in trial, rendering most of the accusations baseless and eventually brought the trials to an end in On October 17, , the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill restoring some of the names of the Salem Witch Trials victims , including Rebecca Nurse.
The Rebecca Nurse homestead is still a museum. Also located at the homestead is the Nurse family cemetery and a replica of the Salem Village Meetinghouse. Rebecca Nurse Homestead Website: www. Memorial plaque located on Masonic Temple. Rebecca Nurse Homestead, Danvers, Mass, circa Sources: Nevins, Winfield S. XIII, , pp: Baker, Emerson W. Oxford University Press,
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