Bridget Bishop is hanged at Salem; the first life taken in the witchcraft trials
Colonial Massachusetts in the spring of 1692 was a colony in the grip of fear — accusations of witchcraft had been spreading through Salem since February, and the courts were ready to act. Bridget Bishop, an English-born woman whose black clothing and unconventional manner had long made her a target of Puritan suspicion, was examined on April 19, accused of bewitching five young women, and brought to trial on June 2. Eight days later, the jury returned its verdict, and on June 10, 1692, Bishop was hanged — the first person executed in what would become the most notorious witch trial in American history, and the first woman recorded to die by hanging in the colony.
The Salem trials left a specific mark on American law and memory. By 1702 the Massachusetts General Court had declared the proceedings unlawful, and by 1711 the colonial legislature annulled the convictions — early American institutions correcting themselves in writing, on the record. That self-correction became a template. The last Salem conviction, against Elizabeth Johnson Jr., was not officially exonerated until 2022, a reminder that the legal cleanup took 329 years to finish.
QWhat happened when a jury examined Bridget Bishop's body for proof of witchcraft — and then examined it again?
A jury of women convened during Bishop's trial found what they described as a third nipple on her body — at the time, considered a near-certain mark of a witch, believed to be a teat used to suckle a familiar spirit. The find was entered as evidence. Then the jury examined her a second time. The nipple was not there. The court proceeded anyway. The disappearing evidence did nothing to slow the verdict, a detail that captures how little the outcome depended on any particular proof. The decision, as Cotton Mather's own account makes clear, had been reached before the examination began.
QHow long did it take for the last person convicted in the Salem witch trials to be officially exonerated?
Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was convicted during the Salem witch trials in 1693. She was not officially exonerated until 2022 — 329 years later. The Massachusetts colonial legislature had annulled most convictions in 1711, but Johnson was inadvertently left off the list, possibly because she had no descendants to petition on her behalf. A group of eighth-grade civics students in North Andover, Massachusetts, researched her case and successfully lobbied the state legislature to pass a resolution clearing her name. She had no living relatives to receive the news.
QWhy is it difficult to know whether Bridget Bishop actually ran a tavern in Salem — and why does it matter?
The tavern story has followed Bishop into nearly every account of the Salem trials, used as evidence of her disreputable lifestyle. The problem is that Salem in the 1690s had another woman named Sarah Bishop, and historians have noted that records attributed to Bridget may belong to Sarah instead. The mix-up matters because the tavern detail — like the torn coat and the unusual clothing — helped build the portrait of a woman outside Puritan norms, and that portrait was the real engine of her conviction. How much of it was accurate, and how much was projection onto the wrong person, remains an open question.
