The Salem witches were burned at the stake
The old claim turned out to be wrong and was rejected by evidence.
TaughtIn 1692 the Puritans of Salem burned witches at the stake on Gallows Hill.
NowNobody was burned at Salem. Nineteen people were hanged, one man was pressed to death under stones, and at least five died in jail. Burning was never a penalty for witchcraft under English law, which treated it as a felony.
What actually happened
The distinction is legal, not trivial. Continental Europe often tried witchcraft as heresy, and heresy could carry burning. England tried it as a felony under the Witchcraft Acts, and the felony penalty was hanging. Massachusetts followed English law, so the Salem executions were hangings, carried out in 1692 at Proctor's Ledge, a site archaeologists confirmed in 2016.
The body count is specific: fourteen women and five men hanged. Giles Corey refused to enter a plea and was subjected to peine forte et dure, crushed under stones over three days, which is the one execution that was neither hanging nor burning. Several more, including an infant, died in the appalling conditions of the jails.
The burning image likely bled in from continental European and later fictional depictions, and from the general medieval-horror stock imagery. Given that the Salem story is usually taught precisely as a lesson about mass hysteria and the cost of getting facts wrong, teaching it with the wrong facts has a certain irony.
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Sources
- Smithsonian Magazine: A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trialssmithsonianmag.com
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Salem Witch Trialsbritannica.com
Who was taught this
Still standard through 2000, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 1990 learned the earlier version.