Witches In The Elizabethan Era

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Witches today, are commonly seen as mythical creatures that make a good Halloween costume. In Elizabethan times however, this was not the case. People in the Elizabethan era were taught to fear and loath witches seriously. Books such as The Hammer of the Witches, taught people how to hate and fear witches. Parallel to society today, people often tend blame someone or something for their misfortune. Unfortunately for the people who were thought to be witches, that blame landed on them. Obviously, witches are not real, but in Elizabethan times, there was a certain demographic that was deemed to be witches. The vast majority of Elizabethan “witches” were women. Of the 270 witch trials during this time, only 23 of them involved men. Witches were…show more content…
Society had not advanced much technologically speaking, and there was filth everywhere. People would literally just throw their garbage out of their windows and leave them on the street. Also, in England, there was a lack of technology when it came to the removal and treatment of sewage. Often times, sewage would even mix in with the towns’ drinking water. Incontestably, this created many health problems for people who lived in these places, and was responsible for diseases such as the black plague and cholera. Science at the time was unable to determine that the diseases were caused by how unsanitized everything was, but the population did need somebody to blame. The population decided that they should blame witches for all of their misfortune. A snowball effect occurred, a small amount of people blamed witches for their problems, but as time passed, more and more people adopted the idea that nothing was their own fault, it was all the witches. This belief that witches caused all of the worlds problems, eventually led to the famous witch hunts and trials of the Elizabethan era. The punishment for being a witch was death. Lamentably for the poor souls that were deemed witches, the most common way of figuring out if a person was a witch, was a lose-lose situation. Bricks would attached to the accused’s feet, and then the accused would be thrown in water. If the accused survived, they were a witch, but if the accused died, then there was a sort of “oh well, whoops” attitude towards the accidental punishment. The punishment was harsh, but the people thought that it was deserving, because witches caused so much pain in the

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