Punishments in Salem & 'Salem' (tv series)

The cord has fallen over Salem, the bodies have been hanging on the burning wood. The fire has been set in Salem, the Witches have been burnt.

During the 1692 Witch Trials, Puritans took away more than thirty lives and their way to do so was pretty tough. Indeed, during the trials, there were no issues possible if you were accused of witchcraft and if you pleaded innocent. Death sentence was the only response to such accusations and denying it in front of the Court was seen as a provocative thing. To destroy every maleficent mark of witches, Puritans used torture which ended with death every time.

First, the hanging. Historical records say that the first accused woman Bridget Bishop was hanged. In the TV series, the main punishment is actually hangings and it sticks to what really happened. Even though the triggering woman of this hysteria makes just a brief appearance in the series, she is actually seen hanged and we see her drawing her last breath. As the seasons go on, we see more and more public hangings in front of the whole village in order to frighten people. 

Bridget Bishop being hanged, S01E02, The Stone Child

If we search a little bit further, we can also find more outrageous sentences such as burnings, sequestration or the ducking tool.
In Salem, punishments are not hidden from the viewer and very shocking scenes are shown throughout the three seasons of the show.

In the middle of the first season, when the Reverend's lover - who happens to be a prostitute - is accused of witchcraft, the viewers are shown a very striking scene where a specific instrument is used: the ducking stool. In the scene, she is sat on a wooden chair and as the questioning goes on, she is dropped into the water until she looses her breathe. The director chose to offer all of these scenes to the viewer so he can transport himself to this period and experience the archaic punishment at that time. 

In addition to these tortures, Salem perfectly represents the sewer jail where we sometimes visit some of the inhabitant of the town. They live in terrible conditions and are condemned to watch the freemen walking over their face. 

Woman on a Ducking Stool (woodcut), Giclee Print

The ducking stool, S01E08, Departures

Burnings, commonly associated to the witches' punishment are also represented in the TV series but less than hangings, the most noteworthy scene being the one of the last episode of the first season when the elder witches are hanged and then burnt. At that time, this act was considered as the purest one to destroy evil forces since fire symbolizes hell. They believed that they used fire to send witches back to where they were from but we might say that the witch burnings is more a myth than a reality regarding the Salem Trials.
 

Punishments were also applied to men at this period, but mostly for other reasons than for witchcraft, except in the case of John Alden.
At the time, society was organized via very strict rules and as we mentioned it before, religion had a crucial and central place. In the first season, Isaac (who we are now familiar with) is publicly punished and humiliated in front of the whole Salem Village because he has been caught having a sexual intercourse with a woman he was not married to. His punishment was the condemnation of having the letter F for “Fornicator” burned on his forehead. Thus, from the first episode, the viewers are aware that the population in this society gets to be punished very harshly if one commits a crime.

Another case of punishment, but less brutal and morbid was the one of John Alden. At the very end of the first season, he is accused of witchcraft but his only sentence before the judgement was imprisonment which seems unfair and not enough compared to what women characters has to go through after the same accusations.

Not only associated to the Witch trials, these awful and archaic punishments were spread over the continents such as in Europe for instance, but nothing about it has been mentioned in the series.

To conclude, all the punishments that we might call killings, took place publicly and highlight the euphoria, the fear, and the darkness of the period. We can say that Salem has succeeded at depicting the severe atmosphere in which people lived and the methods used so as to punish them.