p314159i t1_j9mbquk wrote on February 23, 2023 at 12:18 AM

Reply to comment by FrontierPsycho in TIL - English physician William Harvey was a prominent skeptic regarding allegations of witchcraft. He was one of the examiners of four women from Lancashire accused of witchcraft in 1634, and as a consequence of his report, all of them were acquitted. by wendalltwolf

Men were accused of being witches too, in Salem the only reason women were more likely to get accused of being witches was because the people doing the accusing were women accusing other women they knew.

Basically so long as you kept giving names they would hold off persecuting you. Both men and women were initially accused of being witches but when men were accused of being witches they were more likely to just accept being killed immediately rather than accusing a bunch of other people first to spare their own life, with the famous case of the guy who instead of announcing a plea would grunt "more weight" when they came to ask him for one as he was sandwiched between two boards with rocks on top.

Ultimately the witch trials did not end until the accusations of witchcraft had passed through the women's social circles as they accused people they knew until they eventually reached up all the way to the governor's wife, in which case the whole witch trial thing was clamped down upon swiftly.