Witchcraft Trials at Salem

This is John Daly in the Salem Court of Massachusetts Bay Province. The recess in the witchcraft trial of 71-year-old Rebecca Norse, which started at 10 o'clock in the morning of this 29th day of June 1692, is just about over and the trial should soon resume.

As you know, Rebecca Norse, great-grandmother and mother of eight, whose husband owns a 300-acre farm not far from the Crane River Bridge, went on trial this morning as a witch. penalty for witchcraft is death. This courthouse on Townhouse Lane is jammed to the rafters.

Salem, Massachusetts, June 1692. CBS is there. A Salem court tries a woman as a witch. CBS invites you to believe that our microphone is there waiting for the verdict. All things are as they were then, except for one thing.

CBS is there. This broadcast, the fourth in a special summer series produced and directed for Columbia by Robert Gures-Shaehan is based on authentic historical fact and quotation. And now, Salem, June 29th, 1692, and John Daly.

This trial is progressing, the tension with which this day opened here in Salem has grown greater if possible. In this trial, second and the biggest roundup of suspects these colonies have ever seen, two key witnesses for the prosecution, this morning testified that the defendant, Rebecca Norse, was responsible for fits, seizures, and the unnatural torment which have been plaguing a dozen or so Salem

girls for the last few months. Another woman named by these girls, Bridget Bishop, has already been hanged, and waiting in jail at this very moment to be tried by this same court on these same charges of witchcraft, or 150 local residents who were seized in their homes in nearby Lynn, Topsfield, Marblehead, Amesbury, and over wells, as well as Salem, and as far off as Boston.