Abigail Williams

Abigail Williams (1681 - ?) played a signifcant role in the Salem Witch Trials and was depicted as one of the central characters in the play, "The Crucible".

Although the play The Crucible was based on the real goings on in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, 1692 not all of the play was historically correct. To make it appeal more and have more of a tension Arthur Miller made Abigail Williams significantly older than in real life. Miller portrayed her as an 18 or 19 year old girl who had, had an affair with the younger John Proctor whose age was also changed from 60 to about 30 or 40. The real Abigail was only 11 and lived almost 8 miles away from the Proctor farm - a significant way in those days - making the so called affair near impossible.

After her cousin Betty became ill, Abigail quickly caught the affliction wanting the attention that had settled on her young cousin. She began having fits and yelled obscenities. She and other girls began to accuse neighbours of bewitching them. Abigail was only too eager to accuse unlikely people. After the trials finished, not much was known of what happened to the young Abigail. It is thought that she died young having never recovered from her "affliction", although legends state she ended up as a prostitute in Boston.