Tituba was an enslaved woman of Indigenous or African descent who lived in Barbados before being brought to Massachusetts by Puritan minister Samuel Parris. Though little is known about her early life, her position as an enslaved, racialized woman placed her at the bottom of Salem’s social hierarchy. In How to Kill a Witch, Tituba is presented as a real woman whose vulnerability made her an easy target when fear and hysteria overtook the Salem community. Her story closely related to the theme of The Persecution and Scapegoating of Vulnerable Populations both due to her racial identity and her position as an enslaved person.

Tituba was the first person accused during the Salem witch trials of 1692 after Parris’s daughter and niece began exhibiting unexplained illness, like seizures. When a doctor could not find a cause, he suggested witchcraft was to blame, and Tituba was named for introducing supernatural practices to the girls. Unlike the other accused women, Tituba confessed, but her confession was extracted under torture and coercion. She claimed there were other witches in Salem, and this statement ignited mass panic and opened the doors for further accusations.

The authors emphasize that Tituba’s testimony was treated as proof rather than evidence of abuse, reinforcing the belief that witches were real and organized. Although she was eventually found innocent and released, her life after the trials disappears from the historical record, showing how marginalized people are often erased even when wronged. Tituba’s inclusion in the book allows Mitchell and Venditozzi to compare Scottish and American witch trials and explore how racism, enslavement, and gender connected with superstition. Her story reinforces the book’s central argument that witch hunts target the most vulnerable first, and that confessions born of fear can destroy entire communities.

Christian Caddell was a woman who worked as a witch pricker in the 17th century by disguising herself as a man to gain authority and avoid suspicion. In How to Kill a Witch, her story complicates the idea that witch hunts were carried out only by men, illustrating how oppressive systems can sometimes be upheld by those they also endanger and illustrating The Problem of Abuse of Power and Social Norms. While misogyny drove the witch hunts, survival sometimes pushed women to participate in violence against others.

Witch prickers were believed to possess special expertise in identifying witches by searching for Devil’s marks, which were supposedly spots on the body that would not bleed when pierced. Caddell participated in this practice during the 1660s, mainly in Strathglass, where a landlord attempted to remove tenants by accusing them of witchcraft. Rather than performing legitimate examinations, Caddell tortured the accused, contributing to their suffering and reinforcing false evidence. Her actions reveal how easily power can be abused. 

Eventually, Caddell’s fraud was exposed, and her gender became known, which likely embarrassed men in power who had trusted her for so long. Unlike male witch prickers who often escaped severe punishment, Caddell was arrested and sentenced to indentured servitude in Barbados. The authors suggest that her punishment was harsher not only because of her crimes, but because she violated gender norms by occupying a male position of authority.