Some fifty years after the infamous Salem Witch Trials, the British colonial city of New York was it

Some fifty years after the infamous Salem Witch Trials, the British colonial city of New York was itself subject to a period of murderous mass hysteria in what became known as the Conspiracy of 1741.

In the spring of 1741, thirteen fires sprung up around Lower Manhattan, with no official culprit found, rumours began to swirl around that it was a result of Catholic saboteurs, born of the then contemporary war between Britain and Spain, as well as supposed competition between enslaved people and poor white settlers. Combined with a particularly harsh winter, tensions were high in what was, at the time, the second largest hub of the slave trade outside of Charleston, South Carolina, with New York City becoming a power keg awaiting a reason to explode…

The metaphorical match for this powder keg being a 16 year old indentured servant Irish girl by the name of Mary Burton, who when arrested while in possession of stolen goods, immediately accused others of being part of a conspiracy by slaves and poor white people to burn down the city, kill all the wealthy white men, and form their own government (complete with a king).

Just as with Salem, the hundreds of people arrested under the suspicion of being part of the conspiracy (a conspiracy that historians claim likely never existed), with many of the slaves, freed black people, and lower class white people absolving to save themselves by accusing others as “also” being involved.

In all, 34 people were executed in relation to this possibly fictional potential uprising, including 17 black men, two white men, two white women were hanged, and with an additional 13 black people who were burnt at the stake as, again, being suspects in an uprising that likely didn’t exist. The two supposed ringleaders, a white cobbler and tavern owner called John Hughson and a slave named Caesar, where gibbeted and left out to rot as an example to other potential revolutionaries in the future.

An additional 84 men and women were transported to the Caribbean to be sold into slavery for their part in the “conspiracy“, while 72 men where spared death with the lighter sentence of just getting exiled from the colony.

Again, all of these deaths came about over a fear of an revolt against slavery that historically probably was never real in the first place. Unlike the Salem Trials, which were less about actual witchcraft and more about paranoid superstition (possibly combined with ergot poisoning) being used by locals as an excuse to settle grudges against their neighbours, the 1741 “conspiracy“ was itself likely a product of those with an investment in the status quo violently protecting their wealth against even the suggestion of emancipated slaves and lower class white people. There was no conspiracy, but the authorities demonstrated in no uncertain terms what they would do to those who dared to seek freedom on their own terms.