Case file · Witch trials
Sally Basset
In June 1730 Sally Basset, an elderly enslaved woman, was burned at the stake in Bermuda, convicted of trying to poison her granddaughter's owners. Fears of poison and folk magic ran through the case.
1730 CE · 32.29, -64.78 · status: official
The account
Legend says that on her way to execution she told the crowd that there would be no use their running, for there would be no fun until she came; and that the purple Bermudiana flowers sprang up where she was burned, called 'Sally Basset's tears'. A statue of her stands at the Cabinet Office in Hamilton.