Women and the Noose E-Book

Richard Clark

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 507

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

From Sarah Malcolm, sentenced to be executed for multiple murders in the early eighteenth century, to Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain in 1955, Women and the Noose traces the history of female crime through the cases of seventy women who met their end on the hangman's gallows. In this detailed account, each woman's story is revealed: her background, criminal acts and execution. Through their tales, historian Richard Clark highlights the wide range of crimes once punishable by death, from cold-blooded murder and crimes of passion to burglary and petty theft. He also shows how, as time went on, execution methods evolved, from burning at the stake to death by hanging, and how the public came to prefer a more humane, private death over the cruel, public scenes of earlier periods. Clark's frank treatment of events, combined with sympathetic revelations about the women's private lives, makes this revised and updated edition of Women and the Noose a chilling and surprisingly moving read.

Leseprobe

Front cover from left to right: Charlotte Bryant, Kate Webster, Edith Thompson and Ruth Ellis (Courtesy of Topham Picturepoint).

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders. The publishers would be glad to put right any errors or omissions in future editions.

First published 2007

This paperback edition first published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Richard Clark, 2007, 2023

The right of Richard Clark to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75247 416 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction

1        

The Early Georgian Period

2        

Later Georgian Period and the ‘Bloody Code’

3        

Later Georgian Murders

4        

Infanticide and the Murder of Bastard Children

5        

The Early Victorian Period: ‘Nothing Like a Good Hanging!’

6        

Victorian Child Murders

7        

Never Too Young to Die: Teenage Executions

8        

The Carnival is Over: Nineteenth-CenturyExecutions ‘Within the Walls’

9        

Baby Farmers

10        

The Twentieth Century

Epilogue

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to trace, through the cases of seventy women and girls, the history of British female executions from the early Georgian period to the final one in 1955, together with the development of the legal and execution processes and the changing attitudes of the media and the public towards capital punishment, particularly for female criminals.

There has always been a far greater interest in serious crimes committed by women than in those of most men, perhaps due to the comparative rarity of them. In the eighteenth century females accounted for less than 5 per cent of all executions. Large numbers of people, always including many women, would turn out to watch a woman die. Even after hangings ceased to be public spectacles there were often substantial numbers of women waiting outside the prison gates for the official notices of execution to be posted.

In the period 1735 to 1955 just over 600 women and girls were put to death in Britain (including Southern Ireland up to 1923). The majority of these women were hanged but approximately thirty-two were burned at the stake for High Treason or Petty Treason up to 1789. No woman was to be beheaded in this period and there is no record of a woman ever being executed by shooting.

It is not possible to be more precise on the numbers due to the paucity of the records for some counties in the earlier part of the eighteenth century and because one cannot always be certain whether a particular death sentence was carried out or commuted. In some cases broadsides were printed claiming to have details of an execution when the person was in fact reprieved.

The peak decades for female executions were 1740-1749 with sixty-two, 1750-1769 with seventy and 1780-1789 with seventy-five. However it should be noted that the courts tended to exercise greater leniency towards women, the reprieve rate in the period 1735-1799 being an average of 78 per cent steadily rising to 90 per cent in the twentieth century. The majority of women who were executed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had typically committed the more serious crimes, particularly murder, or High Treason in the form of coining, forgery or arson. When women were hanged for the less serious crimes it was often because they were repeat offenders who had already served lesser sentences or because the government of the day was keen to crack down on a particular type of crime.

The Murder Act of July 1752 required that murderers be hanged within two days of sentence, or the next ‘working day’ if the second day was a Sunday, which was a ‘dies non’ or non-hanging day. After this date, murderers were often hanged alone to comply with requirements of the Act, which was not completely abolished until 1836.

Women convicted of crimes other than murder at the Old Bailey in London were usually executed several weeks after sentence when the Recorder had submitted his report to the Privy Council. Women were typically hanged alongside men. This was frequently the case at Tyburn and later at Newgate where quite large batches of prisoners would be executed together.

Those sentenced to die at County Assizes had a report on their case, forwarded by the trial judge to the Secretary of State for consideration for reprieve, containing his recommendation. Many Assize towns in the Shire counties carried out hangings on market day to ensure the biggest crowd, who were supposed to be deterred by the spectacle of the execution.

From 1868 the period between sentence and execution for murder was fourteen to twenty-seven days and from 1888 the Home Office directed that three clear Sundays should elapse.

Prior to 1836 there was no requirement for prisoners to be represented by counsel at their trials so most poor defendants had no legal representation at all. Circumstantial and hearsay evidence was deemed quite sufficient for a capital conviction. There was no appeal mechanism – the Court of Appeal did not come into being until 1907. After this date the period between sentence and execution could be up to six weeks where an appeal was lodged.

Age was no bar to execution and teenage girls under eighteen years old were regularly put to death up to 1849. The execution of persons under sixteen was not formally outlawed until the Children’s Act was passed in 1908. The Children and Young Persons Act of 1933 prohibited the death sentence for persons under eighteen at the time of the crime.

A large prison-building programme was undertaken in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and executions were moved from their previous venues outside towns to in front of, or on top of, the gate houses of the new prisons. This did away with the lengthy and uncomfortable journey to the gallows by cart. At the same time the New Drop style of gallows was usually adopted which seemed to give a slightly quicker death.

Prior to May 1868 executions were carried out in public. Twenty-five-year-old Frances Kidder became the last woman to suffer this cruel and humiliating fate when she was hanged at Maidstone on 2 April 1868.

From 29 May 1868, the law required that all executions be carried out within the walls of prisons. Priscilla Biggadyke became the first woman to die away from the gaze of the masses at Lincoln in December 1868.

Ninety-five women received death sentences between May 1868 and December 1899 of whom twenty-two were to be hanged in the nineteenth century and a further one in January 1900.

One hundred and fifty-six women received death sentences in Britain during the twentieth century. Of these, seventeen were hanged including one in Scotland and two in Ireland. Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be executed in Britain on 13 July 1955.

Prior to 1874 criminals were given little or no drop when they were hanged and thus often struggled in the agonies of strangulation for some time after they were ‘turned off ’. As women were typically lighter in weight than men they tended to die harder still.

Francis Stewart became the first woman to be executed by William Marwood’s newly introduced long-drop method in 1874, which was designed to break the prisoner’s neck and cause instant unconsciousness, through the use of a measured drop calculated from the prisoner’s weight and height. All subsequent female executions used this method.

From this time other changes were made to the execution process for both sexes in a continuing effort to reduce the prisoner’s suffering. Executions became genuinely private affairs, with the press being increasingly excluded. The length of drop given was refined and codified in Home Office tables. The design of the noose and pinioning methods were also improved. The distance the prisoner had to walk from her cell to the gallows was reduced to just a few paces with the introduction of purpose-built execution suites to replace execution sheds in prison yards. The last few female hangings took just fifteen seconds to carry out instead of minutes required in earlier private executions.

1

THE EARLY GEORGIAN PERIOD

The reign of King George II spanned the period from 1727 to 1760. In the period from 1735 to 1759, 151 women suffered the death penalty in Britain, fifteen being burned at the stake and 136 being hanged, giving an average of six female executions per annum.

Just over half of the women executed at this time suffered for murder, with highway robbery (what we would typically call mugging today), forgery and robbery in a dwelling house accounting for a significant proportion of the non-murder executions. In the cases of at least some of the others who died for the lesser offences, they had previous convictions and had already been reprieved once, receiving alternative sentences such as whipping, imprisonment or a period of transportation.

In this chapter we will look at four cases, of which three are of murder and one is of a repeat offender.

There was often a strange dichotomy between the severity of sentences and the actual treatment of the prisoner. Mary Blandy seems to have been remarkably well looked after even if she was made to wear leg irons. Sarah Malcolm even had her portrait painted whilst awaiting the gallows by no less an artist than William Hogarth who visited her in Newgate. Celebrity criminal Jenny Diver was in effect allowed to choreograph much of her execution, choosing the right clothes to wear and being allowed to hire a mourning coach to take her to Tyburn, to avoid having to mix too much with the common criminals.

Sarah MalcolmMultiple Murder atthe Inns of Court

Sarah Malcolm is the first in this series of educated, middle-class young women who met her death at the hands of the ‘common hangman’. She was just twenty-two when she suffered for the murders of three women during a robbery at the home of one of them.

Sarah originated from Durham and had been born in 1711 to a good family. However, her father had squandered the family’s money and as a teenager, Sarah was forced to move to London and go into service. Initially, she performed her duties well but later got a job at the Black Horse, a pub in Boswell Court near Temple Bar, where she became involved with London’s low life.

She left her job at the Black Horse and took a job as laundress to chambers above the Inns of Court, working for some of the tenants there. Among her customers was Mrs Lydia Duncomb, a wealthy but somewhat frail old lady, whose age is variously quoted as being between sixty and eighty, who occupied a set of chambers in Tanfield Court in the Temple. Lydia employed two live-in servants, Elizabeth Harrison aged sixty, who was effectively retired, and seventeen-year-old Ann Price, who had been employed to take over Elizabeth’s duties. Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Harrison had been Mrs Duncomb’s companion for many years.

The precise events of the night of Saturday, 3 February 1733 are unknown because Sarah never gave a credible account of them. She told her trial that she entered the old lady’s apartment with Martha Tracey and the Alexander brothers, and they carried out the robbery while she kept watch on the stairs and thus took no part in the murders.

The first body discovered was that of Ann Prince with a knife wound to her throat. It was found in the passage leading to the apartment, her hands clutched to the wound. Elizabeth Harrison was found lying across her bed having been strangled with her apron string and Mrs Duncomb similarly lying across her bed. It seemed that she too had been strangled but that she might have died of shock and fright, and the weight of her assailant’s body on top of her.

On the Sunday morning, one of Mrs Duncomb’s friends, a Mrs Ann Love, arrived for a dinner invitation but could get no answer or see any sign of life. She went to fetch another of Mrs Duncomb’s friends, a Mrs Frances Rhymer, and they could not raise any sign of life. Sarah also came up and Mrs Love, fearing that all was not well, sent Sarah to find a locksmith. Sarah returned later with Mrs Ann Oliphant, also a friend of Mrs Duncomb, who was quite a bit younger and managed to gain entry into the apartment. They were met with the horrific sights described above. They also realised that the apartment had been stripped of anything of value and Mrs Duncomb’s strongbox had been forced open. Other neighbours came to see what was going on. A doctor was sent for by one of the Temple porters and Mr Thomas Bigg, a surgeon, made a preliminary examination of the three deceased women.

John Kerrel was also a tenant of the Chambers and he too employed Sarah. He had been out on the Sunday and returned home around 1 a.m. to find Sarah in his room. He was surprised to see her there at that time of night and being aware of the murders, asked her if anyone had been arrested. He also discovered that some of his waistcoats were missing and when he challenged Sarah about this, she confessed that she had pawned them. He told her to leave and was obviously not comfortable with her presence as he believed that whoever had committed the murders knew their way around the apartments. Sarah left but now being thoroughly suspicious he made a search and in the Close-stool, he found some linen and underneath a silver tankard with blood on the handle. Under the bed, he found a bloodstained shift and apron. He immediately called the watchmen and they caught up with Sarah by the Inner-Temple Gate. They brought her back to John Kerrel’s apartment who asked her if the tankard was hers and she told him it was and that it had been given to her by her mother. She was now taken to the constable and he took her before Alderman Brocas who sent her to the Compter (local lock-up jail) and on the Monday morning, committed her to Newgate prison. As part of the normal admissions procedure, she was searched on arrival and was found to have a considerable amount of silver and gold coins about her, which she allegedly admitted were Mrs Duncomb’s. They also found a purse containing twenty-one guineas in the bosom of her dress, which Sarah claimed she had found in the street. She offered these to Mr Roger Johnson the turnkey (warder) if he made no mention of them. He refused this and took the coins to his superiors and reported the attempt to bribe him. She also repeated to Mr Johnson that she had organised the robbery, but that she had stayed on the stairs leading up to the apartment while Martha Tracey and the Alexander brothers had carried it out.

An inquest was held into the murders and Sarah was indicted by the coroner’s court.

Sarah came to trial at the Old Bailey at the February Sessions for the City of London and County of Middlesex which were held on Wednesday, 21 February to Saturday, 24 February. Sarah’s trial was scheduled for Friday the 23rd and she was charged with the three murders and breaking and entering the dwelling-house of Lydia Duncomb. She pleaded not guilty to all of these charges.

As all of these indictments were capital offences, it was decided to proceed with the murder of Ann Price only, to save court time. The prosecution told the jury that if they were not convinced by the evidence and by the findings of the coroner’s court, it was for them to say how Ann Price died. The basic chronology of the crime, discovery of the bodies and arrest of Sarah was now put before the jury.

John Kerrel was the first to give evidence and he told the court of the events leading to the arrest. His friend and neighbour, John Gehagan, also testified for the prosecution and confirmed the discoveries of the bloodstained clothes and the tankard. The two watchmen, John Mastreter and Richard Hughs, gave evidence of Sarah’s arrest and told the court how she claimed that the blood on the tankard was her own from a cut finger. Frances Rhymer, who looked after Mrs Duncomb’s financial affairs, identified the tankard and the purse that had been found on Sarah and told the court of the contents of the old lady’s strong box.

Sarah cross examined each prosecution witness in minute detail and made much of any differences between the known facts and their recollections of events, in an effort to discredit their testimony.

Roger Johnson told the court how he had searched Sarah in Newgate and made his incriminating discoveries. He recounted that the purse contained a substantial number of high value coins and testified that Sarah had admitted to him that the money was Mrs Duncomb’s, offering it to him to keep quiet about it. Johnson further suggested that Sarah had told him she had hired three witnesses to testify that the tankard was hers. Sarah claimed that she had given the money to Johnson for safekeeping and that he was to return it to her when she was acquitted. Johnson’s superior, Mr Alstone, confirmed Johnson’s account and also added that Sarah had told him that she had planned the robbery and had been assisted by Martha Tracey and the Alexander brothers.

The next piece of evidence was the statement, taken on oath, when Sarah appeared before Sir Richard Brocas on 6 February. In this, she affirmed that she had planned the robbery but that she had remained on the stairs outside the old lady’s apartment whilst it was carried out.

Sarah was not represented by counsel but offered a spirited defence. She claimed that the blood on her shift and apron was from her period and was not that of the murdered maid. She claimed the blood on the handle of the tankard was from her finger cut. She admitted to planning the robbery and to being an accessory to the crime but implicated Tracey and the Alexanders in the murders. She told the court that she accepted that she would die for robbery in a dwelling house but that she could not confess to the killings, as she was innocent of them. She also asked the judge to order the return of the money found on her that was over and above that stolen from Mrs Duncomb. At the end of her speech, the jury retired for fifteen minutes to consider their verdict. Sarah was found guilty of the robbery and the one murder charge that was proceeded with and also guilty in accordance with the verdict of the Coroner’s Inquisition, i.e. of the other two murders. The authorities had no evidence against Martha Tracey and the Alexander brothers and did not proceed against them.

Sarah was taken back to Newgate and the following day, returned to the court at the end of the Sessions to be sentenced to death, as were nine men. Her case was reported in the London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, for March 1733.

In the condemned hold at Newgate, she continued to refuse to confess to the murders. Crimes like this were very rare, especially when committed by a young woman, and so she was seen as something of a celebrity. The well-known artist, William Hogarth, visited her in prison two days before her execution and sketched her prior to painting her portrait.

At this time, as there was virtually no news media, in the case of particularly shocking murders it was arranged that the execution would take place as near to the crime scene as possible so that local people would be able to see that justice had been done. Sarah was reportedly distressed about the venue being Fleet Street as she would be executed among the people who knew her rather than at Tyburn where she would have been somewhat more anonymous. She confessed on the night before she was hanged and the details were printed in ‘A Paper delivered by Sarah Malcolm on the Night before her Execution to the Rev. Mr. Piddington, and published by Him’ (London, 1733). This was more of a self justification than a confession.

Sarah was to be hanged on Wednesday, 7 March. Newgate’s portable gallows was set up in Fleet Street, in the square opposite Mitre Court, for the purpose. She was prepared in the normal way by the Yeoman of the Halter, her hands tied in front of her and the halter noose around her neck. She was placed in the cart with John Hooper, the hangman, to make the short journey to Fleet Street accompanied by a troop of javelin men and the under sheriff. Sarah is said to have fainted in the cart and also to have ‘wrung her hands and wept most bitterly’. When she arrived at the gallows, she listened carefully to the Ordinary’s prayers for her soul and again fainted. She was revived and just before the cart was driven from under her, she is reported to have turned towards the Temple and cried out, ‘Oh, my mistress, my mistress! I wish I could see her!’ and then casting her eyes towards heaven, called upon Christ to receive her soul. She was dragged off the cart by the rope and left kicking in the air, dying after a brief struggle. Her body was taken down and buried in the churchyard of St Sepulchre’s church. Strangely, it seemed that John Hooper was the only person present to have any real sympathy for her. William Hogarth thought that ‘she was capable of any wickedness’ and the crowd surrounding the gallows were of the same view.

Sarah’s bloodstained garments featured prominently in the trial. However blood typing had not been invented at the time and there was no means of knowing whose blood it was. She claimed it was her menstrual blood and it certainly could have been. Sarah did not deny being present on the stairs nor did she deny having the stolen property, both capital crimes in themselves.

It has been suggested as a motive for the crime that Sarah was having a relationship with one of the two Alexander brothers, whom she hoped would marry her and devised the plan to rob Mrs Duncomb so as to enable her to have enough money to get married on. She presumably saw her elderly client’s apartments as a source of ‘easy money’. Perhaps Ann Price disturbed her in the course of entering the apartment and was thus stabbed. Ann was presumably a fit teenage girl who would have put up a struggle, and no doubt this commotion would have alerted Mrs Duncomb and Elizabeth Harrison, so they too had to be silenced.

Sarah was fortunate in one way, in that had she been in the direct employ of Mrs Duncomb, she would have been guilty not only of murder but also of Petty Treason and would have been burned at the stake.

Jenny Diver‘Dressed to Die’

Unlike the majority of cases featured in these pages, our present subject was a street thief and pickpocket, rather than a murderer.

Jenny Diver’s real name was Mary Young but she was re-christened by her gang as she was such an expert ‘diver’, as pickpockets were known. For simplicity, I have called her Jenny Diver from here on in. She was a professional criminal who became something of a celebrity, ending her career dangling from London’s Tyburn Tree. It is thought that she was about forty years old at the time of her death, although there is no precise record of her date of birth.

Jenny was born around 1700 in the north of Ireland, the illegitimate child of Harriet Jones, a lady’s maid. Harriet was forced to leave her job and found lodgings in a brothel where she gave birth. She soon deserted Jenny who lived in several foster homes before, at about the age of ten, she was taken in by an elderly gentlewoman. She was even sent to school, where she learned to read and write and mastered needlework. Her quick-fingered dexterity fitted her well for her future life of crime. Her sewing was excellent and she was able to earn a reasonable living from it. So much so that she decided to go to London and become a professional seamstress.

There was a small problem however – how to raise the money for the ferry boat fare. She solved this by persuading one of her admirers that she would marry him if he found the money and went with her to England. He booked a passage on a ship bound for Liverpool. A short time before the vessel was to sail, the young man robbed his master of a gold watch and eighty guineas and then joined Jenny, who was already on board the ship. The crossing of the Irish Sea took two days and Jenny was very seasick. She and her young man took lodgings in Liverpool and lived together for a short while as man and wife. When Jenny had recovered sufficiently, they journeyed to London by road. The day before they were due to leave Liverpool her companion was arrested for the thefts in Ireland. Jenny sent him his clothes and some money before she departed, and he was returned to Ireland to stand trial. He was sentenced to death but this was commuted to transportation, as it was his first offence.

Once in London, Jenny met up with another Irish girl called Anne Murphy, who offered her lodging in Long Acre. Anne was in fact the leader of a bunch of pickpockets and introduced Jenny to the trade. As an apprentice pickpocket she was given ten guineas on which to live until she could start producing income herself. She was taken by members of the gang to suitable venues to observe their techniques and to practice lifting purses and jewellery. Jenny learned very quickly and was clearly going to be an asset to the gang. In fact she was so successful at crime that she was soon making a fortune and took over from Anne as head of the gang, who renamed her Jenny Diver. Anne and some of the other members often played the part of servants to her in her various scams.

Not only was Jenny nimble fingered but she was also extremely inventive. She was an educated, attractive and smartly dressed young woman who could mix easily in wealthy middle-class circles, without being suspected of being a thief. The story is told of how she went to a church service wearing two false arms which appeared to remain in her lap. Dressed in good clothes and sitting among the wealthier lady worshippers, she would wait her chance to seize their watches and jewellery, passing them to one of her assistants in the pew behind. Apparently to her victims, her hands had never moved throughout the prayers.

Another successful ruse was to fake sudden illness when in the midst of a crowd. This she did in St James’ Park on a day when the King was going to the House of Lords. As she lay on the ground apparently in great pain, surrounded by people offering her assistance, she was systematically robbing them and passing the items back to other members of her gang who were masquerading as her footman and maid.

Jenny also went on expeditions with her boyfriend of the day, usually one of the gang members. In one of these adventures, she used the sudden illness ploy again but this time to gain access to a house in Wapping. While the owners went upstairs for smelling salts, etc., Jenny rifled through the drawers and helped herself to a considerable sum in cash. Her boyfriend was doing the same in the kitchen, stealing the best silver cutlery.

Jenny and her gang rapidly achieved notoriety and inevitably she was caught, for picking the pocket of a gentleman in early 1733. She was committed to Newgate and came to trial at the next Sessions of the Old Bailey, under the name of Mary Young, her real name, although she used many aliases. As this was her first recorded offence as Mary Young, she was reprieved to transportation to Virginia on America’s east coast. She spent four months in Newgate, awaiting a prison ship. When the day finally came, she had a huge quantity of goods put aboard the ship with her, to enable her to fund a good lifestyle in Virginia. No doubt she used some of her wealth to bribe the captain to allow her to take all this and again the governor of the penal colony, when she arrived there to let her live well and not have to work in the plantations.

It would seem that she missed both the excitement of crime and the easy wealth she made from it because it was not long before she returned to Britain. Only 5 per cent of those sentenced to transportation for periods of less than life did return and to do so before completing one’s sentence was a capital crime. However, Jenny was able to use her looks and money to persuade a returning captain to take her back to London.

She returned to her various forms of thieving, but she was getting older now and her fingers were stiffening with arthritis. At the age of thirty-eight, on 4 April 1738, Jenny was caught red-handed with two male accomplices trying to take the purse of a woman named Mrs Rowley in Canon Alley, near London’s Paternoster Row. This time she gave the name of Jane Webb and under this name, was once more sentenced to transportation after her trial eight days later.

Remember there were no photographic or fingerprint records at this time so the authorities had to accept the name she gave and seemed unable to unearth her previous conviction and sentence. It would seem that journalists of the day had no such problem making the connection between Jane Webb and Jenny Diver and her true identity was reported in the London Evening Post. Members of her gang made every effort to save her from transportation, but on 7 June 1738 she was once more put aboard a prison ship, the Forward, again bound for America. Jenny did not learn from this and within a year, using her usual method of bribery, she landed back at Liverpool.

She made her way to London but her old gang had dispersed, retired, transported or hanged. Jenny was finding it much harder now to make the good living she had been used to in her younger days.

Nemesis finally overtook Jenny on Saturday, 10 January 1741, when she was caught trying to rob a purse containing 13s ½d (a fraction over 65p), from a younger woman, Judith Gardner, in Sherbourne Lane. Jenny had set up a scam with Elizabeth Davies and an unidentified male member of her gang, whereby he would offer to help ladies cross some wooden boards laid over a patch of wet ground. As he held Judith’s arm, Jenny put her hand into the woman’s pocket. Judith realised this and grabbed Jenny’s wrist still within her pocket. Jenny hit her round the head but she maintained a firm grip on Jenny’s cloak until passers-by managed to arrest her and Elizabeth. A constable was summoned and they were taken to the compter (a local lock-up jail). Their male accomplice managed to escape.

She was examined the next day by the magistrates, who committed her to Newgate to await trial. This time she was identified by the authorities and appeared before the next Sessions for the City of London and County of Middlesex at the Old Bailey, a week later on Saturday, 17 January 1741.

She was charged, together with Elizabeth Davies, with highway robbery in the form of ‘privately stealing’ (picking pockets to the value of more than 1s) and also with returning from transportation. She had been caught red-handed so had no real defence to the first charge and equally little to the second.

The principal prosecution witness was the victim, Mrs Gardner, who described the attack on her to the court and was cross-examined on her testimony by Jenny herself. Mrs Gardner told the court how she had been put in fear by the attack and how she had struggled with Jenny. Several other witnesses gave evidence of the crime and subsequent arrest of the two women. There was no counsel for the defence in those days but Jenny did her best to defend herself and brought forward character witnesses for both herself and Elizabeth Davies, not that these convinced the jury who brought them both in guilty, to use the parlance of the time. At the end of the Session, the Recorder sentenced them to be hanged at Tyburn. In all, thirteen prisoners were sentenced to death from this Sessions, seven men and six women. Both Jenny and Elizabeth immediately ‘pleaded their belly’ (claimed that they were pregnant), but the panel of matrons charged with examining them found this not to be the case. At the end of the Sessions, the Recorder prepared his report to the King and Privy Council recommending who should be reprieved and who should hang. Predictably, Jenny’s name was not on the reprieve list. Elizabeth had her sentence commuted to transportation.

It seems that the enormity of her situation finally hit Jenny and she turned to religion. Religion and repentance were seen as very important and even criminals like Jenny would have become very concerned about the afterlife and the fate of her soul. She would have been repeatedly told that if she confessed and repented her sins, then she could avoid going to ‘eternal damnation in the fires of Hell’, or some similarly emotive phrase. As will be seen, she clearly took this message to heart. On her last Sunday, she and her fellow condemned prisoners were taken to the chapel and seated in the Condemned Pews where they were made to endure a church service with a coffin centrally placed on the table in their midst.

Wednesday, 18 March was to see one of the largest multiple hangings at Tyburn for many years. The prisoners had been convicted at the December 1740, January 1741 and February 1 741 Sessions. In all, sixteen men and four women were to suffer that day. The women being Jenny, Elizabeth Fox and Priscilla Mahon who had been convicted of robbery in a brothel and Dorothy Middleton, convicted of burglary.

On the morning of her execution, Jenny, being wealthy, dressed in a long black dress with a black bonnet and veil. Many of the women hanged at this time would wear a cheap shift as it was all they could afford and in any case, their clothes would become the property of the hangman afterwards.

Jenny was led from her cell to the Press Yard in Newgate, accompanied by the tolling of the bell of St Sepulchre’s church just across the road. The Yeoman of the Halter tied her wrists in front of her and put a cord around her body and elbows. He put the noose around her neck and wound the free rope around her body. At this point, her nerve failed her for a few moments but she soon recovered her composure. The other nineteen were similarly treated and then led to the three carts and seated on their coffins. Jenny was allowed to go to Tyburn in a mourning coach, attended by the Ordinary of Newgate, Reverend Boughton, to whom it was reported that she confessed her sins and declared her religious beliefs.

Like anybody else about to suffer an imminent and painful death, Jenny was no doubt inwardly terrified of what was about to happen to her, but she had to maintain her image and put on a ‘good show’ for the crowd. Then, as now, ‘celebrities’ captured the public’s imagination and she would have been expected to justify her celebrity status.

The journey to Tyburn, some 2 miles, could often take three hours or more to complete so it was usually around noon or later by the time the prisoners arrived. The procession comprised marshalmen, javelin men and constables armed with staves, all led by the City Marshal and under sheriff on their horses. The route led west out of the City of London, along Holborn, St Giles, and the Tyburn Road (now called Oxford Street) to the gallows at what is now Marble Arch at the north-eastern corner of Hyde Park. Extraordinarily as it may seem now, the procession would make at least two refreshment stops where the prisoners were allowed to have food and alcohol, before reaching Tyburn. The first was at the Bowl Inn in St Giles, the second at the Mason’s Arms in Seymour Place.

Once at Tyburn, Jenny was helped down from the coach by Reverend Boughton and took her place in one of the carts. It is probable that the four women would have been placed in the same cart and the sixteen men divided up between the other two carts. The hangman, John Thrift, uncoiled the free rope from around her and threw the end up to one of his young assistants lying on top of one of the three cross beams, who secured it leaving very little slack. This process had to be repeated for each prisoner, so took some while to complete. Jenny may well have slipped John Thrift a small bribe to ensure he did his job well and positioned the knot under her left ear instead of at the back of her neck. When all the ‘sufferers’, as they were known, were secured to the beams and had finished their prayers, night-caps were drawn over the faces of those who could afford them. Jenny did not require a night cap, instead preferring her veil. The signal was given by the under sheriff for the carts to be whipped away by their drivers. As the cart moved from under her, Jenny was dragged from it, dropping just a few inches to be brought up with a jerk, causing the noose to tighten around her neck. Swinging back and forth under the beam, amid the writhing mass of her fellow prisoners, she made choking and gurgling sounds, her feet paddling in thin air. Jenny was fortunate, only struggling for a few moments before going limp and passing into unconsciousness, according to contemporary reports. It is not known whether her friends pulled on her legs to shorten her suffering, although this was a common practice. It is reported that some of the spectators offered up prayers for her soul as she dangled there.

She had arranged for her friends to claim her body when she was cut down to prevent it falling into the hands of the dissectionists and was buried at her specific request in St Pancras churchyard.

One hundred and eighty-two women were hanged at Tyburn in the eighteenth century, so female executions were comparatively rare. Jenny’s would have been reported in the press as there were several titles by 1740 and there were execution broadsides published detailing her crimes, confession and execution. This mass execution drew a huge crowd of people of all classes. Wealthy people paid substantial sums for seats in the grandstands around the gallows. These were known as Mother Proctor’s Pews, after their owner, who no doubt made a fortune from them. In the crowd there were quite possibly pickpockets operating, irrespective of the fact that it was one of their number who was the star attraction that day.

Was it simple greed or the love of London and the thrill of crime together with the easy living she made from it that led Jenny to continue down the path that she knew would inevitably lead to the gallows? She was an intelligent woman who would have been fully aware of the likely punishment for her crimes and yet, it seems, she could not resist the excitement and glamour of being London’s most successful pickpocket.

Mary Blandy‘For the sake of decency,gentlemen, don’t hang me high.’

Mary Blandy was thirty-one years old when she was hanged in 1752 for the murder of her father by poisoning. Her father, Francis Blandy, was a prosperous lawyer and the town clerk of Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire at the time of his murder. So Mary lived a comfortable lifestyle at the family home in Hart Street and had been given a good education.

Francis had unwisely advertised a dowry of £10,000 – a huge sum for those days, for the man who married Mary. This attracted plenty of suitors, all of whom being promptly rejected except one, the Honourable Captain William Henry Cranstoun, who was initially acceptable. Cranstoun was the son of a Scottish nobleman and therefore seen as a suitable match. By all accounts he was not a physically attractive person but seems to have been able to take Mary in completely. All went well to begin with but then problems arose when it was discovered that Cranstoun was in fact still married, having wed one Anne Murray in 1744 in Scotland, although he had been living in the Blandy household for a year. Mary’s father became very unhappy about Cranstoun and began to see him for what he was. To get over Francis’ hostility, Cranstoun persuaded Mary to give her father powders which he described as an ancient ‘love philtre’ and which he assured her would make Francis like him.

He knew what the powders contained but presumably didn’t mind letting his girlfriend murder her father to get the £10,000 dowry. Ironically Francis Blandy’s estate came only to around £4,000. Under the law at the time, this would have automatically passed to him if they married.

Mary seemed to be totally taken in by Cranstoun and administered these powders, which were in fact arsenic, in her father’s tea and gruel, causing him to become progressively more ill. The servants had also become ill from eating some of the leftover food although they all recovered. None of this seemed to register with Mary – that the powders might be the cause of the problem.

When her father was obviously near death, Mary sent for the local doctor who advised her that she could be held responsible for poisoning him so she quickly burned Cranstoun’s love letters and disposed of the remaining powders. Susan(nah) Gunnell, the housemaid, had the presence of mind to rescue some of the powder from the fire when Mary tried to destroy the evidence and took it to a chemist for analysis who found that it was arsenic.

Francis realised he was dying and asked to see Mary, telling her that he suspected he was being poisoned by her. She begged for his forgiveness, which he indeed gave her, despite the fact that she did not admit her crime to him. He finally succumbed on Wednesday, 14 August 1751. After her father’s death, Mary was kept for some time under house arrest in her room, under the care of Edward Herne, the parish clerk of Henley. However, she was able to get out on one occasion and went for a walk around the town. The local people of Henley were hostile to her and chased her across the bridge over the Thames, into Berkshire, where she took refuge with a friend, Mrs Davis, the landlady of the Little Angel Inn at Remenham.

In spite of this popular suspicion, it was some time before Mary was arrested. As soon as he got wind of Mary’s likely arrest, Cranstoun deserted her and is thought to have escaped abroad and died penniless in France in late 1752. An inquest was held which found that Francis Blandy was poisoned and accused Mary of administering it. On Friday, 16 August, the coroner issued a warrant for the arrest of Mary and for her committal to the Oxford County Gaol. Mary was made to wear leg irons whilst awaiting trial as there was some concern that she would try to escape.

She came to trial at Oxford Assizes on 3 March 1752 before the Honourable Heneage Legge, Esq., and Sir Sydney Stafford Smythe in the hall of the Divinity School. The normal venue, the Town Hall, was being refurbished at the time. The trial was of particular interest because it was the first time detailed medical evidence had been presented in court on a charge of murder by poisoning. Although Dr Anthony Addington had not been able to chemically analyse Francis Blandy’s organs for traces of arsenic as the technology didn’t exist at the time, he was able to convince the court on the basis of observed comparison that the powder Mary had given her father was indeed arsenic.

She defended herself with the help of three members of counsel, with what has been described as ‘intelligence and zeal’ although her case was hopeless. She made an impassioned speech for her own defence in which she totally denied administering poison but did admit that she had put a powder into her father’s food. The servants gave evidence against her, telling the court that they had seen her administering the powders to her father’s food and drink and trying to destroy the evidence.

At the end of the thirteen-hour trial, the jury swiftly convicted her of murder and she received the death sentence. She was then returned to Oxford Castle where it is reported that the keeper’s family were all very upset by her conviction. Mary allegedly told them ‘Don’t mind it’, ‘What does it signify? I am very hungry; pray, let me have something for supper as speedily as possible.’ They gave her mutton chops and apple pie. She apparently got on well with her jailers and was well treated by them.

She was allowed nearly six weeks between sentence and execution and appeared completely unmoved by her situation. The trial judge would have sent his recommendation to the Secretary of State, and this would have been considered by the King and Privy Council at a ‘Hanging Cabinet.’

In July 1752, the Murder Act was passed which stipulated that all persons convicted of murder were to be fed only on bread and water and hanged within two days of sentence and that their body be dissected afterwards. Fortunately for Mary, she missed the advent of this new law.

Mary’s case was the main news story in the early part of 1752 and there were endless articles about her in the press. She also wrote a great deal in the condemned cell including ‘Miss Mary Blandy’s Own Account of the Affair between her and Mr. Cranstoun’, which was described by Hoarce Bleakley as the ‘most famous apologia in criminal literature.’ She corresponded with various people, including another woman under sentence of death, Elizabeth Jeffries, whose case is looked at next. A middle-class lady who visited Mary in prison was shocked to find that Mary was sympathetic to Elizabeth who she regarded as a common criminal who deserved her fate. Mary was recorded as saying of her ‘I can’t bear these over virtuous women. I believe that if ever the devil picks a bone it is one of theirs.’

There seems to be some difference of opinion as to the place of execution. According to some accounts, she was executed in the Castle Yard at Oxford, a large open space, and in other accounts the gallows was set up on a raised mound at the Westgate. Both are quite possible.

Mary was hanged on Monday, 6 April 1752 from a gallows consisting of a wooden beam placed between two trees. She chose ‘a black crape sack dress, with her arms and hands ty’d with black paduasoy ribbons.’ She was attended by Rev. Swinton and behaved with bravery and penitence to the end although still protesting her innocence. A relatively small crowd had gathered to watch her die.

Her last request to the officials was ‘for the sake of decency, gentlemen, don’t hang me high.’ She was naturally modest and concerned that the young men in the crowd would look up her skirts if she was too high. She was then made to climb a ladder draped in black cloth, whilst the hangman climbed a ladder beside her. Mary was noosed and her hands were tied in front to allow her to hold her prayer book. She covered her face with a large handkerchief.

It had been agreed that when she had finished her prayers, she would drop the book as signal to the hangman to ‘turn her off ’ the ladder as the saying went. She passed into unconsciousness very quickly, reportedly, dying without a struggle, probably due to carotid reflex. She was taken down after half an hour but there was no coffin for her so she had to be carried back to the castle by six men. It is said that a blackbird perched on the beam during the hanging, and that no blackbird has ever sung there since.

Mary was buried in the early hours of the Tuesday morning in the chancel of Henley Parish church, between the graves of her father and mother. Her ghost is said to haunt the Westgate and the Little Angel Inn.

Mary was notably brave in the way she faced her death. She would have expected that death by hanging would be slow and painful even though in the event it seemed not to be. Her last words ‘for the sake of decency, gentlemen, don’t hang me high’ became instantly famous although they hardly seem those of someone who is terrified, rather more those of someone concerned with preserving her modesty than with her imminent death.

Mary must have been totally devastated at the knowledge that the man who she thought loved her had duped her into murdering her own father and then immediately abandoned her to save his skin while sending her to the gallows. But how could an educated and mature woman be so taken in? Sadly she was by no means the first, nor will she be the last to murder for love. She must surely have had her suspicions when everyone who ate the food to which she had added the powders became violently ill and yet she brushed these aside in the hope that Cranstoun would marry her.

By the standards of justice prevailing in 1752, Mary had a fair trial and a fair sentence. Ironically, modern forensic science would have simply made it easier to convict her. The only doubt as to her guilt is that of her intention. She loved her father and I feel sure she neither meant nor wanted to kill him but rather wanted to believe what Cranstoun had told her even though she had clear evidence that it was a lie. At one time, arsenic was used as a tonic, and this may account for why her father seemed actually better the first time she gave it to him.

Elizabeth JeffriesThe Murderous Niece

The British public and therefore the British media have always enjoyed a ‘good murder’. The early months of 1752 brought not one, but two such events. Their cases filled the newspapers for weeks. In the previous pages we have looked at the case of Mary Blandy and, as mentioned, the other case was that of Elizabeth Jeffries who had aided and abetted the murder of her uncle.

Mr Joseph Jeffries was a wealthy but childless man who lived in Walthamstow, Essex, and who had adopted his niece, Elizabeth. He made his will in her favour but threatened to change it because of her rebellious teenage ways, her good behaviour being made a condition of inheritance. Elizabeth had been thinking of murdering her uncle for some two years but did not see a way of doing it unaided. Finally fearing that he would carry out his threat to disinherit her, the by now twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth enlisted the help of Mr Jeffries’ gardener, John Swan, with whom she was believed to have been ‘intimate’, to use the contemporary term. They had tried to persuade a former servant, one Matthews, to kill Mr Jeffries by offering him a substantial share of the proceeds, but in the end he declined, although he was probably present at the killing.

The plan to kill Mr Jeffries involved Matthews obtaining a brace of pistols for which Elizabeth had given him half a guinea. He spent this on drink but still joined the others in Mr Jeffries’ house at around 10 p.m. on the night of Tuesday, 3 July 1751. Matthews hid himself in the pantry and was joined there by John and Elizabeth around midnight. They asked him if he was ready and where the pistols were but he told them, ‘I cannot find it in my heart to do it.’ To which the furious Elizabeth replied: ‘You may be damned for a villain, for not performing your promise!’ Whether John feared that Matthews would prove unreliable, we don’t know, but he had brought a brace of pistols. He also produced a book and insisted that Matthews should swear not to disclose what had passed between them, ‘unless it was to save his own life.’ Matthews then left Mr Jeffries’ house but remained long enough to hear a pistol shot. Elizabeth and John had devised a plan whereby they would both pretend to have been in their respective rooms at the time of the shooting, having first staged what was to appear to be a botched robbery by hiding some plate and silver in a sack downstairs. Later that evening, they would raise the alarm and claim that Mr Jeffries had been robbed and murdered by an intruder.

Initially the authorities arrested Elizabeth as there was no sign of forced entry, and began a search for Matthews whom she had implicated. However, they could produce no evidence against her and she was released. She now took control of her uncle’s assets and began spending them. In the meantime Matthews was located and gave a full statement of events, if only to save his own neck. On receipt of this information Elizabeth and John were re-arrested and committed to Chelmsford prison for trial at the next assizes.

They were tried together some eight months later at the Essex Assizes before Mr Justice Wright on Tuesday, 10 March 1752. They had missed the previous year’s assize which had opened on 31 July 1751. Matthews was the principal witness for the prosecution and both were found guilty. The Crown counsel summed up Elizabeth’s motive for killing her uncle thus ‘to alter his will, if she did not alter her conduct.’ John Swan, as he was a servant of Mr Jeffries, was convicted of Petty Treason ‘for the cruel and wicked murder of his late master’, and Elizabeth ‘of aiding, helping, assisting, comforting and maintaining the said John Swan to commit the murder’. Note that she was not charged with murder, as she would have been under the doctrine of common purpose that applied in the twentieth century (see Edith Thompson), but rather with the crime she had actually committed. She reportedly confessed her part in the crime on the Thursday and they were brought back before the court on the Saturday to be sentenced. She fainted as her death sentence was pronounced. Nine men also received death sentences of whom five were reprieved and the other three hanged at Chelmsford on 26 March. The Court ordered that Elizabeth and John be executed near the scene of their crime.

The execution procession led by the under sheriff of Essex left Chelmsford Gaol at 4 a.m. on Saturday, 28 March, with Elizabeth riding in a cart, sitting on her own coffin and accompanied by the hangman. Because John had been convicted of Petty Treason, he was drawn along behind tied to a sledge, which was a mandatory part of the punishment for that crime. On arrival at the gallows, which was near the sixth milestone in Epping Forest near Walthamstow, some 23 miles and perhaps eight or nine hours away from Chelmsford, he was made to get up into the cart with Elizabeth and stand beside her.

A huge crowd had assembled to witness the proceedings; such was the public interest in the case. The prisoners did not communicate with one another at all, not even by glance, in the cart. Elizabeth was made to stand on a chair as she was of small stature and fainted several times as she was being prepared. It was reported that both confessed their guilt and justice of their sentences to a member of the jury who questioned them before they were turned off. After they had hung for the requisite time both bodies were taken down. Elizabeth’s corpse was taken away in a hearse to be delivered to her friends for burial, but John’s was hung in chains in another part of the Forest, said to be near the Bald Faced Stag Inn in Hainault Road, Chigwell, Essex, as a warning to others.

A broadside of the trial and execution of Elizabeth and John was printed. With the typical inaccuracy of these publications, the date of the murder is a year out.

Clearly Elizabeth’s desire for money was the prime mover in the crime and it seems that she sucked John Swan into the plan by the offer of sexual favours. It is not clear more than 250 years later whether she was really interested in John as a person or rather just saw him as an available assistant. No doubt she would have been happier to have paid Matthews to commit the crime and so put a slightly greater distance between it and her.

Mary Blandy had become aware of Elizabeth being in a similar predicament to her own and was allowed to write to her while both were in prison. The ensuing correspondence, between 7 January and 19 March 1752, was published under the title of ‘Genuine Letters between Miss Blandy and Miss Jeffries.’ Initially both women protested their innocence to each other, but later Elizabeth acknowledged her guilt to Mary. In her last letter to Elizabeth on 16 March, Mary reportedly wrote: ‘Your deceiving of me was a small crime; it was deceiving yourself: for no retreat, tho’ ever so pleasant, no diversions, no company, no, not Heaven itself, could have made you happy with those crimes un-repented of in your breast.’ So, with the promise to be ‘a suitor for her at the Throne of Mercy’ Mary finished the correspondence.

2

LATER GEORGIAN PERIOD AND THE ‘BLOODY CODE’

In the period 1760-1799, 205 women were executed, seventeen at the stake and 188 on the gallows. This was an average of just over five a year. One hundred and eight of these women had been convicted of murder.