Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen Read Online Free Page B

perforce have to go ahead. And so Eliza mounted the scaffold, her calm demeanour evoking nothing but sympathy and admiration from the large crowd as hangman Solomon Blay, himself an exiled convict, having placed the noose around her slim neck, pulled the lever – and the body of Eliza Benwell dropped the length of the short rope, a seeming eternity elapsing before her lifeless body hung inert and motionless.

One day in 1744 London housewife Lydia Adler attacked her meek and henpecked husband, knocking him down and kicking him so severely that he later died. At her trial at the Old Bailey she was charged with murder, but this was changed to one of manslaughter when medical evidence was produced testifying that her husband was already suffering from a rupture at the time of his death that was the material cause of his death. She was sentenced to be ‘burned in the hand’, and as the court officials were heating the branding iron, Lydia, as bad-tempered and impatient as ever, exclaimed, ‘Come on, hurry it up, can’t you? I’ve got my linen to do!’
    Bevan, Catherine (USA)
    In England the penalty of being burned at the stake was usually inflicted on those unfortunates who happened to have a different religion to the one more generally practised at the time. Two differing reasons for such a horrific death were that it prepared the heretical victim for the ever-burning fires that surely awaited him or her below, and that only by fire could the victim’s soul be cleansed of his or her heretical thoughts.
    The English colonists brought many of their quaint customs with them into America, including the home-grown methods of execution. Hanging needed no introduction, but strangely enough being burned at the stake rarely occurred except in the notable case of Catherine Bevan, not for being a heretic but a murderer.
    In 1731 she, together with her servant lover, planned the death of her husband. Unable to kill him by herself, it was agreed that the young man would knock him unconscious and she would then strangle him. Having carried out their plan, they reported to the coroner that he had died while having a fit and that the funeral had been arranged. However, the official insisted on inspecting the body and on opening up the coffin discovered the bruised and battered corpse.
    After being sentenced to death, Catherine, her hands bound behind her, was taken to the market square and there tied to a stake by means of a rope around her neck. Kindling was heaped around her and while the local residents either cheered or watched appalled, the tinder was ignited. As the flames leapt upwards the executioner attempted to reach forward and pull the rope with the intention of ending her life quickly by strangling her but, ironically, considering the method by which she had murdered her husband, the rope, singed by the mounting flames, had burnt away and Catherine collapsed, to be slowly incinerated in the roaring inferno.

Unlike in Catherine’s case, a rope did Hannah Dagoe a favour. Sentenced to death for robbery in 1763, this strongly built Irishwoman had no intention of going quietly as the cart stopped beneath the Tyburn gallows. Somehow she got her hands free and attacked the hangman, nearly stunning him. Then, turning to the crowds surrounding the scaffold, she tore off her hat and cloak and tossed them as souvenirs to the many outstretched hands. As she was doing so the hangman gathered his wits again and managed to drop the noose over her head – but rather than submitting to be slowly strangled (as usually happened at Tyburn), she threw herself over the side of the cart with such violence that her neck was broken, and she died instantly.
    Bockin, Margaret (Germany)
    When, in 1580, a neighbour asked Margaret Bockin to look for lice in her hair, Margaret struck her from behind with an axe. Needless to say she was found guilty of murder and was led out in the tumbril to the scaffold in the market square. There, naked to the waist,