Читать книгу True Crime Chronicles - Camden Pelham - Страница 34

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THE case of this criminal is more remarkable for her resuscitation after her execution, than for the circumstances attending the offence of which she was convicted.

The culprit was the daughter of poor parents living at Musselburgh, about five miles from Edinburgh, a place almost entirely inhabited by fishermen and persons employed in the manufacture of salt. When she reached the age of womanhood, she was married, but her husband, who was a fisherman, being impressed, he was carried off to sea. Deprived of her lawful protector, she formed an illicit connexion with another man; and it was for the murder of the offspring of this acquaintance that she was eventually sentenced to undergo the severest penalty of the law. It appears that she was remarked to be pregnant, and was accused by her neighbours of the fact, but she steadily denied her guilt. At length the body of a newly-born infant was found near the place of her residence, and as there was no way of accounting for its existence, except that suggested by the pregnancy of Mrs. Dixon, she was taken into custody, and being tried was found guilty and ordered for execution.

After her condemnation she behaved in the most penitent manner, confessed that she had been guilty of many sins, and even owned that she had departed from the line of duty to her husband; but she constantly and steadily denied that she had murdered her child, or had even formed an idea of so horrid a crime. She owned that the fear of being exposed to the ridicule of her neighbours had tempted her to deny that she was pregnant; and she said that, being suddenly seized with the pains of child-birth, she was unable to procure the assistance of her neighbours; and that a state of insensibility ensued, so that it was impossible she should know what became of the infant.

At the place of execution she persisted in her protestations of innocence, and Jack Ketch having performed his office, the body hung the usual time, and was then cut down and delivered to the friends of the deceased. By them it was put into a coffin, and sent in a cart to be buried at her native place; but the weather being sultry, the persons who had it in their care stopped to drink at a village called Peppermill, about two miles from Edinburgh. While they were refreshing themselves, one of them perceived the lid of the coffin move, and uncovering it, the woman sat upright, to the infinite alarm of the spectators. The mystery being soon explained; a fellow, who was present, had sufficient sagacity to bleed her; and in the course of the ensuing day she was sufficiently recovered to be able to walk home to her old residence at Musselburgh.

By the Scottish law, not only was she released by the execution from the consequences of the crime of which she had been found guilty, but from the bonds of matrimony also; but her husband having by this time returned from sea, he was publicly re-married to his old wife, within a few days after she had been hanged. A suit was subsequently brought by the Lord Advocate against the sheriff for omitting to perform his office; but as it turned out that the escape of the convict was not owing to any neglect on his part, but to some peculiar formation of the neck of the woman, the prosecution was abandoned.

The date of this transaction was the month of November, 1728; and the subject of this most remarkable escape was living in the year 1753, when it is due to her to state that she still persisted in her declarations of innocence.