Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 - Various - Страница 2

A woman was strangled and burnt for coining in front of the Debtors door, Newgate, on the 10th of March, 1789. I believe this to be the last instance in which this old punishment was inflicted, at least in the metropolis. The burning part of the ceremony was abolished by the 30 Geo. III., c. 48., and death by hanging made the penalty for women in cases of high or petty treason. E. S. S. W.'s informants are wrong in supposing that the criminals were burnt whilst living. The law, indeed, prescribed it, but the practice was more humane. They were first strangled; although it sometimes happened that, through the bungling of the executioner, a criminal was actually burnt alive, as occurred in the celebrated case of Katherine Hayes, executed for the murder of her husband in 1726. The circumstances of this case are so remarkable, that, having referred to it, I am induced to recapitulate the chief of them, in the belief that they will interest your readers. Hayes, who was possessed of some little property, lodged with his wife Katherine in Tyburn, now Oxford Road. Mrs. Hayes prevailed upon two men, named Billings (who lodged in the house) and Wood, a friend of Hayes, to assist her in murdering her husband. To facilitate that object, Hayes was induced to drink the enormous quantity of seven bottles (at that time full quarts) of Mountain wine, besides other intoxicating drinks. After finishing the seventh bottle he fell on the floor, but soon after arose and threw himself on a bed. There, whilst in a state of stupefaction, he was despatched by Billings and Wood striking him on the head with a hatchet. The murderers then held council as to the best mode of concealing their crime, and it was determined that they should mutilate and dispose of the body. They cut off the head, Mrs. Hayes holding a pail to catch the blood; and she proposed that the head should be boiled until the flesh came from the skull. This advice was rejected on account of the time which the process suggested would occupy, and Billings and Wood carried the head in the pail (it was at night) to the Horseferry at Westminster, and there cast it into the Thames. On the following day the murderers separated the limbs from the body, and wrapping them, together with the trunk, in two blankets, carried them to Marylebone fields, and placed them in a pond. Hayes' head not having been carried away by the tide, as the murderers expected it would have been, was found floating at the Horseferry in the morning. The attention of the authorities was drawn to the circumstance, and the magistrates being of opinion that a murder had been committed, caused the head to be washed and the hair combed out, and then had it placed on a pole and exposed to public view in St. Margaret's churchyard, in the hope that it might lead to the discovery of the suspected crime. Great crowds of persons of all ranks flocked to St. Margaret's churchyard to see the head, and amongst the rest a young man named Bennett, who perceiving the likeness to Hayes, whom he knew, immediately went to Mrs. Hayes on the subject; but she assured him that her husband was alive and well, which satisfied him. A journeyman tailor, named Patrick, also went to see the head, and on his return told his fellow workmen that it was Hayes. These workmen, who also had known Hayes, then went to look at the head, and felt the same conviction. It happened that Billings worked at the same shop in which these men were employed in Monmouth Street, and when he came to work next morning, they told him of the circumstance. Billings, however, lulled their suspicious by declaring that he had left Mr. Hayes at home that morning. After the head had been exhibited for four days in the churchyard, the magistrates caused it to be placed in spirits, in a glass vessel, and in that state it continued to be exposed to public view. Two friends of Hayes, named Ashley and Longmore, who had seen the head without imagining that it was his, some time after called on Mrs. Hayes, on separate occasions, to inquire for her husband, whose absence began to be noticed. Ashley and Longmore were mutual friends, and their suspicions being excited by the contradictory statements which Mrs. Hayes had given to them, they went to look again at the head, when a minute examination satisfied them that it had belonged to Hayes. The apprehension of the murderers was the result. On the day they were brought up for examination, the trunk and limbs of the murdered man were found. Wood and Billings confessed and pleaded guilty. Katherine Hayes put herself on her country, was tried and convicted. Wood died in prison. Billings was hanged in Marylebone fields, near the pond in which Hayes's body had been concealed. Katherine Hayes was executed at Tyburn, under circumstances of great horror; for, in consequence of the fire reaching the executioner's hands, he left his hold of the rope with which he ought to have strangled the criminal, before he had executed that part of his duty, and the result was, that Katherine Hayes was burnt alive. The wretched woman was seen, in the midst of flames, pushing the blazing faggots from her, whilst she yelled in agony. Fresh faggots were piled around her, but a considerable time elapsed before her torments ended. She suffered on the 3rd of November, 1726. This tragedy forms the subject of a comic ballad which is attributed to Swift.

C. Ross.

The communication of E. S. S. W. (Vol. ii., p. 6.), which is as interesting as it is shocking, induces me to send you a short extract from Harrison's Derby and Nottingham Journal, or Midland Advertiser. The number of this journal which is dated Thursday, September 23, 1779, contains as follows:—

"On Saturday two prisoners were capitally convicted at the Old Bailey of high treason, viz. Isabella Condon, for coining shillings in Cold-Bath-Fields; and John Field, for coining shillings in Nag's Head Yard, Bishopsgate Street. They will receive sentence to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution; the woman to be burnt, and the man to be hanged."

I presume that the sentence which the woman underwent was not executed. The barbarous fulfilment of such a law was, it may be hoped, already obsolete. The motives, however, upon which this law was grounded is worth noting:—

"In treason of every kind," says Blackstone, "the punishment of women is the same, and different from that of men. For, as the decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sensation as the other) is to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burned alive." "But," says the foot-note, "by the statute 30 Geo. III. c. 48., women convicted in all cases of treason, shall receive judgment to be drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till dead."

The law, therefore, under which a woman could be put to death by burning, was repealed in 1790.

Blackstone elsewhere says:—

"The humanity of the English nation has authorized, by a tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of those judgments as savours of torture and cruelty: a sledge or hurdle being usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn; and there being very few instances (and those accidental or by negligence) of any persons being embowelled or burned, till previously deprived of sensation by strangling."

This corroborates the conclusion of E. S. S. W., that the woman he describes was strangled at the stake to which her neck was bound.

I wish to suggest to any of your legal or other well-informed correspondents, who will have the kindness to take a little trouble for the benefit of your general readers, that an instructive and interesting communication might be made by noting down the periods at which the various more revolting punishments under the English law were repealed, or fell into disuse. For instance, when torture, such as the rack, was last applied; when embowelling alive and quartering ceased to be practised; and whose was the last head that fell under the axe's bloody stroke. A word also on the use of the pillory, ducking-stool, stocks, &c. would interest. Any illustrations of the modification of our penal code would throw valuable light on the philosophy and improvement of the national character. And I believe it would appear that the Reformation gradually swept away the black horrors of the torture-room; that the butchery of the headsman's block ceased at the close of the civil contest which settled the line of regal succession; and that hanging, which is the proper death of the cur, is now reserved for those only who place themselves out of the pale of humanity by striking at human life.

Alfred Gatty.

Ecclesfield.

E. S. S. W. (Vol. ii., p. 6.) will find a case of burning in Dodsley's Annual Register, 1769, p. 117.: a Susannah Lott was burned for the murder of her husband at Canterbury, Benjamin Buss, her paramour, being hanged about fifteen minutes before she was burned.

T. S. N.