Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Abbott Geoffrey

Author:Abbott, Geoffrey [Abbott, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780857659873
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2013-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Once Quakers had been banished from a town, they were forbidden to return. The Colonial Records of Massachusetts for the year 1657 defined the penalties to be paid by those who defied the law: ‘A Quaker, if male, for the first offense shall have one of his ears cutt off; for the second offense have his other ear cutt off; a woman shall be severely whipt; for the third offense they, he or she, shall have their tongues bored through with a hot iron.’

M

MacLauchlan, Mary (Australia)

Mary was one of the many hundreds of women convicted of minor crimes in England to be transported to the penal colonies of Australia, the punishment being additionally severe in her case, since she was separated from her husband and children. In Tasmania the women worked in factories and, not unnaturally, became acquainted with male transportees and established residents. It so happened that Mary, as a consequence of one such relationship, had a baby and, terrified of the punitive consequences, and doubtless in a confused state of mind having just given birth, she attempted to dispose of her newborn son by flushing him down the toilets in the building. The deed being discovered, she was tried, found guilty of infanticide, and sentenced to death.

On the dreaded day she was taken to the scaffold clad in a long white gown with a black ribbon about her waist. It was strongly suspected that the man in question was a ‘gentleman’ rather than a fellow convict, and the prison chaplain, the Reverend William Bedford, an ex-Ordinary of Newgate Prison, managed to persuade her not to name the transgressor as the executioner positioned the noose about her neck. Some of the immense crowd gathered round the scaffold reported that ‘her mental agony was truly awful’ and that as she fell through the opening trapdoors she screamed, ‘Oh my God!’

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