Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen

by Abbott, Geoffrey

  Askew, Anne (England)

  A third Tudor head, in addition to those of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, could well have rolled across the scaffold boards on Tower Green; as it was, the one who actually died an appalling death was a commoner, Anne Askew.

  That lady was a vehement Protestant, one of a group of friends who met and discussed religious matters with Queen Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth wife. Such get-togethers were dangerous activities in a royal court riven with opposing factions, and the Queen’s enemies were not slow in seeing such discussions as evidence of Katherine’s heretical leanings towards Protestantism. This was reported to the authorities and a warrant for her arrest was drawn up, one which could have led to her being tried and executed, had it not been for negligence on the part of Chancellor Wriothesley who, en route to deliver the warrant to the King, dropped it in a corridor of Westminster Palace. Luck must have smiled on Katherine that day, for the missive was found by one of her servants, who handed it to her mistress. Aghast at its contents, she sought an audience with her husband and, by a show of affection, won him into such a forgiving mood that when Wriothesley reappeared with another warrant, he was greeted with an outburst of royal wrath and ordered out of the royal presence.

  But any such luck had forsaken Anne Askew. The warrant for her arrest had reached its destination only too safely, and Anne was lodged first in Newgate Prison, and then, in June 1546, in the Tower of London, for, reasoned the plotters, the Queen could still be disposed of if evidence of her heretical leanings could be obtained from Anne Askew – and the Tower’s inventory included a device guaranteed to extract the desired confession – the rack!

  Anne was taken to the torture chamber in the White Tower. There, half underground, illuminated only by the flickering brands in wall sockets, she was first shown the persuasive instrument. At her obvious refusal to be frightened, Chancellor Wriothesley ordered that she should be secured to the device. Under the supervision of the rackmaster, the Yeoman Warders bound her wrists and ankles to the rollers at each end of the bed-like device, and as the levers were operated and the ropes creaked under tension, the questions were put – but not answered. Anne, strong-willed and stubborn, was determined to remain silent, despite the relentlessly increasing strain imposed on her leg joints, hips, shoulders and arms, but Wriothesley, thwarted in his initial attempt to bring about the downfall of Katherine Parr, was equally determined to wrest the secrets from his helpless prey. Furiously he urged the warders to continue turning the levers to increase the agonising pressure on the woman’s limbs.

  However, also present was the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Anthony Knivett. Aghast at the suffering being inflicted – for few, if any women had ever been racked before – he ordered his warders to release Anne, but on their obeying, Wriothesley and his cohort, Sir Richard Rich, seized the levers and started to apply even greater pressure. According to her later account quoted in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs ‘They did put me on the rack because I confessed to no ladies or gentlemen to be of my opinion [Protestantism] and therefore kept me a long time on it and because I lay still and did not cry out, my Lord Chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead.’ Her ordeal was also described by the historian Bale: ‘So quietly and patiently praying to the Lord, she endured their tyranny till her bones and joints were almost plucked asunder.’

  Although outranked by the two officers of the law, Sir Anthony exclaimed that he would go to Westminster immediately and report their brutal actions to the King; at that, Wriothesley, determined that he would get his explanation in first, left the chamber and, mounting his horse, set off at speed. But the Lieutenant had a trick up his sleeve for his official barge was moored on Tower Wharf – and travel via the river was infinitely quicker than through London’s narrow huddled streets! Arriving at Westminster, Sir Anthony gained audience with Henry who, although he had not hesitated to have two of his wives beheaded, nevertheless was outraged at the idea of a woman being tortured in the manner described by the Tower officer, and he promptly ordered that it should cease forthwith.

  Triumphantly Sir Anthony returned to the Tower and instructed his warders to release Anne from the machine, then summoned the Tower’s surgeon to revive the half-fainting and semi-crippled victim.

  Regardless of all the heroics and brave initiatives shown, however, there was no happy ending for Anne Askew. She was still a heretic and, charged with high treason by refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of the King as head of the church, and also declaring that if any fugitive priest asked her for sanctuary she would have granted the wish, she was sentenced to the punishment prescribed for those crimes. On 16 July 1546, unable to walk, she was carried to Smithfield strapped in a chair, where she was burned at the stake before a large crowd, hours passing before her remains were finally reduced to ashes.

  On execution days in London thousands of spectators would pack the streets around Smithfield, Tyburn or Tower Hill, many arriving the night before in order to get the best positions near the scaffold or stake. Refreshment vendors would do a roaring trade, much ale being quaffed and many pies devoured. Broadsheets describing the crime and its perpetrator were peddled among the onlookers, and clerics exhorted the crowd to join in with hymns appropriate to the occasion.

  In Texas on 3 February 1998, hundreds of spectators and scores of reporters from all over the world gathering outside a prison there, in which Karla Fay Tucker was executed for murder. The excitement was intense, snack bars did a roaring trade, pictures of the condemned person were displayed, prayers were said, hymns sung, and protesters raised their voices in condemnation of the verdict. Those who were unable to attend listened to the non-stop radio commentaries or watched the pictures unfolding live on their television screens. It seems that human nature doesn’t change all that much.

  Aurhaltin, Elizabeth (Germany)

  Pretending to possess magical powers, one-legged Elizabeth Aurhaltin of Vielseck would visit houses and once inside would then collapse, professing to be ill or in convulsions. She would explain that she had a wise vein in her leg by which she could prophesy the future and even discover hidden treasure. Moreover, the pain in the vein would not cease until she had informed the inhabitants of the house of what she knew – for which she would expect to be suitably rewarded, of course. If they doubted her ability, she offered to prove it by being allowed to stay the night ‘so that she could speak to the spirit of the treasure’. Once alone, she would then whisper questions and answers as if she was speaking to someone else; next morning she would explain that she had been conversing with a poor lost spirit who could not rest until the residents had dug for the buried gold. During the excavating, Fraulein Aurhaltin would ‘discover’ a jar of coals in the ground and promptly advise her hosts to lock it up securely in a chest for three weeks, after which they would find that it had turned into gold.

  Time and again she repeated this fraud until the authorities finally arrested her. Investigation revealed that she had 4,000 florins in her possession. She was sentenced to be executed by the sword on 9 February 1598. Having only one leg, she had to be carried to the scaffold and secured in a chair to make sure she did not move as Master Franz Schmidt, the Public Executioner of Nuremburg, wielding the heavy double-handed sword, decapitated her.

  Franz Schmidt’s diary includes an entry for 6 August 1579, which describes how one Michael Dieterich of Pernetswin and two other robbers were taken to the scaffold to be beheaded. ‘When they were being led out,’ the diary reveals, ‘Frau Dieterich wanted to see the poor sinners as they passed her house, and saw her own husband among them, whom she embraced and kissed, for she had not known her husband had been arrested, nor that he was a fellow of that sort.’

  B

  Balfour, Alison (Scotland)

  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries torture was illegal in England – except by royal prerogative – but lawful in Scotland, much to the regret of those accused of heinous crimes. One o
f these was Alison Balfour ‘a witch of repute’ who, at the instigation of John Stewart, Master of Orkney, was, together with her servant Thomas Papley, charged with conspiring to poison the Master’s brother, Patrick, Earl of Orkney.

  In June 1596 she was subjected to the cashilaws, a version of the dreaded boots, iron footwear which were slowly heated up; these she had to keep on for 48 hours, while watching her 90-year-old husband undergoing peine forte et dure, being pressed under 700 lb of weights. So determined were the authorities to force her to confess to consorting with the Devil that her son was given 57 lashes of the whip and her seven-year-old daughter was subjected to the agonies of the thumbscrews.

  Understandably Alison, undergoing such torture and having to watch her family suffering so appallingly, gave in and admitted the charge, but on being released from the cashilaws, promptly recanted her confession. It didn’t help her though, for on 16 December 1596 they took her away and burned her as a witch.

  It is recorded that on seeing the hangman waiting for her, Sarah Pledge, mentioned elsewhere, showed her distaste for him and swore that she’d rather go naked to the gallows than have him claim his perquisites and have her clothes. ‘But,’ quoth a contemporary chronicler, ‘Jack Ketch soon deprived her of her life – and her clothes!’

  Female prisoners taken to be tortured

  Barfield, Margie Velma (USA)

  Many women in all walks of life seek to achieve records of one kind or another, be they for long-distance running, climbing mountains, or even numbers of years lived. But Margie Velma Barfield’s achievement was one that, given the choice, she could well have done without; it certainly was not for longevity, on the contrary: she was the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.

  Her misfortune was that, following a nervous breakdown, she became hooked on drugs, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, Librium and similar prescription pills, so dependent that she forged some of her husband’s cheques to pay for her obsession and then, fearing that he would report her to the authorities, she poisoned him by adding rat-poison to his beer. Such was the solicitude she showed towards him during his last few doomed hours that his family not only acceded to her wish to have his gold wedding ring but also gave her four hundred dollars – which she promptly spent on more drugs to feed her addiction.

  However, the symptoms of her husband’s death alerted the authorities, the inevitable autopsy revealing the manner of death. Velma was arrested, and although at first she pleaded insanity, she later confessed not only to dispatching her husband, but also her own mother and an elderly couple she had once nursed, all for the same reason: drugs.

  She spent six years in prison while lawyers fought her case on the grounds that she had been abused as a child and beaten by her husband. During that time she turned to the Bible for solace, but all pleas by religious leaders and others came to naught. Given the choice of death in the gas chamber or by lethal injection, she opted for the latter, and on 2 November 1984 this 52-year-old grandmother lay on the trolley in the execution chamber. Three syringes were attached to intravenous tubes, one carrying a saltwater solution. While the prison chaplain prayed with her, the other two syringes were pressed, only one of them passing the toxic contents into her body (the other was a dummy so that the operators would never know which of them had executed her). Within minutes she was dead.

  In an attempt to compensate society for her guilt, Velma had donated her kidneys for transplant purposes, but severe difficulties then arose, for such organs could only be removed while the donor’s blood was still circulating, and the only way to achieve that would be to inject a heart stimulant – but what if the victim then came back to life? She had already been declared dead, so could they legally execute her again? Finally it was decided to attempt removal of her organs in a hospital some distance away, and once in the ambulance doctors desperately tried to revive her by forcing oxygen into her lungs, and although at one time during the journey her cheeks showed a pinkish tinge, her heart failed to resume beating. But Velma’s wish came partially true, for at the hospital her eyes were transplanted, giving blessed sight to another.

  It was always a dilemma for women condemned to be the active partner in a danse macabre with the executioner in deciding just what to wear for the event. Some styles had of course been insisted on in advance by the relevant authorities: off-the-shoulder blouses were de rigeur for the guillotine, short-sleeved dresses mandatory for lethal injection, and an upswept hairstyle essential for the axe or the sword. Only minimal jewellery was permitted: if being hanged, necklaces were forbidden (other than the one provided and positioned by the hangman), as were pendant earrings, on the left ear lobe at least (the knot of the noose was always on the left); heavy bangles and sequinned frocks played havoc with the flow of the current in the electric chair, and there was little point in applying perfume prior to taking one’s place in the gas chamber. So the choice was limited. Nevertheless, pink floral pyjamas worn with fuzzy pink slippers? That was what Margie Velma Barfield wore, after a last meal of Cheez Doodles and a Coke, when, as described above, she was executed by lethal injection in the USA in 1984.

  Barton, Elizabeth (England)

  It was not unknown in the sixteenth century for people to have visions of the future, usually religious ones, and when the news spread that this 19-year-old maidservant had the ability to see into the future while in trance-like states, even such famous men of the day as Sir Thomas More and the Bishop of Rochester, William Fisher, took notice; indeed, so great was the latter’s approbation that in 1527 he arranged for the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’, as she became known, to be admitted into the Benedictine Nunnery at Canterbury.

  All would have been well and Elizabeth could have spent a cloistered life revered as one possessing second sight, but, imbued with religious fervour and inflamed by Henry VIII’s action in divorcing Catherine of Aragon, she overstepped the mark by prophesying that the King would ‘die a villain’s death’ within a month of marrying Anne Boleyn.

  To Henry, renowned for reacting violently at such prognostications, this was not just the immature outburst of a hysterical woman – this was High Treason. And so it was that in June 1553 Elizabeth Barton was escorted under heavy guard to the Tower of London, and, after being subjected to some minor torture, was carried to St Paul’s Cross where she performed public penance by having to repudiate her treasonable statements.

  However, Catholic support for her continued to run high in the country, so high indeed that only by applying the proven Tudor recipe could the situation be resolved – by eliminating the source. And so, on 20 April 1534, the Holy Maid of Kent was drawn to Tyburn and there hanged in front of the inevitably vast crowd. Unusually – and doubtless in order to publicise more widely the fate of such traitorous prophets – hanging was not considered sufficient; on the scaffold she was decapitated by the axe, her head then displayed on London Bridge, the only woman believed to have been so exhibited: ‘its long black locks falling over its pallid features as a terrible warning to all.’

  In 1643 at the Manorial Court in Bridlington, Yorkshire, the Lord of the Manor enquired why a certain Jane Key had not been brought before him. The constable explained that the sentence passed on her at the last sitting was that she should be whipped by him the full length of the High Street, but that before he could carry out the sentence the woman had met with an accident and had broken her neck. On hearing that an offender he had sentenced had not, for whatever reason, received the punishment handed down by the Court, the Lord started to rebuke the constable but desisted when the officer hastily pointed out that despite her accident he had not failed in his duties, adding, ‘Every morning I rubbed her neck with neatsfoot oil, and then I whipped her as ordered!’

  Bateman, Mary (England)

  Starting her working life as a housemaid, Mary Bateman became ambitious and left her job to become a fortune-teller in Leeds, waxing prosperous on the fees and valuables she extorted from her more gullible clients and by providing young w
omen with nostrums with which to bring about abortions. Obsessed by greed, the 41-year-old ‘Yorkshire Witch’ sold some ‘magical’ potions to a Mrs Perigo as a health cure, but they had the opposite effect and brought about the woman’s death.

  At her trial Mary Bateman was found guilty of murder, but when she was sentenced to be hanged, she ‘pleaded her belly’, i.e., claimed that she was pregnant. On hearing her say that, many women in the public gallery tried to leave the courtroom in order to avoid being inducted as a jury of matrons who would have to examine the prisoner and ascertain the truth or otherwise of her claim – much rested on such a verdict, for the law of the day stated that ‘if the claimant be four and a half months advanced in that state, she shall not be executed until after giving birth’. But the judge ordered that the courtroom doors be locked, Mary then being escorted to another room where twelve women eventually pronounced that her claim was unfounded (although obviously she could have been in the earlier stages of pregnancy).

  Her well-attended execution took place at York on 20 March 1809, many of the credulous spectators believing that she would employ her supernatural powers to vanish into thin air when the noose tightened; however, when it did, she didn’t! Meanwhile, 23 miles away in Leeds, 2,500 residents had paid three pence each in admission charges to view the corpse on its return to the town; the crowds, entertained by jugglers and balladeers, supplied with food and drink by itinerant purveyors of pies and ale, waited more or less patiently.