When we had fixed ourselves, I perceived that the whole powers of darkness were ready to give us a reception. Beckoning to the multitude, I desired them to pray for her, at which they were rather silent, until the cart began to move. Then they triumphed over her with three huzzas; this was followed by a combination of hellish curses. When we had passed through the gates [of Newgate Gaol], carts had been placed each side of the street, filled principally with women. Here I may say, with the greatest truth, nothing could have equalled them but the damned spirits let loose from the infernal pit. Some of the common cries from the thoughtless concourse were ‘Pull her hat off, pull her hat off, that we may see the b*****s face!’, accompanied by the most dreadful imprecations.
As they neared the execution site Elizabeth joined in prayers with the Ordinary and acknowledged the justice of her sentence, but on arrival, so great was the uproar that she was held firmly while hangman Thomas Turlis noosed her, tied the rope to the overhead beam of the gallows, then, hastily dismounting, gave the horse a smart slap on the flanks. At that the cart moved away, leaving Mrs Brownrigg to swing in the same manner as she had suspended poor Mary Clifford from the staple – although not by the wrists, but by the neck!
Elizabeth Brownrigg
Her body was subsequently taken to Surgeons’ Hall and handed over to be anatomised. After that ‘her skeleton was exposed in the niche opposite the first door in the Surgeons’ Theatre, so that the heinousness of her cruelty may make the more lasting impression on the minds of the spectators attending the dissection sessions.’
As a perquisite, English executioners would sell small lengths of the rope with which they had hanged particularly notorious criminals as souvenirs or for allegedly curative purposes. But this facility was not available across the Channel during the French Revolution, and so French women, desperately requiring such bizarre artefacts to bring them luck at the card table, would contact the appropriate government department in London, pleading to be given the address of the possible supplier!
C
Calvert, Louise (England)
Mrs Lily Waterhouse lived in Leeds and in March 1925 her husband died. Although so desirous of making contact with the spirit of her dear departed that she attended seances, she did not neglect her physical desires, the police being aware that a large number of men frequently visited her house, to the detriment of the neighbourhood. A year following her husband’s death she took in a lodger, Louise Calvert, but no doubt regretted it, for within weeks she went to the police to complain that her lodger had stolen some of her belongings. She was told to come back the next day and make a formal statement, but when she did not reappear there an officer was sent round, only to find her dead. Her hands had been bound and she had been strangled.
A witness, another lodger, testified that she had seen Louise leave the house and when she questioned her and mentioned noises she had heard, Louise told her that Mrs Waterhouse was upset because Louise had announced that she was not staying any longer. Upon being later arrested, Louise explained that she had not stolen anything but that Mrs Waterhouse had asked her to pawn some of her property, but a search of her own house situated some distance away from that of Mrs Waterhouse’s revealed not only some items belonging to the murdered woman, but she was even wearing Mrs Waterhouse’s boots! Such incriminating evidence disposed of the alternative theory that Mrs Waterhouse had been murdered by one of her many male visitors, and Louise Calvert was put on trial.
Little could be said in her defence, and the judge did not hesitate to sentence her to death. However, a complication then arose, for Louise claimed a stay of execution on the grounds that she was pregnant. Such factors had of course been taken into consideration by those responsible for drafting laws governing executions, and so the judge selected a jury of mature women, accompanied by the prison doctor, to adjourn to an anteroom and carry out the necessary examination. On their return the doctor stated that although the prisoner was not pregnant, she could well be in the very early stages of that condition, and this was confirmed by the spokeswoman, adding that in the opinion of the matrons, the execution of the prisoner would not involve the death of any person other than Louise herself (at the time the law stipulated that a condemned woman could not be classified as pregnant unless such condition had existed for a length of 140 days or more).
Understandably the trial was given a great deal of attention in the local newspapers, one investigative journalist discovering an earlier murder tenuously linked with Louise Calvert, the victim being a John Frobisher for whom Louise had acted as housekeeper. He mysteriously disappeared in 1922 and when his body was retrieved from the Liverpool–Leeds Canal he was found fully dressed – except for his boots!
Her final plea not having been upheld, Louise Calvert was taken to Strangeways Gaol, Manchester, and despite many pleas by the public on her behalf, she was hanged within the prison walls.
Condemned women occasionally ‘pleaded their belly’ (claimed to be pregnant in order to avoid being hanged), but in 1848 Charlotte Harris, guilty of murdering her husband, actually was pregnant and so she was informed that she would be allowed to have the baby – and then be hanged. At that, petitions for clemency were raised, signatures obtained across the country, public protest meetings held, and eventually, after no fewer than 40,000 women from all walks of life had appealed to Queen Victoria, a reprieve was granted.
Clitheroe, Margaret (England)
This lady, the first of her sex to suffer martyrdom in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, sacrificed herself for her deeply held religious principles. Imprisoned for failing to attend services in the established Protestant churches, she suffered several terms of imprisonment, and in 1586, when she was about 35 years of age, a gang of pursuivants, professional priest-hunters, raided her house and discovered not only a hidden priest hole, but also a large number of vestments and other religious items necessary for Catholic worship.
The martyr Margaret Clitheroe
Margaret Clitheroe suffering peine fort et dure
The existence of such incriminating evidence resulted in Margaret’s immediate arrest, and she was eventually charged with the heinous crime of being a Papist and for harbouring Jesuits and Catholic priests, and was committed to imprisonment in York Castle. At her trial the vestments and religious artefacts were then paraded before the court by ‘two lewd fellows’, who donned the vestments and masqueraded with altar bread in their hands, saying: ‘Behold thy gods in whom thou believest!’
When asked whether she pleaded guilty or not guilty, she refused to do so, saying: ‘Having made no offence, I need no trial.’ Judge Clinch, losing his patience with her, told her plainly that if she refused to plead, there was no more room for mercy, and she must have the law provided in such cases. He then pronounced that she was to be subjected to peine forte et dure, severe and hard pain, saying:
You must return from whence you came, and there, in the lowest part of the prison, be stripped naked, laid down, your back upon the ground, and as much weight laid on you as you are able to bear, and so continue three days without meat or drink, except for a little barley bread on the day you do not drink, and puddle water on the day you do not eat, and on the third day be pressed to death, your hands and feet be bound to posts, and a sharp stone under your back.
Before the ‘persuasive’ torture started, various attempts to save her were made while she was confined in prison; some begged her to go to a Protestant church and abide by the statutes, but she refused outright.
On 23 March 1586, Good Friday, she was walked barefoot to the Tollbooth in York, carrying over one arm a long linen gown she had made. In the cell she was stripped by the women and donned the gown she had brought. Upon lying down, a sharp stone about the size of a man’s fist was placed beneath her and her arms were stretched out wide and bound to posts set in the ground. Her face was covered with a handkerchief and a heavy door laid upon her. So stubborn was her refusal to answer the questions then put to her that it appears
the preliminary two days were dispensed with, because men were then ordered to pile stones upon the door, the total weight being estimated at in excess of 800 lb. From beneath the handkerchief came an agonised prayer for help and strength, those gathered round hearing her exclaim: ‘Jesu! Jesu! Have mercy on me!’
After about fifteen minutes of excruciating pain, her bones being crushed, her blood vessels being burst, she passed away. The press was left in position until the afternoon, when her body, as was the custom, was thrown into a hole beside a filthy dunghill near the city’s walls. However, six weeks afterwards, after a diligent search, her corpse was found by a pious Catholic who declared that ‘it was whole, without putrefaction, without corruption or evil savour.’
Her final burial place, where she was interred ‘unbowelled, before necessary preservatives could be gotten’ is unknown, but the Convent of the Institute of Mary, near Micklegate Bar in York, reportedly the oldest existing foundation in England, possesses what is affirmed by constant oral tradition to be the severed hand of the ‘Pearl of York’. Originally it was preserved in a silken bag enclosed in a box and kept under the altar in the chapel until 1840, when Bishop Briggs, concerned by the absence of any authentication of its identity, ordered it to be removed. Thirty-four years later, Mr Charles Weld of Chideock defrayed the cost of a handsome reliquary in which the hand was to be kept. Of turret shape, from its base spring palm leaves supporting a jewelled cross; the metal work is of silver gilt. Within the glass globe, the hand, pointing heavenwards, is small and well-shaped, brown and dry with age. The flesh and sinews still remain, and the fingers are contracted, the curvature showing all the agony suffered during the ordeal of the peine forte et dure. The hand lacks one finger, severed at the joint, it having been presented to the donor of the reliquary. The vessel itself bears the inscription in Latin: ‘The hand of the valiant woman Margaret Clitheroe née Middleton, who suffered at York with the greatest constancy for the faith and love of Christ, on the 25th day of March, 1586. She has deserved to be called the proto-martyr of her sex, under the tyrant Elizabeth. Charles Weld, of Chideock, and Mary, his wife, devoutly and humbly offer this shrine in honour of the Martyrs of England, AD 1874.’
The hand of Margaret Clitheroe
It is only 150 years or so since women prisoners, being taken from York Gaol to the Assizes Courts, were led through the streets handcuffed and chained by the neck.
Coghlan, Margaret (Australia)
It could hardly be expected that nineteenth-century Antipodean hangmen would be any more skilful or use longer ropes than their fellow tradesmen back home, and this was certainly the case where Solomon Blay, chief executioner in Tasmania from the 1840s to the 1890s was concerned, although it is believed that his performance did improve somewhat towards the end of his career. Having been found guilty in England of counterfeiting, he had been transported in a prison ship to that distant colony, no doubt volunteering to fill the scaffold vacancy rather than labour in the quarries or build roads in the penal settlements.
One of his victims was Margaret Coghlan who, although she would not have been aware of it, was the last woman to be executed in Tasmania. During a drunken row with her husband, he, not known for his chivalry towards the fairer sex, picked up an iron bar and threw it at her. It would seem that the projectile missed her, for she then proceeded to beat him about the head with it. And to ensure that he would not revive and retaliate, she cut his throat with his own razor, after which she placed it in his hand, curling his fingers around it to simulate suicide.
The investigating authorities might have been expected to believe that he had intended to end his own life, but hardly that he would have given himself several severe head wounds before getting the razor from the bathroom, so Margaret was arrested and ultimately found guilty of murder.
On that fateful day in 1862 Margaret was escorted from Melbourne Prison’s condemned cell, her condition bordering on total hysteria. To prevent her from collapsing completely, the officers with her blindfolded her eyes so that she would not see the noose suspended in readiness from the gallows beam. She had to be supported as she mounted the scaffold and one of the wardresses found the ordeal so distressing that she fainted and had to be carried back to the prison building. Not so Solomon Blay; tightening the noose, he operated the drop and Margaret Coghlan, whether justified in retaliating for her husband’s brutal attack or not, paid the terrible price demanded by the law.
Eliza Fenning was accused of attempting to poison the family for whom she worked and in 1815 was sentenced to death. On the scaffold she wore a white muslin gown with a satin ribbon tied around her waist, a white muslin cap, and a pair of high-laced lilac boots; this was her bridal outfit, for she was to have been married the day before. Because of her cap, hangman John Langley could not pull the regulation hood over her head so had to use a soiled pocket handkerchief instead. Just before the trapdoors opened she exclaimed in a muffled voice: ‘I am innocent.’ Her father had to pay the executioner his fee of fourteen shillings and sixpence before he could retrieve his daughter’s body for burial.
Coo, Eva (USA)
One day in 1935 Mr Lawes, Warden of Sing Sing Prison, authorised the dispatch of invitations for Eva Coo’s execution to the official guests, observers, medical specialists, newspaper journalists, and to those of the victim’s relatives who wished to attend. The printed forms read:
In accordance with Section 507 of the Code of Criminal Procedure you are hereby invited to be present as a witness at the execution by electricity of Eva Coo which will occur at this prison on 27 June 1935. The hour of 11 p.m. has been designated by me for such execution and you will arrange to be at my office in this prison not later than 10 p.m.
I would thank you to treat this communication as confidential and advise me immediately upon its receipt of your acceptance or otherwise, so that I can make arrangements accordingly. Under no circumstances is this invitation transferable.
Very respectfully, Lewis E. Lawes, Warden
Following any horrendous and consequently well-publicised crime, there were always hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications from those who wished to watch the condemned criminal die, and there is no reason to think that the auditorium was anything other than full when Eva, deservedly or not, went to meet her Maker.
Born in Canada, Eva moved south and lived in the States where she became a prostitute before running her own brothel, the notorious ‘Little Eva’s Place’, in a town on the outskirts of New York. There she prospered, but trade suffered badly when Prohibition ceased, and she became desperate for money. She had a close friend, Martha Clift, who acted as a hostess in Eva’s establishment, and from all accounts the two women discussed different ways of overcoming their financial difficulties. Which lady suggested murdering Harry Wright, the brothel’s handyman, and claiming his life insurance of several thousand dollars, is not clear, but one night in June 1934 Harry, having been plied with drink, was lured out of the building and killed. Which of the women struck him and with what type of implement is unclear; it depended on which local paper one read.
One of the murderous conspirators hit him with a claw hammer or a mallet; the other then got into the car and ran over him several times. One thing that was clear, however, was that no matter how close a friend Martha had been to Eva, it ended abruptly when the pair were arrested. Martha, to save her own skin, turned state’s witness and gave damning evidence, admitting that she had driven the car over the handyman, having been promised a considerable part of the insurance money, but that it was Eva who had actually struck the fatal blows. Acting on her statement the police exhumed Wright’s body on no fewer than two occasions but could not substantiate Martha’s accusations.
Eva was sent for trial, journalists reporting how the judge had encouraged the all-male jury to play their part in the proceedings by saying, in a somewhat unorthodox way: ‘Don’t think we are locking you up; enjoy yourselves, laugh and talk among yourselves, get lots of exercise. You are good
sports and citizens, and I appreciate what you are doing.’
When Eva entered the crowded courtroom she must have realised with horror that she would face the death sentence on learning that her ‘friend’, in order to face a lesser charge of second-degree murder, was prepared to testify against her. And so it proved, for after a short deliberation, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. Eva Coo was sentenced to death; Martha Clift to twenty years’ imprisonment.
In Sing Sing’s condemned cell, Eva complained bitterly that all her personal belongings, expensive clothes and other valuables had been sold to defray the lawyers’ expenses. The Warden, noted for his humane treatment of his prisoners, deplored the fact that one of her attorneys had even applied for four invitations so that he and colleagues could come and watch the death of the client he had defended. Mr Lawes did not justify Eva’s crime in any way, but praised her fortitude and equable behaviour as appeal after appeal was dismissed. Albert R. Beatty, the executioner, described in his memoirs how the Warden visited Eva prior to the designated hour, just as one of the wardresses was attaching the electrode to one of the victim’s legs. Still insisting that she was innocent, nevertheless she walked calmly and composedly into the execution chamber where she seated herself in the chair. Looking around, she bade farewell to the wardresses, saying, ‘Goodbye, darlings!’, then allowed the guards to strap her arms and legs securely. Her only reaction, an instinctive gasp, came when Beatty put the head electrode in position and threw the switch, sending the current surging through her body, her life ending in a matter of seconds.
Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen Page 5