Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen

by Abbott, Geoffrey

  However, one man who was determined not to be robbed, come what may, was William Kent. On 7 November 1949, after enjoying Jean’s voluptuous charms and a drink or two in a hotel bedroom, he fell asleep, only to wake up to find her going through his pockets. He resisted strenuously, but was knocked out by a blow to the head with a bottle deftly wielded by Jean. Summoning her two confederates, she then searched their victim, but on finding nothing worth stealing, the trio tied him up and proceeded to torture him with a broken bottle before leaving.

  Kent’s dead and badly lacerated body was discovered the next day by hotel staff, who described the two men and the redhead so accurately to the police that it was only a matter of hours before all three were arrested and charged with murder. Despite a desperate appeal, Jean Lee and her criminal companions were hanged on 19 February 1951 in Sydney.

  Women convicts in the Australian penal colonies were harshly punished for misbehaving, some sentenced to spend hours on the treadwheel, pacing ever upwards to keep the huge paddle-steamer-like wheel turning, their legs throbbing, panting for breath, with only minimal breaks to recover.

  Lefley, Mary (England)

  Was she guilty or wasn’t she? Certainly circumstantial evidence, if nothing else, was against her; she had earlier been a close friend of Priscilla Biggadike, a woman who had been hanged at Lincoln for poisoning her husband, and here was Mary Lefley using the same method to rid herself of her husband. There was some doubt, of course. It was declared in court that she had left the farm to go to the market, having first prepared some rice pudding for her husband, ready for his return from work; all he had to do was to put it in the oven and cook it. A neighbour then took the witness stand and testified that Mr Lefley had come to his house for help, obviously in great pain; a doctor had been summoned, but alas too late, for the distressed man died before medical help arrived. Recognising the symptoms described by the neighbour, the doctor took possession of the food left on the table and sent it for forensic analysis, the laboratory technicians subsequently reporting the presence of arsenic in the uneaten portion.

  Mary was arrested and charged with her husband’s murder. Despite the fact that she pleaded innocence; that there was no apparent motive; that no poison was found by the police anywhere in the house; and that no evidence emerged that she had ever purchased any arsenic, local gossip was against her, it being intimated that in the past she had been popular with the local youths, and anyway, she’d known Priscilla Biggadike, and look what she did! No wonder, after the jury, having deliberated all night to bring in a guilty verdict, did Mary Lefley exclaim, ‘They are hanging me for my past!’

  In Lincoln Prison’s condemned cell Mary prayed constantly, convinced that truth would prevail but on 26 May 1884, when hangman James Berry entered the cell, she shouted, ‘Murder! Murder! Don’t hang me, or you will commit another murder!’ The female warders guarding her had to pull her out of the bed and forcibly dress her in her prison garb, and her frantic shrieks echoed round the prison’s stone walls as she was led to the scaffold between the warders. Her cries of innocence were abruptly stilled as Berry operated the drop – but that was not the end of this tragic story.

  Nine years later, in 1893, it emerged that a local farmer had confessed, on his deathbed, that he was the real murderer. Bearing a grudge against Mr Lefrey over a business deal, he had bided his time until, on seeing Mary leave for market, he had gone into their house and mixed some of the arsenic he had bought to exterminate rats into the rice pudding.

  The practice of English hangmen selling short lengths of the rope as souvenirs after dispatching notorious criminals was not entirely confined to that country. Following the wide publicity in America given to the crime and execution of Emiline Meaker in 1883, not only did the spectators queue up for hours to enter the prison and see the actual gallows from which she had been suspended, but requests were also made to the warden for pieces of the rope, the applicants insisting on receiving certificates authenticating the use to which they had been put.

  Line, Anne (England)

  Harbouring clerics of the ‘wrong’ religion carried just one penalty – death, as Anne Line found out in 1601. The ancient records reveal that:

  On the 27th of February a Gentlewoman called Mistress Anne Line, a widow, for relieuing [giving relief to] a priest contrary to statute; that, Mass having been said in her house, she assisted the priest in his escape.

  Her weakness was suche that she was caryed to the said sessions betwixt two, in a chaire. Havyng been condemnede, she was carryed the next daye to her execution, many tymes on the waye being stayed and urged by the minister, who urged what meanes he could, to perswade her to convert from her professed faithe and opinion; he most constantlie persevered therin, and she was brought to the place of execution [Tyburn] and there shewed the cause of her coming thither [the gallows], and being further urged among other thinges by the minister that she had bene a common receavor of many priests, she aunswered ‘Where I have receaved one, I would to God I had bene able to have receaved a thousand.’ She behaved herself most meekely, patiently and vertuously to her last breath. She kissed the gallowes and before and after her private prayers blessinge herself, the carte in which she stood was drawne awaye, and she then made the signe of the crosse uppon her, and after that, never moved.

  Religious feelings also ran strongly on the other side of the Atlantic, sympathy being extended, albeit too late, to Mary Tompkins, Anna Coleman, Alice Andrews and Alice Ambrose, four seventeenth-century ‘rogue and vagabond Quakers’. The constables of twelve Massachusetts and New Hampshire towns received their instructions, viz. ‘You are enjoined to make them fast to the cart-tail and draw them through your several towns, and whip them on their naked backs, not exceeding ten stripes in each town, and so convey them from Constable to Constable on your Peril.’

  Lisle, Dame Alice (England)

  Another woman whose qualities of charity and humanity towards others were ultimately responsible for her execution was Alice Lisle. The daughter of Sir White Beckenshaw, in 1630, aged sixteen, she married John Lisle, a Member of Parliament and barrister. John Lisle was so esteemed by Oliver Cromwell that he was appointed to organise the trial of King Charles I in 1649. But when Charles II regained the throne, he fled to Switzerland to evade arrest and trial as a regicide, although Fate dogged his footsteps even there, for he was later murdered in Lausanne.

  After her husband had left the country Dame Alice lived a quiet life in Dorset, but in 1685 James, Duke of Monmouth led an ill-assorted army of peasants equipped with pitchforks and cudgels through that county, heading for London, hoping to overthrow James II and claim the throne for himself. The attempt was abortive; James, Duke of Monmouth, was beheaded, five strokes of the axe being necessary. His followers scattered across the country, the King ordering Judge George Jeffreys to deal with them, an invitation relished by the Hanging Judge, no fewer than 330 being executed. As described by Sir Edward Parry:

  Areas in some southern counties were quite depopulated, nothing to be seen but forsaken walls, unlucky gibbets and ghostly carcases. The trees were loaden almost as thick with human quarters as with leaves; the houses and steeples covered as close with heads as at other times with crows or ravens. Nothing could be liker hell; caldrons hissing, carcases boyling, pitch and tar sparkling and glowing, blood and limbs boyling and tearing and mangling, and Jeffreys the great director of all.

  In Lyme Regis, where Monmouth had started his ill-fated attempt, the mayor had been ordered to build gallows and provide nooses to hang the prisoners ‘with a number of faggots to burn the bowels of the traitors and a furnace or caldron to boil their heads and quarters and salt to boil them with to preserve them on display; and tar to tar them with, and a sufficient number of spears and poles to fix and place their heads and quarters.’

  Throughout all this turmoil, Alice Lisle lived an undisturbed life at her house, but throughout the county hundreds of Monmouth’s supporters frantically sought refuge from t
he soldiers hunting them. One night two of them turned up at Alice’s door, one a preacher named Hicks, the other a man called Nelthorp. Filled with compassion she took them in, fed them and gave them shelter, but the next day the local Justice of the Peace arrived with an escort of soldiers; Hicks, Nelthorp and Alice were arrested.

  Dame Alice appeared in court on 27 August 1685, the charge being ‘that on 28 July, knowing that one John Hicks, clerk, to be a false traitor, and to have conspired to the death and destruction of the King, and to have levied war against him, did, in her dwelling house at Ellingham, Dorset, traitorously entertain, conceal and comfort the said John Hicks and cause meat and drink to be delivered to him, against the allegiance, the King’s Peace, etc.’

  Alice was extremely deaf and the charge had to be repeated loudly to her; upon which she pleaded not guilty. Colonel Penruddock, the JP, testified that on searching the house with the soldiers, he had found Hicks and later discovered Nelthorp hiding in a hole by the chimney. In her defence Dame Alice said she knew warrants were out for Hicks but did not know he was a Monmouth supporter; further, that she was loyal to the King and that her son was actually serving with the government forces. The legal point was also raised that she could not be accused of harbouring a traitor until Hicks had been convicted as one. But all this was brushed aside by the irascible and irrational Judge, who sent the jury out to consider their verdict. However, they returned shortly afterwards, the foreman saying that they doubted whether the accused knew Hicks was in Monmouth’s army. Jeffreys, never one to heed a questioning jury, promptly sent them out to think again. Once more they returned to announce that she was not guilty, but the Judge, outraged by their apparent defiance, threatened them with dire consequences if they failed to take notice of his ‘judicial recommendation’. Not daring to risk being accused of being traitors themselves for disagreeing with His Worship, they speedily brought in a verdict of guilty. Satisfied, Jeffreys urged Dame Alice to confess, adding that she was to be burned at the stake that very afternoon. However, sentence was postponed until 2 September, and although she did not confess, a petition sent to the King resulted in his gracious consent that, rather than being consumed by the flames, she could be beheaded by the axe instead.

  The ghastly execution was carried out in the marketplace in Winchester, the frail 71-year-old lady kneeling over the block and submitting to decapitation without resistance, onlookers averring that ‘she died with serene courage’. Only one blow of the axe was necessary.

  Although a happy ending to this tragic episode is not possible, it is of some consolation to know that the baddies got their comeuppance. Following the Revolution of 1688, James II went into exile on the Continent, William and Mary accepted the Throne of England, and Parliament annulled the judgement passed on Dame Alice Lisle (not that it did much good). The hunt was on for Judge Jeffreys and he was captured in a tavern near the Thames, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and sentenced to death. He was known to suffer from cirrhosis of the liver due to his lifelong addition to brandy, and regrettably escaped the axe, for on the morning of 19 April 1689 he was found dead in his cell in the Bloody Tower.

  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.’

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  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!’

  Many convicts transported to Australia did not take kindly to being forcibly shipped to an unknown future on the other side of the world. The women who rebelled were severely dealt with, some of the more violent being put in irons for days, and even tied to the grating and whipped. One such was Elizabeth Dudgeon, of whom it was reported in Massey’s Journal Book, 1796, ‘the corporal did not play with her, but laid it [the whip] home, which I [the lieutenant in charge] was very glad to see; she has long been fishing for it, which she has at last got, to her heart’s content.’

  MacLeod, Margaret (Scotland)

  This lady was short of ready money but was cunning enough to obtain some without becoming personally involved; instead she used her wiles on a man friend named Household, to the extent that he agreed to forge a bill of sale apparently signed by the Duchess of Gordon. Margaret then obtained £58 from a Mr Henderson, an Edinburgh merchant, in exchange for the bill of sale.

  The document was found to be false, probably by the Duchess’s auditors, and Mr Henderson, although totally innocent, was arrested and charged with fraud. Released on bail, and realising the predicament into which he had been manoeuvred, he fled the city to avoid trial.

  The trail led back to Margaret, and she too was arrested. The details of the case were scrutinised by the Lord Advocate’s office (the chief prosecutor) and it was then that sheer coincidence intervened, one that even Margaret, with all her guile, could not possibly have foreseen. It so happened that the Lord Advocate was having a house built in the city, and on visiting the site he discussed progress with the builder. During the conversation the builder happened to mention that one of the carpenters he employed, a man called Household, had appeared agitated on learning of the lawyer’s visit and had left abruptly. When asked whether the workman had given any reason, the builder said that Household had mentioned something about a forgery!

  Putting two and two together, the Lord Advocate ordered a police search. It resulted in the arrest of the fugitive carpenter, and he, to save his own skin, admitted the part he had played, but accused Margaret MacLeod of being the instigator of the plot. In court, despite the part he had played in the fraudulent transaction, the jury absolved him from all blame. Margaret, however, was not as fortunate; charged and found guilty, she was sentenced to be hanged.

  Her appearance on the scaffold, that day in 1726, brought a murmur of admiration from the many onlookers: self-assured, showing not the slightest sign of weakness or apprehension, she carried a white fan, which, together with her necklace and brooches, she then handed to the prison chaplain before taking the noose from the hangman and positioning it around her neck. With a smile, she said calmly, ‘I am ready to die!’ There was little doubt that she had dressed meticulously for the occasion, for she wore a black crinoline supported by a huge hoop – and one can only assume that the drop trapdoors must have been made extra wide to accommodate her descent betwixt them.

  Despite the judge requiring Henrietta Robinson, on trial for murder in New York in 1905, to remove the five blue lace veils she was wearing so that the officers of the court and jury members could see her face, she
obstinately refused to do so, though did lift them momentarily, only to conceal her face with her handkerchief. Wild rumours spread through the press that her hair grew abnormally low over her forehead, that her skull was misshapen, that her jaw line was deformed, and the mystery deepened further when, sentenced to life imprisonment, she continued to hide her features from visitors to the gaol. The identity of the person who sent her regular supplies of blue veils was never discovered.

  Malcolm, Sarah (England)

  Most female murderers use poison to dispose of their victims; whether this is because they have greater opportunity to add it to the food they are preparing, or that they recoil from employing actual weapons, is not known, but 22-year-old Sarah Malcolm from Ireland certainly did not waste time going to the chemist for arsenic under the pretext of needing it to kill rats; she much preferred her bare hands and a sharp knife – if indeed the findings of the court were correct.

  On first coming to London she worked in the Black Horse Inn, near Temple Bar, where she met two brothers, Thomas and James Alexander, men of somewhat dubious character. Subsequently she obtained a job as a laundress in a set of lawyers’ chambers in the Inns of Court, one of her employers being a young Irishman named Mr Kerril, and another, Mrs Lydia Duncomb, a reputedly wealthy 80-year-old lady who had two maids, Elizabeth Harrison, aged 60, and 17-year-old Ann Price. On 3 February 1733 Sarah called at Mrs Duncomb’s chambers in Tanfield Court in the Inner Temple, ostensibly to visit Elizabeth Harrison, who had been ill, although it was later surmised that her actual motive could have been to make sure there had been no changes to the layout of the rooms.