Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen

by Abbott, Geoffrey

  Understandably, this outlandish story, worthy of Baron Munchausen himself, stretched the listeners’ imaginations beyond belief. Did he abscond with the few pounds he might have collected – hardly enough to sustain him for the length of time he had been away – and if he had, why did he return? And what on earth induced John Perry to accuse the other members of his family of murder, a totally false indictment which led to three totally needless and completely unjust executions? It is true he admitted that he lied – but alas, too late for his mother, his brother – and himself.

  In earlier centuries in the Isle of Man, the fate of a man who had committed rape was left in the hands of his victim; she would be invited to choose between a rope, a sword or a ring. It was entirely up to her whether he should hang, be decapitated – or become her husband!

  Place, Martha Garretson (USA)

  Many people aspire to achieve records, but Martha Place achieved a place in the record books for which she would rather not have qualified, for she became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair.

  As Martha Garretson she was employed by widower William Place as his housekeeper, but their relationship became closer and they got married. William already had a daughter, Ida, by his first wife, and Martha resented the affection shown by her new husband towards the 17-year-old girl to such an extent that it apparently affected her mental balance, for on 7 February 1898, after an argument in which Ida had sided with her father before he left for work, she viciously attacked Ida, throwing acid into her eyes. As the girl covered her face in agony, Martha picked up an axe and felled her with several violent blows; Ida collapsed on the floor, Martha then piling pillows on her face and suffocating her. Newspapers were later to describe the force of the axe blows, how a deep gash over the top of her head reached down to her neck, her face being horribly burned by the acid.

  A little while later, William came home to be the immediate target of Martha’s axe; although with a severely fractured skull he managed to struggle out of the house, neighbours then sending for the police. On entering the house, the officers found Mrs Place unconscious, having turned on the gas in an attempt to commit suicide. Medical help was forthcoming, and she was revived – and arrested.

  Such was the horrific nature of her crimes that at her trial her defence sought to enter a plea of insanity, but this proved unsustainable and she was declared sane. Confident that she would at least be reprieved at a retrial, her spirits sank when this was refused. In the condemned cell in Sing Sing Prison she had several hysterical outbursts, although following frequent prayer sessions with her priest, and perhaps due to his guidance, she regained her self-assurance when, on 20 March 1899, she was led to the execution chamber where the executioner Edwin Davis awaited. There, seated in the chair, she sat still and unresisting, holding a Bible in her hands while her hair was clipped short, preparatory to the head electrode being positioned. A female warder tightened the straps around her, attached the leg electrode and covered her face with the mask. Davis then sent 1,760 volts surging through her body and after about four seconds had elapsed, a further 200 volts were given, followed by a third wave of current, this series of power bringing death to the murderess Martha Garretson Place.

  One of the many newspaper journalists present reported that the execution was a success, going on to describe how Martha’s death was certified ‘by a woman physician dressed in the height of fashion, immaculate in a grey dress and a huge hat with pronounced crimson trimmings’. Must have been tricky using a stethoscope.

  Pledge, Sarah and

  Whale, Anne (England)

  This scandalous story was one of an illicit relationship between two women, a tragedy that involved a poisoning and ended in a hanging, strangulation and being burned to ashes.

  Anne was born in Horsham, Sussex; her father died when she was young and so she was brought up by her mother. A wayward child, on attaining her teens she got into unsavoury company but later returned home and was fortunate enough to meet a respectable young man named James Whale. It so happened that a relative had bequeathed the large sum of eighty pounds, which would become hers on reaching the age of 21. This being a promising basis for a sound marriage, their wedding took place, and the young couple went to live in a house owned by Sarah Pledge, who was distantly related to Mrs Whale. An attractive widow, she wasted no time in acting in a highly provocative manner towards James Whale. Upright and respectable, Mr Whale promptly forbade her ever to enter his private rooms again.

  Rebuffed and insulted, Sarah was determined to get her revenge, and having already become close friends with Anne, encouraged her into an even more intimate relationship, to the extent that one day in June 1742 she suggested to Anne that they should dispose of her husband by giving him poison, implying that they would be much happier together without him. Anne agreed, but being amateurs, took it for granted that anything that was particularly horrible would be equally poisonous, and so they caught as many spiders as they could, and after roasting them, mixed them in his tankard of beer. The brew may have tasted nauseating, but much to the women’s annoyance, James continued to live.

  Sarah then came to the conclusion that sterner measures would have to be taken, and as the only real poison she had probably ever heard of was arsenic, she bought some from a chemist in Horsham. Anne agreed to administer it and so, while her husband was taking care of their child, she mixed it into the pudding she was preparing for his supper. Avoiding having any of the sweetmeat herself, she watched James eat his fill, then go to bed – and to die in excruciating agony.

  But the relationship between the two women had not passed unnoticed by the neighbours, and at the news of poor Mr Whale’s sudden death, the subsequent gossip reached the ears of the local police. A post-mortem was carried out and after the surgeon had reported finding the presence of a large amount of arsenic in the internal organs, the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder. It wasn’t long before another jury, this time sitting in the courtroom at Horsham at the trial of the two women, found both of them guilty of murder.

  The judge then sentenced them to death, it then being reported in the Newgate Calendar that ‘Mrs Pledge behaved in a most hardened manner, making use of profane expressions, and declaring that she would fight the hangman at the place of execution. On the contrary, Mrs Whale acknowledged the justice of the sentence which had condemned her, and gave evident signs of her being a real penitent.’ However, under the spiritual guidance of the clergyman who attended them, Sarah Pledge’s attitude mellowed considerably and she accepted her fate.

  On 14 August 1742 an immense crowd attended the execution site in Horsham to watch with ghoulish satisfaction the sight of Sarah Pledge being hanged, and then the execution of Anne Whale who, having committed the crime of petty treason (the murder of a husband) was tied to a stake, then strangled by the hangman before the burning tinder ignited the flames which, after some hours, reduced her to ashes.

  When women get together for a casual chat it is sometimes to grumble about their husbands or to exchange recipes, and that was certainly the case when Joyce, Audrey and Clestrell shared a pot of coffee in 1956 – except that the husband who was most grumbled about was Joyce Turner’s, and the recipe discussed was how best to kill him. Such was the pressure brought to bear on her by her friends, that Joyce left her neighbour’s house and went home where she found her husband asleep. She promptly shot him dead. When the crime was investigated all three women blamed an intruder, but when the police discovered that the murder weapon belonged to Joyce, the game was up. She was given a life sentence in gaol – as were her two friends, being equal members of the conspiracy.

  Potts, Elizabeth (USA)

  Some executions are by hanging, others by decapitation; rarely did one victim suffer both methods almost simultaneously, but that was the appalling result when Elizabeth met her death in 1890.

  The events leading up to this shocking disaster started back in January 1888 at a house in Nevada, when a
man named Miles Faucett, who was allegedly owed money by Elizabeth and her husband Josiah, called on them to discuss the debt, but never left the premises. Some months later the Potts moved to another part of the country, and the Brewer family moved in to the Potts’ old house. Mrs Brewer, her senses apparently attuned to spiritualistic activities, then reported the presence of apparitions, and of hearing spectral sounds in the house, especially in the area of the cellar. Her husband George, sceptical or not, investigated, any doubts he may have had being instantly dispersed when he discovered human remains down there, these mainly consisting of a charred and mutilated head, and pieces of what were arms and legs. A fragment of clothing being identified as belonging to Miles Faucett, the Potts pair were brought back to the town for questioning. So strong was the evidence that they were subsequently charged with murder, and on 12 March 1889 appeared in court.

  Their defence, which they maintained throughout their trial, was that Faucett had committed suicide because Elizabeth had caught him in the act of assaulting their four-year-old daughter and, fearing the shame of exposure, had shot himself. Elizabeth did not explain why, if that had been the case, she and her husband had dismembered and burnt the body, rather than simply sending for the police. In the absence of any extenuating circumstances, both Mr and Mrs Potts were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

  For the executions a scaffold was transported in sections from California, a local paper describing it as ‘made of seasoned timber; the crossbeam was capable of sustaining a tremendous strain and worked like a charm when tested with sandbags’. On hearing the noise of it being assembled in the prison grounds, it was reported that both the Potts had cried, although later Elizabeth was heard swearing damnation on all concerned. Josiah apparently passed the time by playing patience, an admirable quality which, seemingly, he had a sufficiency. It was also rumoured that Elizabeth had attempted to commit suicide by cutting her wrists with a small penknife she had hidden in her hair, but had been thwarted by one of the warders.

  On 20 June 1890 both faced the sheriff as he read out the death warrants, a regulation procedure which took twenty minutes. Both Josiah and Elizabeth had been given a ‘reinforcing tonic’, probably whisky, though a reporter described how the woman gasped in horror at the official’s words. They then mounted the scaffold steps to the platform, where they had their shoes removed and were pinioned, their arms to their sides, their wrists bound in front of them. Awkwardly they shook hands with each other and kissed, Elizabeth still protesting her innocence as the hangman put the black hoods over their heads and proceeded to noose them. He then cut the cord, withdrawing the bolts which held the trapdoors in place, and the two victims dropped into the pit.

  It was then that, for the officials and witnesses, the ‘normal’ hanging was transformed into an unforgettably ghastly nightmare, for on looking down into the pit, they saw that while Josiah’s body rotated slowly on the rope, life having departed, Elizabeth’s speed of descent had been too great, and as the rope about her neck abruptly tightened, the noose had acted like a cheese-cutter, slicing through the carotid artery, causing the blood to flow copiously over her body, and almost severing her head. Rather than expose the distorted features of the victims to the bystanders, the black hoods were left in place, both cadavers then being brought out of the pit and later interred, appropriately, in a potter’s field. Miles Faucett’s remains were also buried nearby.

  Some early American transgressors were punished by being in the stocks or having to stand on the penance stool in the marketplace while wearing a large card on which was inscribed their offence. In May 1652, Ann Boulder, a Boston woman, was arrested for defacing a public notice and was ordered ‘to stand in yrons half an hour with a Paper on her Breast marked PVBLICK DESTROYER OF PEACE.’ And when Joan Andrews, a resident of York, Maine, was caught increasing the weight of a firkin of butter with two heavy stones, ‘she had to stand disgraced bearing the description of her cheatery written in Capitall Letters and pinned upon her forehead.’ As did Widow Bradley of New London, Connecticut, in 1673 ‘for her sorry behaviour, by wearing a paper pinned to her cap to proclaim her shame.’

  R

  Reid, Mary (Scotland)

  Some people just don’t get on with their neighbours, and this was never more true than where Mary Reid (or Timney) was concerned.

  She lived with her husband and family near Kirkudbright, Scotland, her neighbour being 40-year-old Ann Hannah, with whom she occasionally had violent arguments over money, but none was so violent as that which took place on 13 January 1862, for it culminated in our heroine – or villain – picking up an iron beetle, a heavy hand tool used in pounding cloth, and clubbing Ann to death.

  At her trial on 8 April, before Judge Deas (colloquially referred to as ‘Judge Death’ because of his penchant for handing down that particular type of sentence) she pleaded self-defence, claiming that Ann Hannah had attacked her first. The jury was not convinced, the Judge lived up to his nickname, and Mary was sentenced to die.

  On execution day, 29 April 1862, at Dumfries, there was a turn-out of nearly 3,000 people to watch the murderess be dispatched, but the crowd grew quiet as Mary, in a state of near collapse, had to be supported between two burly warders as she mounted the scaffold steps. On the trapdoors they remained standing on each side of her, holding her upright as hangman William Calcraft drew the white hood down over her head. So still was the crowd that most of them could hear her muffled shrieks and cries through the thin material as she begged for mercy, if only for the sake of her four young children. Calcraft, worried that the crowd’s sympathies for the woman might suddenly erupt into a riotous attempt to rescue her, hastily dropped the noose over her head and reached for the lever which would operate the drop, but even as he did so, a sudden commotion stilled his hand as shouts of ‘Stop!’ and ‘A reprieve!’ came from those on the outskirts of the crowd. Aware that petitions for a commutation of her sentence had been raised and might just have been granted, the hangman stayed his hand as a man came running up the steps waving a piece of paper. He handed it to the prison governor who, together with other officials, was present on the scaffold; the officer slowly read it, while the wretched woman, unable to see what was happening and in mental anguish knowing that any second the boards would fall away from under her feet, could only wait, as did the crowd. And then, after a few breathless moments, anticlimax followed, as the governor announced that the letter was from the editor of a London newspaper requesting him to dispatch an account of the hanging as soon as possible! Realising that this could be the touch-paper should the now incensed crowd rush the scaffold, Calcraft didn’t even wait for the governor’s order to continue with the execution – reaching out, he released the drop and Mary’s pathetic voice ceased abruptly as she dropped out of sight of the onlookers, the rope tightening remorselessly around her neck.

  There has to be a legal definition of everything in the judicial system, and this of course applied to those sentenced to wear the Scold’s Bridle, so in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a scold was defined as: ‘A troublesome and angry woman who, by brawling and wrangling among her neighbours, breaks the public peace, increases discord, and becomes a public nuisance to the neighbourhood.’

  Ross, Eliza (England)

  With the advances in medicine in the early 1800s and the continual need for invasive operations, schools of surgery had been established in the big cities to train students, but the major setback to this was the shortage of specimens on which they could get the practice they needed in order to qualify as surgeons. There were no computer models or plastic skeletons in those days, and in order to teach their students, and also stay in business, the surgeons needed fresh, human bodies. Eliza was one of those who satisfied that demand, albeit on a small scale, by murdering, and then selling the bodies to the surgical schools in London.

  Eliza was a well-known character around the area of Fleet Street where she lived with Edward Cook, himself an ex-bodysnatcher
(one who dug up bodies in cemeteries and sold them to surgeons). A bad-tempered crone, she also made a living selling old clothes and animal skins, usually those donated involuntarily by local pets, and she occasionally took in lodgers. Eliza and Edward then moved to Goodman’s Yard, near the Tower of London, with their lodger Catherine Walsh. One day Mrs Walsh’s daughter Anne went to visit her mother, only to find her absent. Eliza said that she herself had been out shopping, and on returning she had found that Mrs Walsh had apparently left the house and gone; where, she did not know.

  Worried in case her mother might have come to some harm, as time went by Anne searched the streets, enquiring in local taverns and contacting the hospitals, but with no result. Eventually, suspecting that Eliza Ross knew more about her mother’s mysterious absence than she was prepared to admit, Anne then reported it to the police. Their investigations revealed that some clothes which had been sold by Eliza to her market customers belonged to Mrs Walsh, and Eliza and her 11-year-old son Ned were taken to the nearest police office.

  When questioned, Eliza flatly denied any knowledge of what had happened to her lodger, but young Ned, either burdened by his conscience or fearful of the Law, described what had happened to the old lady. She had moved in, he said, and that evening he saw her lying on the bed – he also saw his mother suffocating her by holding her hand over the woman’s nose and mouth until she was dead. He then saw the body carried downstairs, and later, on going into the cellar, he saw a large sack, from the open end of which protruded the head of their late lodger, the face swollen and contorted. And that night the sack had gone.