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Elizabeth
Martha Brown. |
Elizabeth
Martha Brown(e) was an ordinary woman of humble birth
who worked as a servant. Not much is known about her, not even her date and
place of birth. She became the last woman to be publicly hanged in Dorset, and
is only remembered as the inspiration for Thomas Hardy's
famous novel "Tess of the D'Urbervilles".
Elizabeth was nearly 20 years older than her husband, John Brown(e),
and they had met when they were both servants together. It was claimed at the
time that he had married her for money. They lived at Birdsmoorgate,
near Beaminster in Dorset.
The marriage was problematic and she caught John in bed with another woman. A
quarrel naturally ensued and later that day erupted into violence. She struck
out at John and he replied by hitting her with his whip. This was the last
straw for Elizabeth who retaliated by hitting him over the head with the wood
chopping axe, smashing his skull and killing him.
She was
arrested but claimed that her husband's death had been caused by being kicked
in the head by a horse. The police did not believe this and thus she was
charged with murder. She came to trial at Dorchester Assizes, as Dorchester is
the County town of Dorset. The jury did not believe the horse story either and
brought back a guilty verdict. The mandatory death sentence was passed on her
and she was taken to Dorchester prison to await her execution some 3 weeks
later.
There were obvious mitigating circumstances which led to substantial agitation
for a reprieve. Reprieves even for murder although rare, were by no means
unknown at this time. There was, however, much public sympathy for her in view
of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband. The Home Secretary,
however, refused a reprieve even in view of the evidence of obvious
provocation, perhaps because Elizabeth had made the fatal mistake of
maintaining, virtually to the last, the lie that her husband had died from a
horse kick. (c.f. the case of Tracy Andrews in 1997,
where she claimed that her boyfriend had been stabbed in a road rage attack, a
story which she later retracted). Elizabeth became "locked into" this
lie as so many have before and since. Ultimately, in the condemned cell, she
confessed that she had killed him with the axe and, therefore, was responsible
for his death and accepted her fate with great courage. Diminished
responsibility was not a defence open to her in 1856, it would be another 101
years before it was recognised in English law.
The
Sheriff of Dorset made the necessary preparations for her execution, appointing
William Calcraft as the hangman. He was Britain's principal executioner from
1829-1874 - the longest serving hangman of all. He was noted for his
"short drops" causing most of his victims to die a slow and agonising
death.
Elizabeth's execution was set for 9 o'clock on the morning of Saturday, 9th of
August 1856. Calcraft travelled to Dorchester by train and he and his assistant
arrived at the prison the day before as required by the Home Office to make the
necessary preparations.
Elizabeth would have been treated very well in the condemned cell where she
would have been looked after by two matrons (female warders). Even then there
was a strange dichotomy between the harsh sentences of the law, her treatment
in the condemned cell, and her cruel and humiliating execution.
The
gallows was erected outside the gates of Dorchester prison the evening before,
on what is today the prison car park in North Square and was a very impressive affair.
A crowd of between 3 and 4,000 had gathered for, what was by then quite a rare
event, the public hanging of a woman. To add to the public interest Elizabeth
was an attractive woman, who looked younger than her years and had lovely hair.
She was also incredibly brave in the face of death. So much so that her vicar
regarded it as a sign of callousness. She had chosen a long, tight fitting thin
black silk dress for her hanging. At the prison gates, she shook hands with the
officials but declined to be driven to the place of execution in the prison
van, even though it was raining. Instead she chose to walk from the prison to
it. She walked up the first flight of 11 steps where William Calcraft, a
forbidding figure in his black clothes and bushy white beard, pinioned her arms
in front of her before leading her up the next flight of 19 steps, across a
platform and on up the last flight of steps to the actual trap. Here Calcraft
put the white hood over her head and the simple noose around her neck. He then
began to go down below the trap to withdraw the bolts (there was no lever in
those days). When it was pointed out to
him that he had not pinioned Elizabeth's legs, he returned to her and put a
strap around her legs, outside of her dress to prevent it billowing up and
exposing her as she hanged. (The Victorian preoccupation with
decency!) While this was going on, Elizabeth stood stoically on the
gallows, supported by a male warder on each side just waiting for her death.
The rain made the hood damp and it clung to her features, giving her an almost
statuesque appearance. It must also have made it hard for her to breath through
the damp cloth.
Once again, Calcraft went below and pulled the bolts thus releasing the trap
doors. Elizabeth dropped through a distance of about a foot with a resounding
thud. Death was certainly not instantaneous and she struggled some and her
"body wheeled half round and back", according to Thomas Hardy, taking
a few moments to lose consciousness as the rope constricted the major blood
vessels and put pressure on the nerves in her neck. She was left to hang for
the regulation hour before being taken down and buried within the prison.
Fortunately, anatomisation of the body had been ended by law some 25 years
previously.
Her execution caused a leading article in the Dorset County Chronicle
advocating the abolition of the death penalty. Click here for an artist's impression of the hanging.
Thomas
Hardy was a boy of 16 when he went to watch this spectacle with a friend and
was able to secure a good vantage point in a tree very close to the gallows. He
noted "what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the
misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled
half round and back", after Calcraft had tied her dress close to her body.
It made an impression on him that lasted until old age, he still wrote about the
event in his eighties. It was to provide the inspiration and some of the matter
for 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles.” It seems possible
that Hardy found something erotic about the execution and particularly her body
and facial features through the tight dress and rain soaked hood. Charles
Dickens, who had also witnessed public hangings and campaigned strongly against
them, referred to the "fascination of the repulsive, something most of us
have experienced."
James
Seale became the last person to be publicly hanged in Dorset when he was
executed for the murder of Sara Guppy. He went to the gallows two years later,
on the 10th of August 1858, an event also witnessed by Hardy. Public executions
were abolished by law in 1868.
