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Catherine Hayes burnt for Petty Treason. |
The crime of Petty Treason.
In
these male dominated times, men were considered more valuable in law than
women. So if a woman killed her husband,
she was guilty not merely of murder but the much more serious crime of Petty
Treason. Petty Treason was defined by
the Treason Act of 1351 and encompassed the killing of a master by a servant, a
husband by his wife, or an ecclesiastical superior by his inferior. These
crimes were seen as an assault on the majesty of the State, as well as the
actual victim, and were perceived at the time to be against the natural order
of things. Therefore, the punishment for Petty Treason was much more severe
than for ordinary murder. Women convicted of petty treason were burned at the
stake up to 1793, after which they were still drawn to the place of execution
but then hanged in the normal way up till 1825, when the crime of Petty Treason
was abolished, the offence being reclassified as ordinary murder.
Catherine's background.
Catherine
was born near
The
artist's impression of Catherine is thought to be from about the time of her
marriage. For the first six months the marriage seemed to go quite well but
Catherine needed more sex than John could provide at the end of a physically
hard day's work and took other lovers to satisfy herself.
The quiet rural life she and John shared also quickly palled and she persuaded
him to move to
The murder.
Catherine
decided that she no longer had any feelings for John and wanted him out of her
life. But instead of leaving him for one of her two lovers she persuaded them,
over a six week period, to help her kill him. Perhaps fearing withdrawal of her
sexual favours or moral blackmail, they stupidly agreed to her plan.
On the
1st of March 1726, John went out drinking with the two lodgers and they took
bets on who could drink the most and remain sober. When they got home, John
Hayes went to bed in an alcoholic stupor. Once he was snoring happily, Thomas
Billings entered his bedroom and hit John a non fatal blow on the head with an
axe. John let out screams, which were heard by Mrs. Springate,
who rented the rooms above. When she asked the reason for the commotion, she
was told by Catherine that they had been having a party. Thomas Wood helped
Thomas Billings finish off John with the axe. To make identification of John's
body more difficult, they decided to cut off his head, wrap it in a cloth and
place it in a bucket, which they later threw into the Thames at Millbank, from where it was soon recovered lying on a
sandbank near the Horse-Ferry at Westminster. Wood, being a butcher, had the
skill to dismember the rest of John's body, the pieces of which they threw into
a pond in Marylebone Fields. The recovered head was examined and the scull
found to be severely fractured in two places and the face lacerated.
As nobody could immediately identify John's severed head, it was put on the top
of a wooden spike in St. Margaret's Church Yard, there being no photography at
the time. It was identified by at least three men, as being that of John Hayes,
and Catherine made up a story that he was away on business. One of the men, Mr
Ashby, a business friend of John's, did not accept this explanation as he was
due to meet John to discuss some business and had clearly recognised the head.
When he questioned Catherine further, she made up a story about John having
killed a man in a fight and fleeing the country. Ashby didn’t believe a word of
this and so went to the authorities to report his suspicions. Ashby returned to
the Hayes household with several constables and they discovered Catherine in
bed with Thomas Billings. The pair were both arrested.
Thomas Wood had temporarily escaped but returned to
A
coroner's inquest opened on
The
barbarity of the crime shocked early 18th century
The
magistrate showed Catherine her husband's head, by now preserved in a jar of
gin, and invited her to touch it. Superstition of the day had it that if a
murderer touched the head of their victim, their guilt would be revealed.
Catherine, being aware of this, was quite happy to touch John's head and put on
a show of grief for the magistrate. However, she was committed to Newgate to
await trial. Billings was kept separately from her and both continued to
protest their innocence. When Wood was arrested, he was examined by Justices of
the Peace and confessed to his part in the crime, implicating Catherine and
The trial.
Catherine
came to trial alongside
Catherine maintained that she had not taken any part in the actual killing but
had held a candle for the men while they dismembered John. She also continued
to maintain that the crime was the work of the Devil through them.
They were tried by a jury of 12 men who heard evidence of the murder,
identification of the body and her confession and who not surprisingly,
returned a verdict of guilty against all three defendants. Billings and Wood
were sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn and afterwards be hanged in chains
(gibbeted) and Catherine, having been found guilty of Petty Treason was
sentenced to be drawn to Tyburn on a hurdle and there to be burned alive at the
stake. She was greatly distressed by her sentence, as were her two
co-defendants, who begged to have the gibbeting part of their sentence
remitted.
At the
end of the Sessions, a total of 15 defendants were sentenced to death. The
others were Thomas Wright, Gabriel Lawrence, George Reger,
William Griffin for sodomy, Mary Schuffman and Jane Vanvick, for felony, John Mapp,
John Gillingham, and Henry Vigus for robberies on the
highway, John Cotterell and James Dupress
for burglary; and Joseph Treen for horse-stealing.
This batch sentencing was the normal procedure at the time. The Recorder made
his report to the King and Privy Council which resulted in Mary Schuffman and Jane Vanvick having
their death sentences commuted to transportation, as did George Reger and Joseph Treen. Thomas
Wood died in prison of goal fever before his sentence could be carried out.
Catherine and her fellow condemned were lodged in the Condemned Hold at Newgate
where she reaffirmed her confession to the Ordinary, the Rev. J. Guthrie, but
protested the severity of her sentence. She told Guthrie when he asked her why
she murdered her husband, that “it was no more Sin to
kill him than a Dog or Cat, because of the cruel Usuage
he gave her, and his blasphemous Expressions which he too frequently used.” She
accepted that she deserved to die for her crimes but was understandably
horrified by the thought of the manner of her death.
Execution.
The
executions were set for Monday, the 9th of May 1726 and drew the usual huge
crowd, particularly as a woman was to be burnt. In the Press Yard at Newgate,
the nine men and Catherine were prepared for their fate. Their irons were
removed and the Yeoman of the halter put the nooses around the men's necks
prior to loading them into the carts where they sat on their coffins for the
journey to Tyburn. Lawrence, Griffin and Wright, the three who were to die for
sodomy, went together in one cart, Gillingham, Map and Vigus,
the three highway-robbers, in another; and Cotterell
and Dupress, the two burglars, together with Thomas
Billings, in the third cart. Catherine was drawn to Tyburn on a hurdle. (rather
a like a wattle fence panel to which she would be tied and then dragged along
behind a horse).
When they
reached Tyburn, the three carts were backed under the beams and the hangman,
Richard Arnet, secured each man in turn. When they had finished their devotions
(prayers), the carts were moved from under them leaving them suspended.
Catherine was of course able to watch the men die and this must have been
especially painful for her emotionally as Billings was her son. Attention now
turned to her execution. She was taken from the hurdle and secured to a stake,
set in the ground a few yards from the gallows, by an iron chain around her
body. A cord was put round her neck and passed through a hole bored in the
stake, for the purpose of strangling her, in accordance with the normal
practice of the time. Two cartloads of faggots (bundles of dry brushwood) were
piled around her and at the signal the fire was lit. She begged Arnet to
strangle her before the fire reached her and he took the end of the cord and
began to pull on it, but the flames blew in his direction burning his hands so
he had to let go. She reportedly gave three dreadful shrieks before she was
engulfed by the fierce fire and fell silent. She was seen trying to push away
the burning faggots with her free hands but to no avail. Contemporary reports
claimed that Arnet, seeing her plight, threw a large piece of wood at her head
which "broke her skull, when her brains came plentifully out." In any
event, she would have suffered terrible burns and shock and been in great pain
for some time, before the fire and/or lack of oxygen created by it, overcame
her. It was over an hour before her body was reduced to ashes. (Click here to see a drawing of her execution).
This
particular "hanging day" seems to have been fraught with disaster for
Arnet. John Mapp and Henry Vigus
attempted to escape from the carts having freed themselves from their nooses
and wrist ties. One of the spectators' grandstands collapsed, killing at least
two, and injuring several more and finally, Catherine's execution was botched.
Billings'
body was later hanged in chains near Tyburn on the road to Paddington in
pursuance of his sentence.
Conclusion.
It would seem that Catherine, even in her mid 30’s, was a nymphomaniac who was
insatiable both sexually and materially and that these tendencies were at the
root of the crime. She had by the standards of the day, a good life style with
John, but always wanted more of everything than he could provide. Like so many
murderers, it seems she thought she could get away with the crime and probably
would have, had she taken greater care to dispose of the head. At this time,
even if they had been discovered, there would have been no way of linking the
body parts to John Hayes. The head was therefore the crucial piece of evidence.
This remained in murder cases true up till quite recent times. Now