Focus on the execution of teenage girls in the 19th century.

This article is specifically about those girls who would be legally considered juveniles today, i.e. under eighteen years old at the time of their offence and who now would be prohibited from execution by international human rights treaties, not to mention public opinion.

Six girls aged eighteen or under were to be publicly hanged in the first half of the 19th century.
The law of the 18th and early 19th centuries did not accept the concept that teenagers did not know the difference between right and wrong and punished teenage girls just as severely for the most serious crimes as their adult counterparts. There was a strong presumption against those who committed murder for gain, murder by poisoning or brutal murders, especially of their superiors. Children, like adults, continued to be sentenced to death for a very large number of felonies up to 1836 although it was normal for the younger ones to have their sentences commuted for the less serious crimes as there was growing public disquiet about hanging children for relatively minor offences. Executions were decreasing rapidly, both for adults and young offenders after 1836, as the number of capital crimes reduced and public attitudes began to change.

Ann Mead – poisoner.

Ann Mead, aged fifteen or sixteen was found guilty of the murder of Charles Proctor, aged sixteen months, by feeding him a spoonful of arsenic at Royston in Hertfordshire. She expiated her crime on the “New Drop” gallows outside Hertford prison on Thursday the 31st of July 1800, watched by a large crowd. Apparently the motive for the murder was that Ann’s mistress had called Ann a slut and she wanted to get back at her.

Mary Morgan – infanticide.
Mary was a sixteen year old kitchen maid at the imposing Maesllwch Castle near Glasbury, the home of Walter Wilkins Esq., the Member of Parliament for the county of Radnorshire (now part of Powys in Wales). She had become pregnant but had tried to conceal the pregnancy to be allowed to stay on in the servant’s quarters in the castle. On Sunday in September 1804 she complained of feeling unwell and went up to bed. She was visited in the evening by the cook who accused Mary of having given birth to a baby. Mary initially denied this but later admitted that he she had indeed given birth and that she had killed it immediately, severing its head with a penknife! The baby was found under the pillows in Mary’s bed. An inquest was held two days later and the jury returned a verdict of murder against Mary, declaring that : "Mary Morgan, late of the Parish of Glazebury, a single woman on the 23rd day of September being big with child, afterward alone and secretly from her body did bring forth alive a female child, which by the laws and customs of this Kingdom was a bastard. Mary Morgan moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil afterwards on the same day, feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did make an assault with a certain penknife made of iron and steel of the value of sixpence, and gave the child one mortal wound of the length of three inches and the depth of one inch. The child instantly died."

Mary was arrested but was not well enough to be taken to Presteigne for trial until the 6th of October. She thus remained in prison until the following April when she was arraigned at the Great Sessions for Radnorshire, before Judge Hardinge. After a brief trial on the 11th of April 1805 she was convicted and received the death sentence. She was returned to Presteigne Gaol to await her appointment with the hangman two days later.

It was quite normal at this time for executions to take place later in the day than became the custom later, so as to give local people the opportunity to get to the execution site. Mary was hanged at Gallows Lane in Presteigne on Saturday, the 13th of April at around midday, having been conveyed from the Gaol in a horse drawn cart seated on her coffin. The terrified girl was barely conscious when she arrived at the gallows and had to be supported during the preparations. It is probable that she was hanged from the back of the cart rather than on the “New Drop” style of gallows which was slowly coming into vogue at this time. Her body was buried in unconsecrated ground near the church later that afternoon and was for whatever reason not sent for dissection.

Mary’s case was one that attracted the conspiracy theorists of the day. It has been claimed that a gentleman who attended Mary’s trial immediately set off to London to seek a reprieve for her, but failed to get back in time to save her. This is at least highly unlikely, one could not ride to London and back on a single horse in two days in 1805. It is hardly an easy journey now.
It has also been claimed that the father of Mary's daughter was Walter Wilkins the Younger, the son of her employer or alternatively one of the men on the jury that convicted her. However there is little evidence to support either theory and the father was more probably one of her fellow servants.
Two grave stones were erected in Mary’s memory in St. Andrew’s parish churchyard in Presteigne, one by a friend of Judge Hardinge and another by an anonymous donor.
Although to kill her baby in the way she did may strike most of us horrible one has to understand both the social and economic pressures that Mary faced at the time. Had the pregnancy been discovered she would have almost certainly lost her job and with it her place to live and meagre income. There was no social security then and she could only hope for handouts to live on until she could find some alternative employment. Not easy with a baby to bring up and with the social stigma of being an unmarried mother which was a very real one two hundred years ago.

Only one other person was to hang at Presteigne, he was Samuel Harley for the murder of Arthur Bedward in 1822. Presteigne Gaol closed in 1878.

Hannah Bocking - murder in the shadow of the gibbet.

On Monday the 22nd of March 1819, sixteen year old Hannah was publicly hanged at Derby for the murder, by poisoning, of Jane Grant.

Hannah came from Litton in Derbyshire and in the summer of 1818 had applied for a job as a servant but had been unsuccessful due to “her un-amiable temper and disposition". The job went to another local girl, Jane Grant, instead. Hannah knew Jane but hid her jealousy from her and pretended to be friends with her. She was able to procure some arsenic from a local surgeon by telling him that her grandfather wanted it for killing rats.

During the summer of 1818, Hannah and Jane went together to get some cattle in from a field at Wardlow Mires. Dangling from a gibbet nearby was the rotting corpse of Anthony Lingard who had been hanged and gibbeted in 1815 for the murder of Hannah Oliver. Here Hannah offered Jane a spice cake which she had previously laced with poison. Jane died in agony a little while later but before doing so was able to tell her parents about the cake she had been given by Hannah. It seems a strange location to commit a murder and clearly Hannah was not deterred by the possibility of her own execution.

Hannah was soon arrested and charged with killing Jane. She was committed to Friar Gate Gaol in Derby to await the next Assizes that were held in March of the following year. She duly came to trial at the Derbyshire Lent Assizes nearly six months later. Initially she tried to implicate members of her family in the crime but finally confessed that she had bought the poison some ten weeks before the murder. She was convicted and at the end of the Assize on Friday the 19th of March, sentenced to be hanged and anatomised the following Monday, in accordance with the requirements of the Murder Act of 1752. She was sent back to Friar Gate Gaol and placed in the condemned cell which is a small dank room in the basement with little natural light. It can still be visited today. Here the enormity of her crime and sentence finally hit her and she finally burst into tears, making a full confession to a lady visitor, telling her that she and she alone committed the crime. She was attended over the weekend by the Gaol chaplain and by the Rev. Mr. Leach.
Between 12 noon and 1pm on the Monday, she was led back up the stone steps from the prison basement, through the main gate and out onto the pavement where in front of a large number of eager spectators, she ascended the steps of the New Drop gallows erected in front of the Gaol. After the usual preparations and time for prayer a white night cap was drawn down over her face and the trapdoor released. It was not reported whether she died easily or not but “at the moment, when she was launched into eternity, an involuntary shuddering pervaded the assembled crowd, and although she excited little sympathy, a general feeling of horror was expressed that one so young should have been so guilty, and so insensible.” Her body was dissected after death as required by law. At least one broadside was printed about her case.

Catherine Foster – poisoner.
Catherine was one of two teenage girls executed in the period from 1840 - 1868. She was just seventeen years old when she poisoned her husband, John, to whom she had been married for only three weeks, at Acton near Sudbury in Suffolk. She passed her eighteenth birthday in Bury Gaol awaiting trial.

Here full story is here.

Sarah Harriet Thomas - Bristol's last public hanging.

Sarah’s was to be Bristol's final public hanging on the flat roof of the gatehouse of New Gaol in Cumberland Road. She was a house maid to sixty one year old Miss Elizabeth Jefferies, who according to Sarah, did not treat her well and had locked in the kitchen all night among other perceived abuses. There was almost certain to be conflict between a cranky, elderly spinster and a rebellious young girl and this culminated in Sarah bludgeoning Miss Jefferies to death with a large stone as she slept, on the night of Sunday the 4th of March 1849. Sarah had also killed Miss Jefferies’ dog and thrown its body into the lavatory. She left the house, but not without helping herself to some of her mistresses’ jewellery. Miss Jefferies’ brother was alerted to a possible problem by a neighbour who noticed that the window shutters were still closed and called the local constable to help him investigate. When they forced entry they made the gruesome discoveries. Suspicion immediately fell upon Sarah and she was arrested the next day at her mother’s house in Pensford. Initially she told the police that another girl had committed the killings and that she had only been involved with ransacking the house.

She was tried at Gloucester on the 3rd of April 1849, the public gallery being particularly crowded to hear every gruesome detail. Sarah seemed not to treat the court proceedings seriously until she was convicted and the judge donned the black cap and sentenced her to be hanged by the neck until she was dead. On hearing these words of doom she collapsed and had to be carried from the dock by two warders. A petition was got up to save her but this was to no avail. Sarah made a confession to the prison governor, Mr. J A Gardiner and two female matrons seventeen days before her execution and it was read to her every day in case she wanted to correct it. In the confession she told of the ill treatment that she had endured from Miss Jefferies and spoke of her regret in having committed the killings.

On Thursday the 19th of April the gallows was erected and William Calcraft, the hangman, arrived from London. He was to have George Smith from Dudley to assist him. The following morning a huge number of people had assembled in front of the prison to watch Sarah die.

She was dragged up two flights of stairs by six warders onto the gatehouse roof and then up a few more steps onto the platform. She was held on the trap by two warders whilst Calcraft strapped her legs, placed the white hood over her head and tightened the halter style noose around her neck. As the preparations continued Sarah cried out "I wont be hanged; take me home!" Calcraft quickly operated the trap and Sarah’s body dropped about eighteen inches through it, quivering for a few moments before becoming still. Everybody present on the gatehouse roof was upset by the distressing scene they had witnessed and the governor of the prison fainted. Sarah’s body was buried in private in an unmarked grave within the prison later in the day.

Even the by now veteran hangman, Calcraft, was greatly affected by this job and said later that Sarah Thomas was "in my opinion, one of the prettiest and most intellectual girls I have met with."

A crime reporter, one Mr. E. Austin, who attended the execution reported: "Ribald jests were bandied about and after waiting to see the corpse cut down, the crowd dispersed, and the harvest of the taverns in the neighbourhood commenced." However, some in the crowd felt pity for the poor girl. Sadly for the majority it was probably seen much more as a free, slightly pornographic show put on by the authorities for their voyeuristic pleasure.

Sarah was the last teenage girl to be hanged in Britain. One hundred years earlier she would have suffered a far worse fate as her crime would have been deemed to be Petty Treason and she would have been burnt at the stake for it.

Constance Kent who confessed to murdering her three year old brother, Francis, at their home at Road Hill House when she was sixteen had her death sentence commuted to life in prison in 1865 due to her age at the time of her crime and changing attitudes towards the death penalty, particularly for women. She served twenty years in prison before being released and emigrating to Australia.

A further six nineteen year old girls were hanged in the nineteenth century. They were Sarah Lloyd (23rd of April 1800) for stealing in a dwelling house, Martha Chapple (1st of August 1803) for the murder of her bastard, Mary Chandler (9th of April 1808) for stealing in a dwelling house, Sarah Fletcher for the murder of a child (5th of April 1813), Catherine Kinrade (18th of April 1823) for being an accessory to murder and Mary Ann Higgins (11th of August 1831) for the murder of her uncle.

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