Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Geoffrey Abbott Read Free Book Online

finally leaving the knife inserted in the husband’s stomach before fleeing. The badly wounded man staggered out into the street, calling for help, and the neighbours who rushed out ‘found him holding the bloody knife in one hand and the other supporting his bowels, which were dropping to the ground’. He died the next day.
    Thomas was captured, Elizabeth arrested, both confessing their guilt. On 20 March 1776 Thomas Aikney was hanged at York, his body subsequently being sent to the Leeds Infirmary as a surgical specimen to be used in the training of students. Petit treason having been committed by Elizabeth by instigating the murder of her husband, she was tied to the stake, and after the executioner had strangled her she was burned, her ashes being collected by some of the onlookers as souvenirs (in egg-timers, perhaps?).

John Howard, the famous prison reformer, visited gaols across the Continent in the 1770s. In his report on prisons in Stockholm, he noted that Swedish executions are by the axe, and that women are decapitated on a scaffold, that structure afterwards being set alight at its four corners and consumed by the flames, together with the victim’s body.
    Brownrigg, Elizabeth (England)
    Hangman Thomas Turlis had a rewarding task, and the vast crowd were in full agreement with his actions, for once not abusing him too obscenely, when, on 14 September 1767, he executed Elizabeth Brownrigg, a lady assuredly receiving everything she deserved!
    Originally a servant, Elizabeth had married James Brownrigg and they lived in Fetter Lane, near Fleet Street in London. Elizabeth became a midwife and, needing to have assistance in the house, contacted the local Foundling Hospital for some apprentices. Two of the girls were thus employed as servants, Mary Mitchell and Mary Jones, but soon found that they had left the frying pan only to end up in the fire, for Mrs Brownrigg was a cruel and violent woman who did not hesitate to beat them. Mary Mitchell endured the hardships for a year and then managed to escape, only to be captured by the son of the family, who brought her back to his mother’s tender mercies.
    Not long afterwards, the Marys were joined by yet another Mary, 14-year-old Mary Clifford, who was particularly ill-treated by her mistress. For the most trifling offence she would be tied up naked and beaten with a cane, a horsewhip, a broom handle or anything else that came to hand; made to lie in the cold, damp cellar on sacking; and was fed only on bread and water. Later she was confined in the yard, a chain around her neck securing her to the door, her hands being tied behind her.
    Mrs Brownrigg’s cruelty knew no bounds, but retribution was in sight when, on 13 July 1767, she stripped Mary Clifford naked and hung her up by her arms to a staple in the ceiling, then whipped her already severely scarred body until the blood flowed across the kitchen floor. But the brutal treatment was witnessed by a neighbour, who sent for the police. On arrival, although they released Mary Clifford from her bonds, ‘her body being one continual ulcer, ready to mortify’, Elizabeth Brownrigg and her son had escaped. The badly injured Mary Clifford died in St Bartholomew’s Hospital a few days later; the Brownriggs, mother and son, were now wanted on murder charges.

    Elizabeth Brownrigg flogging Mary Clifford
    The couple had rented rooms in Wandsworth in a house owned by a Mr Dunbar, and he happened to see a wanted poster that included a detailed description of his two lodgers. He promptly informed the police and both were arrested. On 12 September they appeared in the Old Bailey; Master Brownrigg received a prison sentence but, after a trial lasting eleven hours, during which every lurid detail of the injuries sustained by the victim was described, Elizabeth Brownrigg was sentenced to death.
    On 14 September, en route to Tyburn scaffold, she was accompanied in the horse-drawn cart by the Ordinary, the Reverend Mr James, and a