Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850. Various
and pleaded guilty. Katherine Hayes put herself on her country, was tried and convicted. Wood died in prison. Billings was hanged in Marylebone fields, near the pond in which Hayes's body had been concealed. Katherine Hayes was executed at Tyburn, under circumstances of great horror; for, in consequence of the fire reaching the executioner's hands, he left his hold of the rope with which he ought to have strangled the criminal, before he had executed that part of his duty, and the result was, that Katherine Hayes was burnt alive. The wretched woman was seen, in the midst of flames, pushing the blazing faggots from her, whilst she yelled in agony. Fresh faggots were piled around her, but a considerable time elapsed before her torments ended. She suffered on the 3rd of November, 1726. This tragedy forms the subject of a comic ballad which is attributed to Swift.
The communication of E. S. S. W. (Vol. ii., p. 6.), which is as interesting as it is shocking, induces me to send you a short extract from Harrison's Derby and Nottingham Journal, or Midland Advertiser. The number of this journal which is dated Thursday, September 23, 1779, contains as follows:—
"On Saturday two prisoners were capitally convicted at the Old Bailey of high treason, viz. Isabella Condon, for coining shillings in Cold-Bath-Fields; and John Field, for coining shillings in Nag's Head Yard, Bishopsgate Street. They will receive sentence to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution; the woman to be burnt, and the man to be hanged."
I presume that the sentence which the woman underwent was not executed. The barbarous fulfilment of such a law was, it may be hoped, already obsolete. The motives, however, upon which this law was grounded is worth noting:—
"In treason of every kind," says Blackstone, "the punishment of women is the same, and different from that of men. For, as the decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sensation as the other) is to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burned alive." "But," says the foot-note, "by the statute 30 Geo. III. c. 48., women convicted in all cases of treason, shall receive judgment to be drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till dead."
The law, therefore, under which a woman could be put to death by burning, was repealed in 1790.
Blackstone elsewhere says:—
"The humanity of the English nation has authorized, by a tacit consent, an almost general mitigation of such part of those judgments as savours of torture and cruelty: a sledge or hurdle being usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn; and there being very few instances (and those accidental or by negligence) of any persons being embowelled or burned, till previously deprived of sensation by strangling."
This corroborates the conclusion of E. S. S. W., that the woman he describes was strangled at the stake to which her neck was bound.
I wish to suggest to any of your legal or other well-informed correspondents, who will have the kindness to take a little trouble for the benefit of your general readers, that an instructive and interesting communication might be made by noting down the periods at which the various more revolting punishments under the English law were repealed, or fell into disuse. For instance, when torture, such as the rack, was last applied; when embowelling alive and quartering ceased to be practised; and whose was the last head that fell under the axe's bloody stroke. A word also on the use of the pillory, ducking-stool, stocks, &c. would interest. Any illustrations of the modification of our penal code would throw valuable light on the philosophy and improvement of the national character. And I believe it would appear that the Reformation gradually swept away the black horrors of the torture-room; that the butchery of the headsman's block ceased at the close of the civil contest which settled the line of regal succession; and that hanging, which is the proper death of the cur, is now reserved for those only who place themselves out of the pale of humanity by striking at human life.
Ecclesfield.
E. S. S. W. (Vol. ii., p. 6.) will find a case of burning in Dodsley's Annual Register, 1769, p. 117.: a Susannah Lott was burned for the murder of her husband at Canterbury, Benjamin Buss, her paramour, being hanged about fifteen minutes before she was burned.
FOLK LORE
Death-bed Mystery.—In conversation with an aged widow,—as devout and sensible as she is unlettered,—I yesterday learned a death-bed mystery which appeared new to me, and which (if not more commonly known than I take it to be) you may perhaps think worthy of a place in "Notes and Queries," to serve as a minor satellite to some more luminous communication, in reply to B. H. at Vol. i., p. 315. My informant's "religio" (as she appears to have derived it by tradition from her mother, and as confirmed by her own experience in the case of a father, a husband, several children, and others), is to the effect that a considerable interval invariably elapses between the first semblance of death, and what she considers to be the departure of the soul.
About five minutes after the time when death, to all outward appearance, has taken place, "the last breath," as she describes, may be seen to issue with a vapour, or "steam," out of the mouth of the departed.
The statement reminds me of Webster's argument, in his Display of supposed Witchcraft, chap. xvi., where, writing of the bleeding of corpses in presence of their murderers, he observes:
"If we physically consider the union of the soul with the body by the mediation of the spirit, then we cannot rationally conceive that the soul doth utterly forsake that union, until by putrefaction, tending to an absolute mutation, it is forced to bid farewell to its beloved tabernacle; for its not operating ad extra to our senses, doth not necessarily infer its total absence. And it may be, that there is more in that of Abel's blood crying unto the Lord from the ground, in a physical sense than is commonly conceived," &c.
Sir Kenelm Digby (I think I remember) has also made some curious remarks on this subject, in his observations on the Religio Medici of Sir T. Brown.
Easter Eggs.-The custom of dyeing eggs at Easter (alluded to, Vol. i., pp. 244. and 397.) prevails in different parts of Cumberland, and is observed in this city probably more specially than in any other part of England. On Easter Monday and Tuesday the inhabitants assemble in certain adjacent meadows, the children all provided with stores of hard-boiled eggs, coloured or ornamented in various ways,—some being dyed an even colour with logwood, cochineal, &c.; others stained (often in a rather elegant manner) by being boiled in shreds of parti-coloured ribbons; and others, again, covered with gilding. These they tumble about upon the grass until they break, when they finish off by eating them. These they call pace-eggs, being no doubt a corruption for pasche.
This custom is mentioned by Brande as existing among the modern Greeks; but I believe it will be found more or less in almost all parts of Christendom.
I observed when in Syria during Easter quantities of eggs similarly dyed; but it did not occur to me at the time to inquire whether the practice was connected with the season, and whether it was not confined to the native Christians.
Information upon this point, and also upon the general origin of this ancient custom, would be interesting.
Carlisle, June 3. 1850.
May Marriages (Vol. i., p. 467.).—This superstition is one of those which have descended to Christianity from Pagan observances, and which the people have adopted without knowing the cause, or being able to assign a reason. Carmelli tells us that it still prevailed in Italy in 1750.2 It was evidently of long standing in Ovid's time as it had passed then into a proverb among the people; nearly two centuries afterwards Plutarch (Quæst. Rom. 86.) puts the question: Διὰ τί τοῖ Μαίου μηνὸς οὐκ ἄγονται γυναῖκας, which he makes a vain endeavour to answer satisfactorily. He assigns three reasons: first, because May being between April and June, and April being consecrated to Venus, and June to Juno, those deities held propitious to marriage were not to be slighted.
Storia di Vari Costumi, t. ii. p. 221.