Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Geoffrey Abbott

forthcoming, if indeed she was responsible in any way for them. They had no effect on the jury’s deliberations, the verdict being one of guilty.
    The inevitable petitions were submitted to the Arizona state governor, Eva even claiming to be insane in order to be granted a reprieve, but to no avail. In gaol she was reported as being full of bravado, one journalist quoting her as saying that she was going to die as she had lived, and that people loved a good sport but hated a bad loser.
    On 21 February 1930 Eva stood on the scaffold, hooded and bound. The executioner positioned the noose around her neck and operated the drop. The trapdoors opened, the body dropped, but then the rope swung back up again – empty. Witnesses saw Eva’s torso sprawled in the pit, her hooded head lying some distance away. And as her heart had continued beating for some little time, copiously flowing blood was very much in evidence.
    Eva had been given too long a drop, due regard not having been given to her physical condition, for subsequent examination revealed that the debacle had been caused by her having a flabby neck. Had prior checks such as those advocated by Marwood and further improved by a successor, James Berry, been in force, a shorter drop would have resulted in a ‘normal’ execution. However, the severance of her head would have been so rapid that Eva would have suffered for only an infinitesimal length of time. Bearing that fact in mind, it is ironic to note that mainly due to that catastrophe, the Arizona authorities decided to dispatch victims by the gas chamber instead – a method in which victims usually attempt to hold their breath for as long as possible, and so suffer visibly for a number of seconds before and while inhaling the toxic fumes.

Inviting friends into one’s cell while awaiting execution seemed to be the norm in some American prisons in the 1930s, for Eva held a veritable soirée, it being reported in the gossip columns of the more popular papers that ‘she was gracious as a society woman entertaining at a tea, the conversation positively sparkling with the repartee’.
    Durgan, Bridget (USA)
    Eva Dugan, whose tragic end is described above, slew her employer and fell to her death from the scaffold; Bridget murdered her employer’s wife and met her death by rising!
    Bridget was a servant in the New Jersey residence of a Dr William Coriell and his wife Ellen. Among the possible reasons which later emerged as to why she should have repeatedly and savagely stabbed the doctor’s wife to death and then attempted to burn the house down, was that she had been reprimanded for not doing her job satisfactorily, or that she had been secretly in love with the doctor. What credence was given at the trial to the fact that she suffered from epilepsy, and whether this might have had any bearing on the crime, is not known, but the jury did not hesitate to bring in a verdict of guilty; nor did the judge hesitate to sentence her to death by hanging, his words being greeted with applause by those in the public gallery, their cheers being drowned by the condemned woman’s hysterical screams, which could be heard by passers-by outside the building.
    Media attention was widespread and intensive, it being reported that hundreds of applications were received from those who wanted to be present at her execution, and on the actual day, 30 August 1867, scenes resembling those at Tyburn, London, two centuries earlier, were very evident. The area surrounding the gaol was packed with spectators, some clambering on roofs and clinging on to ledges, hoping to get a glimpse of the condemned woman as she was led out of the prison block. Inside the yard mayhem reigned, for a further thousand or more had managed to gain admittance, cheering, pushing, even fighting to get a better viewpoint; a mob totally out of control of the officers who were attempting to preserve some sort of order.
    The execution mechanism was of unusual design in that,