Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Geoffrey Abbott Page B
Authors: Geoffrey Abbott
Tags: History
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course, Amelia Dyer repeatedly changing her name and address. Women who responded to the advertisement usually handed over a parcel of clothes, ten pounds in cash, a considerable sum in those days, and the baby – which she never saw again.
When her house was searched by the police, no less than three hundredweight (336 lb) of children’s clothes were found, together with a large number of pawn tickets for baby clothes.
In May 1896 Amelia appeared in court charged with murdering a four-month-old baby girl named Doris Marmon and a boy, Harry Simmons. Her plea, that she was insane, was not accepted, the jury taking only five minutes to find her guilty, and she was sentenced to death. Confident of a reprieve, doubtless because of her age – she was 57 – she spent her time in the condemned cell praying and writing poems, one of which survives:
By nature, Lord, I know with grief,
I am a poor fallen leaf Shrivelled and dry, near unto death
Driven with sin, as with a breath.
But if by Grace I am made new,
Washed in the blood of Jesus, too,
Like to a lily, I shall stand
Spotless and pure at His right hand.
And not content with the hypocritical tone of the verse, she had the appalling gall to sign it ‘Mother’.
In accordance with the regulations, which stipulated that executions should take place at 8 a.m. on the first day after the intervention of three Sundays from the day on which the sentence was passed – in this case 10 June 1896 – Amelia herself was taken into care, James Billington, the public executioner, a muscular ex-coalminer, having temporarily adopted her. He escorted her up the steps of the scaffold behind the high walls of Newgate Prison and there guided her on to the trapdoors, where he hooded her. The prison bell had already been tolling for the past fifteen minutes and would continue to do so for the same length of time after the execution had taken place. Crowds had gathered outside, waiting to see the regulatory black flag which would be raised on the prison’s flagpole at the moment the trapdoors opened, and also, within the next few minutes, to read the Certificate of Death which had to be displayed near the principal entrance to the prison. They did not have long to wait, for Billington, never one to linger, and no doubt recalling the manner in which Amelia Dyer had strangled her helpless charges, positioned his version of a tape, the noose, around her neck and swiftly operated the drop – sending the cold-blooded killer plummeting into the depths of the pit.
Whether Amelia’s spirit departed with her, though, is another matter, it being rumoured that her ghost haunted the chief warder’s office for some years following her execution.
Dyer, Mary (USA)
In England members of the Society of Friends, founded by George Fox (1624–1691), were unpopular with the populace because they opposed the Presbyterian system in force at the time. As a result of his unceasing and public protests, Fox himself spent some time in prisons in Lancaster, Nottingham and Scarborough. It was hardly to be wondered, therefore, that some Quakers, as they became known, sailed to the New World as colonists in order to spread their beliefs.
Their activities were far from welcome, many of them being persecuted and harshly punished, in particular by the Puritans in Massachusetts. One of the Quakers was Mary Dyer who, together with two male colleagues, was sentenced to be hanged for returning after being earlier driven out of the colony. On 27 October 1659 they were escorted under armed guard to Boston Common. On attempting to address the large crowd which had assembled, army drummers drowned out their voices – interestingly enough, the same tactics which were used over a hundred years later in France when the Revolutionaries guillotined their king.
The method of the trio’s execution was identical to that in use at the time at Tyburn, London. After her companions had been executed, Mary, having been blindfolded, was
When her house was searched by the police, no less than three hundredweight (336 lb) of children’s clothes were found, together with a large number of pawn tickets for baby clothes.
In May 1896 Amelia appeared in court charged with murdering a four-month-old baby girl named Doris Marmon and a boy, Harry Simmons. Her plea, that she was insane, was not accepted, the jury taking only five minutes to find her guilty, and she was sentenced to death. Confident of a reprieve, doubtless because of her age – she was 57 – she spent her time in the condemned cell praying and writing poems, one of which survives:
By nature, Lord, I know with grief,
I am a poor fallen leaf Shrivelled and dry, near unto death
Driven with sin, as with a breath.
But if by Grace I am made new,
Washed in the blood of Jesus, too,
Like to a lily, I shall stand
Spotless and pure at His right hand.
And not content with the hypocritical tone of the verse, she had the appalling gall to sign it ‘Mother’.
In accordance with the regulations, which stipulated that executions should take place at 8 a.m. on the first day after the intervention of three Sundays from the day on which the sentence was passed – in this case 10 June 1896 – Amelia herself was taken into care, James Billington, the public executioner, a muscular ex-coalminer, having temporarily adopted her. He escorted her up the steps of the scaffold behind the high walls of Newgate Prison and there guided her on to the trapdoors, where he hooded her. The prison bell had already been tolling for the past fifteen minutes and would continue to do so for the same length of time after the execution had taken place. Crowds had gathered outside, waiting to see the regulatory black flag which would be raised on the prison’s flagpole at the moment the trapdoors opened, and also, within the next few minutes, to read the Certificate of Death which had to be displayed near the principal entrance to the prison. They did not have long to wait, for Billington, never one to linger, and no doubt recalling the manner in which Amelia Dyer had strangled her helpless charges, positioned his version of a tape, the noose, around her neck and swiftly operated the drop – sending the cold-blooded killer plummeting into the depths of the pit.
Whether Amelia’s spirit departed with her, though, is another matter, it being rumoured that her ghost haunted the chief warder’s office for some years following her execution.
Dyer, Mary (USA)
In England members of the Society of Friends, founded by George Fox (1624–1691), were unpopular with the populace because they opposed the Presbyterian system in force at the time. As a result of his unceasing and public protests, Fox himself spent some time in prisons in Lancaster, Nottingham and Scarborough. It was hardly to be wondered, therefore, that some Quakers, as they became known, sailed to the New World as colonists in order to spread their beliefs.
Their activities were far from welcome, many of them being persecuted and harshly punished, in particular by the Puritans in Massachusetts. One of the Quakers was Mary Dyer who, together with two male colleagues, was sentenced to be hanged for returning after being earlier driven out of the colony. On 27 October 1659 they were escorted under armed guard to Boston Common. On attempting to address the large crowd which had assembled, army drummers drowned out their voices – interestingly enough, the same tactics which were used over a hundred years later in France when the Revolutionaries guillotined their king.
The method of the trio’s execution was identical to that in use at the time at Tyburn, London. After her companions had been executed, Mary, having been blindfolded, was
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