Letters from the Dead and Dead Letters, Part I: Letters from the Condemned, 1719

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Hanging offenses in England  in the 18^th century reached considerably far down into common crime.   The practice of printing a broadside detailing the crime with the prisoner’s lament below was also a common practice—it fueled public introspection/fear about keeping the laws of the King, provided them an entertainment (as the hangings were public), and helped to sustain a minor industry of grubby little Grub Street presses that produced such things. Very early on in my bookselling career I sold a collection of upwards of 500 of these broadsides—I remember clearly that young boy(s(!) were hanged for the theft of handkerchiefs,  men hanged for the theft of a goat, a chambermaid for stealing some tableware; people were hanged for house breaking, “threatening”, shooting a stag, fraud, damaging public buildings, and the like.  Under James I in 1603 there were 50 crimes with punishments of death; by 1783 there were 200. As James Briggs (et al) wrote in Crime and Punishment in England , an Introductory History, “the death penalty was a leading feature of penal thinking”. 

Crimes against code, the basic public sensibility, and common discussion were also punishable by death.  Homosexuality was one offense in this category—in 1769 William Blackstone’s foundation work on English law  (Commentary…., chapter 15, Book IV, pp 205-217) described homosexuality as the “crime  that could not be named”, and both active and “passive” partners to such a crime were eligible for hanging.  I wonder about the statistics for crimes like this, and also about the number of Lesbians who were hanged for their love.

 Adultery was another crime for which one could swing, and the broadside that I’ve reproduced here details just one such criminal.  It is the hanging confession of Mary  Baker , who was convicted  of defrauding “several” men of money, and also of the sin of multiple marriages, and adultery.  The case was quickly heard and the sentence quickly delivered

Mary was interviewed and she allowed that she had taken two husbands; but the legal representative convinced her to tell the whole story, as she would be soon be judged by god.  This was sooner than she thought, evidently, because she was convicted on these two admitted counts (though she was suspected of many more).  Convicted and sentenced, and sentenced to death.  It was after she received the death warrant that she confessed to more than the original two.  As the broadside states: “She seemed to entertain some serious Thoughts, but withal discover'd a great deal of Uneasiness in her Mind, which visibly enereas'd, after the dead Warrant was come, and she found she was in it”.  Finding yourself in a death warrant would increase your uneasiness, I’m sure. 

I’ve got no idea why Mary would go into such detail; perhaps it  was a natural reaction, trying to rescue the soul by confession; maybe she was enticed by the legals, somehow (threat against her, threat against family, a more “pleasant” (i.e. less painful, immediate) death at the hands of the hangman.  I don’t know. ) But this is the list of the men she married, or didn’t marry, outlined in her confession. 

 She starts with a general appeal to her readers:

“GOOD People give good head to what I Confess, for by Subtile Inven-
tion, alyis GOD's Laws I have transgressed: for by Falsehood and
cunning I have betrayed several Young Man, alias I Tremble for to declare
my wretched Life, which was as follows:

I seemed to be a Woman of a great Fortune, and forged Deeds of an Estate, and showed it where ever I came, by which I betrayed twenty three Men, which now is to my great Shame, Their Names are as follows:

[And making a list of these names, we have:]

David John's a Farmer living in Wales,
Robert Gard'ner, a plugh-man of that Country,
John Bird in Wapping,near Flece,
Harry Dicks of Shadwel-Dock, from whom I ran away with Sixty  Guineas
Peter Downs, living near Pell-Mell, from whom I took Forty Pound
William Brown living in the Stranda Baker from whom I took near a hundred Pound,
and after Thomas Harrison, a Farmer in Essex, who Clothed me in Coastly Apparel, and Ralf Rogers, from him I took his Rings and Plate, he living in East-Smithfield
William Davis who lives near Clerkenwell
Thomas Young, a Grasier in Northamptoun Shire
Daniel Frazier in the same Shire, from them two I took three hundred Pound
James Barns the Maltner, living near Canterbury, whom I ruined,
Peter Hob a Carner,from whom I took twenty Pound,
Quaker called John Trueman, living in Tower-Hill I took fifty Guineas
Abraham Johnston, I got a Hundred Poud
George Strange a Goldsmith near Rederiff,
Petter Lang, a Shoemaker, I got Forty Pound from each just
John Fox another Baker, and after a young Squire living in Oxford, which makes in all three and Twenty.

I don’t know anything about Mrs. Baker.  It does seem as though she was out and up to not-much-good, an defrauded a bunch of guys.  Seems that she met a very stiff end for what harm she actually caused.  Then again, when kids were hanged for plucking two hankies from a gent's pocket, her crimes seem large in the redded eyes of the Bloody Code.  

Comments

[Jeff]

It's enough to break your heart, pickpockets or even Mary. I dare say many of those men knew what they were getting into, or what they were paying for. I wonder how they felt having their names posted, and I wonder how many were true liaisons? If I were condemned so unjustly to death, I might be inclined to name a few disagreeable acquaintances just to know they'd have trouble after I was gone. Slightly related: I'm just finishing "Try to Remember: psychiatry's clash over meaning, memory, and mind" by Paul McHugh, which gives a history of the recovered memory fiasco of the 80s and 90s and then gets better looking in some detail at the fundamental conflicts in psychiatry (basically the deductive Freudian approach vs. an inductive scientific approach). But Oh! the details of the witch hunts that ended up sounding so much like the Salem witch trials are enough to make you scream.

[John Ptak]

I have big doubts that the confession was real--I guess you could check out those names, one could, and figure if any of them existed in the places they were supposed to be. I can't bring myself to think about the kids--the steps up to the gallows may have been too high for them... The recovered memory stuff continues to be very spooky, not too much removed from past life regression ripoffs, astrology, palmistry, stick-poking, sand-floating, and whatever else you;d like to throw in, real or not. Terrible business, I agree, not too far from the internet artisans selling H1N1 Super Duper Virus ALuminum Hat Protectors.