Rebecca Smith was about 44 years old. She moved to Westbury in Wiltshire with her husband, Philip, whom she married on the 5th of May 1831 and would give birth to eleven children by him.

She was described as “undernourished and in poor health, living in abject poverty and almost illiterate”. Her husband, Phillip, was an alcoholic who seldom worked and frittered away the £100 that her father left her. It seems that she thought that ending the children’s lives by murder was a less cruel fate than death by slow starvation. Of these children, only one would survive, a daughter. Two died of natural causes, by no means uncommon at this time. She ultimately confessed to murdering the other seven with a rodent poison called “Blue” and Richard with arsenic.

Richard Smith was born on the 16th of May 1849 at Westbury. The crime came to light when neighbours became suspicious of Rebecca telling them that Richard was “wasting away” when he appeared to be healthy. She had asked a girl called Caroline Mackay to purchase arsenic and Richard then died suddenly on the 12th of June. The police investigated the death and discovered arsenic in his remains. Rebecca was then arrested and charged with murder.

She was tried for the murder of Richard at Devizes before Mr. Justice Cresswell on Tuesday the 7th of August. The jury made a recommendation to mercy. However, in the condemned cell she confessed to the chaplain of Devizes Gaol that she had murdered seven of her other children.

A contemporary account described her demeanor as she awaited death:
“Her conduct was most becoming. Mild and contented in her manner and deportment, it might be thought that she was totally incapable of the unnatural crime of which she was convicted. Free from guile or hypocrisy, she at once unhesitatingly confessed her crime, and acknowledged the justice of the punishment that awaited her, and frequently expressed a hope that others would take warning by her fate. At the same time, she was extremely ignorant, and betrayed a want of any deep feeling.” This account was syndicated and published in a number of newspapers.

From early on the morning of execution the streets leading to the gaol were thronged with people. At noon on Thursday the 23rd August 1849, she was hanged by William Calcraft before a large crowd outside the New Prison in Devizes, Wiltshire. The drawing shows how Rebecca was pinioned, Calcraft apparently tying the rope back on itself rather than to the beam, as was done at Newgate. Note the planks laid across the trap doors which would remain standard practice until abolition.

Although it was normal for judges to recommend a reprieve for a woman who had killed a new born after 1849 it was not until the passing of Infanticide Act of 1922 that permitted juries to find a verdict of infanticide rather than murder. This was further enhanced by the Infanticide Act of 1938 which made the killing of a baby within the first year of life by its mother, a non capital offence. This finally gave legal recognition to post-partum depression being a genuine mental illness that mothers can suffer from.