The Crime of Petty Treason In these male-dominated times, men were considered more valuable in law than women. So if a woman killed her husband, she was guilty not merely of murder but the much more serious crime of Petty Treason. Petty Treason was defined by the Treason Act of 1351 and encompassed the killing … Read more
Sarah Malcolm was an educated, middle class young woman who met her death at the hands of the “common hangman”. She was just 22 when she was executed for the murders of three women during a robbery at the home of one of them. Sarah originated from Durham and had been born in 1711 to a good … Read more
Unlike the majority of cases featured in these pages, our subject was a street thief and pickpocket rather than a murderer. In Georgian England, such street criminals were seen by the middle and ruling classes as little better than vermin, so their crimes attracted the death sentence—although in around 73% of cases at the time, … Read more
Introduction One of the most common capital crimes for which women were actually executed in the 18th century was the “murder of a bastard,” as it was called, or infanticide as we would call it now. Looking carefully through the records, most cases seem to be genuine murders rather than stillbirths or deaths from natural … Read more
Mary Blandy was 31 when she was hanged in 1752 for the murder of her father by poisoning. She was unusual in the annals of female criminals of the time – she was middle class and well educated. Her father, Francis Blandy, was a prosperous lawyer and the Town Clerk of Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire at … Read more
