Courtroom Ghosts

Amelia Dyer A note at the beginning to say that most of the illustrations I have included in this post come from the  The Illustrated Police News , a tabloid which ran from the 1860s through to the 1930s and is a goldmine of weird and wonderful cases, complete with equally bizarre illustrations. The British Library have some examples  here  and you can find even more on Google Images.  While women who killed their own new-born  infants increasingly generated sympathy among the public and within the judicial system, there was one class of baby-killers who most certainly did not. As I mentioned last week, the introduction of the 1834 Poor Law left women who were pregnant outside of marriage in an even more dire situation than had been the case previously. If a woman wanted to continue working and stay out of the workhouse, she would need to make alternative arrangements for the care of her child. And this is where the baby farmers come in. On 16 th  May 1...

Last week I talked briefly about the ways in which attitudes towards the crimes and execution of women changed over time. The crime of infanticide, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the crime of a mother killing her child when it is less than one year old, is a useful lens for looking at those changes. This post is based in part on my MA dissertation, which looked at the options available to unmarried mothers in the 17th and 18th centuries.  In 1624, Parliament passed a piece of legislation called the 'Act to prevent the Destrouing and Murthering of Bastards'. The full text reads Whereas many lewd Women that have been delivered of Bastard Children, to avoid their Shame, and to escape Punishment, do secretly bury or conceal the Death of their Children, and after, if the Child be found dead, the said Women do alledge, that the said Child was born dead; whereas it falleth out sometimes (although hardly it is to be proved) that the said Child or Children were murthered by the sai...

John Ellis Born in Rochdale 1874, John Ellis would try his hand at a variety of occupations, including newsagent and hairdresser, before becoming an assistant executioner in 1901 and eventually Chief Executioner in 1907. Hanging a total of 203 people, Ellis' career spanned twenty-three years and only ended with his resignation in  early 1924. That summer, he was himself in the dock on a charge of attempted suicide, after shooting himself in the jaw. Appearing in court that August, he apparently 'looked very ill, and had two or three days' growth of beard on his face [...] During the proceedings he leaned wearily on the edge of the dock'. Mr Ellis was bound over for twelve months, meaning that he agreed not to repeat the attempt and that if he did, he would be brought back before the court on the original charge. Promising to give up the drinking habit that he claimed had precipitated the suicide attempt, Ellis left court and walked into obscurity.  The Scots...