From Knapp and Baldwin’s Newgate Calendar
Unmarried young women of the lower classes who became pregnant were often unable to find work if they were known to have a child, and so this crime – the murder or more often the abandonment of a fatherless new-born baby – was heartbreakingly common in the eighteenth century. (The entry is given in full.)
HANNAH WEBLEY,
EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF HER BASTARD
CHILD
At the same assizes, August 1794, came on the trial of Hannah Webley, who was charged with the murder of her male bastard child, at Hinton, in the parish of Berkeley.
Hannah Chair, a girl of sixteen years of age, deposed that the prisoner was a single woman; that she was taken ill on the 1st and 2d of June; she slept with the prisoner, who was a servant with Mr James Pick, and was awaked in the night by the noise and crying of a child: it was dark; she could only observe that the prisoner was leaning over the bed-side; she heard her curse the child; after that she heard two blows (after which the child did not cry), and the prisoner said, ‘Damn thee, thou bist1 done for now.’ She then took her petticoat off the bed, and went down stairs: the witness now went and told her master. The prisoner returned in a few minutes after she had called her master, and brought the child back again: it was between two and three in the morning; she was afraid to speak to her: the prisoner had provided no child-bed linen.
Mr Pick, the master, corroborated what Hannah Chair said; he also deposed that the prisoner never acknowledged that she was with child: he saw the child, which lived till noon the same day; he had it baptized.
John Cornelius Hends, a man-midwife, said that he was sent for to Mr Pick’s on the 2d of June, to look at a child, which was alive, and a male: a woman had it on her lap; he observed a depression or fracture of the skull. There was only one fracture, which appeared to have been done with great violence; there was a discharge of blood from the right ear. He said the fracture might possibly have been occasioned by the child’s falling on the floor, but he never knew an instance of such a thing happening on delivery.
The prisoner, in her defence, made the following declaration: –
‘I was taken very ill, was used to have the colic: my pains came on – I walked backward and forward – the child fell down with great violence: I said “Lord have mercy upon me, I am afraid thou art done for.” I went down, thinking to take the child to my intended husband at Newport.’
The jury, after a little consultation, brought in the prisoner guilty.
The following sentence was then passed by Mr Justice Heath: –
‘Hannah Webley, you have been convicted of a most cruel and unnatural murder. So far was you led on by the fear of a discovery of your shame, as first to curse and then deprive an helpless infant of life: by this wicked act your own life is forfeited to the injured laws of your country. You must now suffer a severe punishment for your crime, even the loss of life: and I hope the punishment, dreadful as it is, will be an instructive lesson to the female part of the creation, and convince them that those who swerve from the paths of virtue will be tempted to the commission of the worst of crimes. I also hope that your punishment will be a lesson to those young men who artfully endeavour to seduce young women from the paths of virtue, and that your sad end will be a monitor to them, and especially to him, who, though at present unknown, except to yourself, inveigled you into the paths of infamy and disgrace. It remains with me to pass that terrible sentence of the law, which is, that on Saturday next you be taken to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till you are dead, and that your body be delivered to be dissected, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!’
Applications were made to his lordship for a respite for this unhappy female; but his lordship declared that he was so much convinced of her guilt that she must suffer, and her execution took place accordingly.