Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 7, 2010
Today’s Burnt Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Joseph Strutt, in his Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants of England (1775), described the execution of Catherine Hayes at Tyburn in 1726 – which didn’t quite go as planned:
“The letter of the law to this very day, I believe, condemns a woman, who doth murder her husband, to be burnt alive… In the case of Catherine Hayes (who, for the murder of her husband, some few years ago, was adjudged to suffer death at the stake), the intention was first to strangle her; but as they used at that time to draw a rope which was fastened round the culprit’s neck, and came through a staple of the stake, but at the very moment that the fire was put to the wood which was set around, the flames sometimes reached the offenders before they were quite strangled – just so it happened to her; for the fire taking quick hold of the wood, and the wind being brisk, blew the smoke and blaze so full in the faces of the executioners, who were pulling at the rope, that they were obliged to let go their hold before they had quite strangled her; so that, as I have been informed by some there present, she suffered much torment before she died. But now they are first hanged at the stake until they are quite dead, and then the fire is kindled round, and the body burnt to ashes.”
Culled from: The History Of Torture
