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On this day in 1786, Elizabeth Wilson was hanged in Chester, Pennsylvania, for the murder of her infant twins.
"One of the melodramas of the early American republic," our Elizabeth (sometimes referred to in records as "Harriot Wilson") was a Chester County farmer's daughter who was impregnated by a passing sailor. When the gentleman refused to make an honest woman of her after she gave birth to bastards, the children disappeared—later found dead in the woods by a hunter.
The fallen woman denied killing them directly, but "admitted that she had left the children by the side of the road for any passing person with humanity to pick up."Elizabeth’s brother William Wilson vigorously undertook on this basis to secure her a pardon at the hands of the Commonwealth’s executive authority, the Supreme Executive Council — then under the leadership of no less august a character than Benjamin Franklin.
And he found a sympathetic audience. Council Vice-President Charles Biddle* “firmly believed her innocent, for to me it appeared highly improbable that a mother, after suckling her children for six weeks, could murder them … there was a large majority would have been for pardoning her.”
Instead of an outright commutation, it granted a stay of execution for William Wilson to investigate further, which he did to no successful effect.For William Wilson’s suit on behalf of his sister had succeeded in earning, on the eve of the Jan. 3 hanging, a second respite on Biddle’s certain anticipation that clemency would be forthcoming. Ill himself, William took the stay of execution from Biddle’s own hands and raced through a fearful storm on the 15-mile ride from Philadelphia to Chester … but
did not arrive until twenty-three minutes after the solemn scene was closed. When he came with the respite in his hand, and saw his sister irrecoverably gone, beheld her motionless, and sunk in death, who can paint the mournful scene?
On this day in 1786, Elizabeth Wilson was hanged in Chester, Pennsylvania, for the murder of her infant twins.
"One of the melodramas of the early American republic," our Elizabeth (sometimes referred to in records as "Harriot Wilson") was a Chester County farmer's daughter who was impregnated by a passing sailor. When the gentleman refused to make an honest woman of her after she gave birth to bastards, the children disappeared—later found dead in the woods by a hunter.
The fallen woman denied killing them directly, but "admitted that she had left the children by the side of the road for any passing person with humanity to pick up."Elizabeth’s brother William Wilson vigorously undertook on this basis to secure her a pardon at the hands of the Commonwealth’s executive authority, the Supreme Executive Council — then under the leadership of no less august a character than Benjamin Franklin.
And he found a sympathetic audience. Council Vice-President Charles Biddle* “firmly believed her innocent, for to me it appeared highly improbable that a mother, after suckling her children for six weeks, could murder them … there was a large majority would have been for pardoning her.”
Instead of an outright commutation, it granted a stay of execution for William Wilson to investigate further, which he did to no successful effect.For William Wilson’s suit on behalf of his sister had succeeded in earning, on the eve of the Jan. 3 hanging, a second respite on Biddle’s certain anticipation that clemency would be forthcoming. Ill himself, William took the stay of execution from Biddle’s own hands and raced through a fearful storm on the 15-mile ride from Philadelphia to Chester … but
did not arrive until twenty-three minutes after the solemn scene was closed. When he came with the respite in his hand, and saw his sister irrecoverably gone, beheld her motionless, and sunk in death, who can paint the mournful scene?
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Ann Hurle - hanged for forgery.
Ann Hurle was one of twelve people to be hanged for forgery in 1804. The law took a very severe view of this offence at the time and few forgers were reprieved .Ann was an educated young woman of twenty two, living in London, who had devised quite an elaborate plan to defraud the Bank of England of £500, which was a very large sum in those days and would now be the equivalent of over a quarter of a million pounds. The crime was perpetrated on Saturday the 10th of December 1803 when she met Stock Broker, George Francillon, at the Bank Coffee House
She was charged with the forgery and he with being an accessory to the crime, although it seems that his case was dropped as there is no record of a trial for him. The case was obviously unusual and of some public interest as it was reported in The Times of Wednesday, the 21st of December 1803. Ann was committed for trial at the next Sessions of the Old Bailey in London.
These Sessions opened on the 11th of January 1804, before the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Sir Archibald Knight. Ann was charged with four offences. The first was “feloniously, falsely, making, forging, and counterfeiting, on the 12th of December, a certain instrument, or letter of attorney, with the name Benjamin Allin thereunto subscribed, purporting to have been signed, sealed, and delivered, by one Benjamin Allin, of Greenwich, in the county of Kent, gentleman, a proprietor of certain annuities and stock transferable at the Bank of England, called Three per Cent. Reduced Annuities, to sell, assign, transfer, and convey, the sum of five hundred pounds of the said transferable annuities, the property of the said Benjamin Allin, to her, the said Ann Hurle , with intent to defraud the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” The second count was, “For uttering and publishing as true a like forged deed, knowing it to be forged, with the like intention.” There were two further counts on the indictment against her, being the same offences against Benjamin Allin. Mr. Garrow led for the prosecution and Mr. Knapp for the defence.
George Francillon and Benjamin Allin were the principal prosecution witnesses. Mr. Francillon related the above story to the court and Mr. Allin examined the power of attorney document and declared that the signature was not his and that he had never signed such a document. Thomas Bateman, Peter Verney and Thomas Noulden also testified against her. Ann’s aunt, Jane, told the court that Ann had not visited Mr. Allin’s house recently and neither had Messrs. Verney and Noulden, the two purported witnesses to his signature on the document.
The witnesses testimonies were cross examined at this time but Ann offered no actual defence leaving this to her counsel. She was thus convicted and remanded to Tuesday, the 17th of January 1804 for sentence. Four men and three women were bought before the court to received their death sentences that Tuesday, with the Recorder of London making particular reference to the gravity of Ann’s crime and the fact that she preyed upon “an infirm and imbecile old man”. He opined that only death was sufficient punishment for such a crime. He then proceeded to pass sentence on each prisoner. When Ann’s turn came, she was asked in the normal way if their was any reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced against her and replied that she thought she was “with child” (pregnant). She did not make this claim with any apparent confidence so no further enquiry into its validity was made. Sarah Fisher, another of the condemned women, also claimed to be pregnant but did so much more forcibly, thus requiring the court to empanel a Jury of Matrons, who examined her and declared that she wasn’t. It is feasible that both women could have been in the early stages of pregnancy, although neither was “quick with child”. Only if the prisoner was obviously pregnant was her execution respited until after she had given birth. In most cases she was reprieved altogether and her punishment commuted to transportation. “Pleading the belly” as it was called was a frequently used tactic at this time by women desperate to avoid the noose.
The Recorder of London reviewed the cases of those condemned to death and made a recommendation in each one. He then presented his recommendations in person to the Privy Council, which was chaired by King George III. In Ann’s case, there could be no recommendation for a reprieve. She was therefore scheduled for execution, along with Methuselah Spalding who had been convicted of sodomy at the previous Sessions held on the 30th of November 1803. It is interesting to note that Spalding was the only one of five condemned men at that Sessions not to be reprieved and that Ann was the only one out of the six men and three women at the January 1804 Sessions not to get a reprieve. Non-murderers normally had a period of two to three weeks before execution at this time and Ann’s execution was set for Wednesday, the 8th of February..
For reasons that are unclear, the normal “New Drop” style gallows at Newgate was not to be used for these two hangings. A simple gallows was erected at the top of the Old Bailey, near to St. Sepulchre's Church.
On the morning of execution, Ann and Spalding were brought from their cells and pinioned in the Press Room. They were then taken out into the yard and loaded into a horse drawn cart covered in a black cloth which emerged from the prison at about 8.10 a.m. for the short ride to the gallows. The cart was backed under the beam and the two prisoners were allowed to pray with Ordinary and make their last statements. Ann was dressed in a mourning gown and wore a white cap. She made no address to the multitude who had come to see her die but prayed fervently with the Ordinary for five minutes or so. William Brunskill, the hangman for London & Middlesex, placed the rope around her neck and when she had finished praying, pulled the white cap down over her face. The cart was now drawn away leaving them both suspended. It was recorded that Ann let out a scream as the cart moved and that she struggled hard for two to three minutes before becoming still, her hands were observed to move repeatedly towards her throat and her un-pinioned legs kicked and padded the air. No doubt the eyes of the crowd were riveted on her poor writhing form. After hanging for the customary hour, they were taken down and returned inside Newgate from where they could be claimed by relatives for burial.
Ann Hurle was one of twelve people to be hanged for forgery in 1804. The law took a very severe view of this offence at the time and few forgers were reprieved .Ann was an educated young woman of twenty two, living in London, who had devised quite an elaborate plan to defraud the Bank of England of £500, which was a very large sum in those days and would now be the equivalent of over a quarter of a million pounds. The crime was perpetrated on Saturday the 10th of December 1803 when she met Stock Broker, George Francillon, at the Bank Coffee House
She was charged with the forgery and he with being an accessory to the crime, although it seems that his case was dropped as there is no record of a trial for him. The case was obviously unusual and of some public interest as it was reported in The Times of Wednesday, the 21st of December 1803. Ann was committed for trial at the next Sessions of the Old Bailey in London.
These Sessions opened on the 11th of January 1804, before the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Sir Archibald Knight. Ann was charged with four offences. The first was “feloniously, falsely, making, forging, and counterfeiting, on the 12th of December, a certain instrument, or letter of attorney, with the name Benjamin Allin thereunto subscribed, purporting to have been signed, sealed, and delivered, by one Benjamin Allin, of Greenwich, in the county of Kent, gentleman, a proprietor of certain annuities and stock transferable at the Bank of England, called Three per Cent. Reduced Annuities, to sell, assign, transfer, and convey, the sum of five hundred pounds of the said transferable annuities, the property of the said Benjamin Allin, to her, the said Ann Hurle , with intent to defraud the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” The second count was, “For uttering and publishing as true a like forged deed, knowing it to be forged, with the like intention.” There were two further counts on the indictment against her, being the same offences against Benjamin Allin. Mr. Garrow led for the prosecution and Mr. Knapp for the defence.
George Francillon and Benjamin Allin were the principal prosecution witnesses. Mr. Francillon related the above story to the court and Mr. Allin examined the power of attorney document and declared that the signature was not his and that he had never signed such a document. Thomas Bateman, Peter Verney and Thomas Noulden also testified against her. Ann’s aunt, Jane, told the court that Ann had not visited Mr. Allin’s house recently and neither had Messrs. Verney and Noulden, the two purported witnesses to his signature on the document.
The witnesses testimonies were cross examined at this time but Ann offered no actual defence leaving this to her counsel. She was thus convicted and remanded to Tuesday, the 17th of January 1804 for sentence. Four men and three women were bought before the court to received their death sentences that Tuesday, with the Recorder of London making particular reference to the gravity of Ann’s crime and the fact that she preyed upon “an infirm and imbecile old man”. He opined that only death was sufficient punishment for such a crime. He then proceeded to pass sentence on each prisoner. When Ann’s turn came, she was asked in the normal way if their was any reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced against her and replied that she thought she was “with child” (pregnant). She did not make this claim with any apparent confidence so no further enquiry into its validity was made. Sarah Fisher, another of the condemned women, also claimed to be pregnant but did so much more forcibly, thus requiring the court to empanel a Jury of Matrons, who examined her and declared that she wasn’t. It is feasible that both women could have been in the early stages of pregnancy, although neither was “quick with child”. Only if the prisoner was obviously pregnant was her execution respited until after she had given birth. In most cases she was reprieved altogether and her punishment commuted to transportation. “Pleading the belly” as it was called was a frequently used tactic at this time by women desperate to avoid the noose.
The Recorder of London reviewed the cases of those condemned to death and made a recommendation in each one. He then presented his recommendations in person to the Privy Council, which was chaired by King George III. In Ann’s case, there could be no recommendation for a reprieve. She was therefore scheduled for execution, along with Methuselah Spalding who had been convicted of sodomy at the previous Sessions held on the 30th of November 1803. It is interesting to note that Spalding was the only one of five condemned men at that Sessions not to be reprieved and that Ann was the only one out of the six men and three women at the January 1804 Sessions not to get a reprieve. Non-murderers normally had a period of two to three weeks before execution at this time and Ann’s execution was set for Wednesday, the 8th of February..
For reasons that are unclear, the normal “New Drop” style gallows at Newgate was not to be used for these two hangings. A simple gallows was erected at the top of the Old Bailey, near to St. Sepulchre's Church.
On the morning of execution, Ann and Spalding were brought from their cells and pinioned in the Press Room. They were then taken out into the yard and loaded into a horse drawn cart covered in a black cloth which emerged from the prison at about 8.10 a.m. for the short ride to the gallows. The cart was backed under the beam and the two prisoners were allowed to pray with Ordinary and make their last statements. Ann was dressed in a mourning gown and wore a white cap. She made no address to the multitude who had come to see her die but prayed fervently with the Ordinary for five minutes or so. William Brunskill, the hangman for London & Middlesex, placed the rope around her neck and when she had finished praying, pulled the white cap down over her face. The cart was now drawn away leaving them both suspended. It was recorded that Ann let out a scream as the cart moved and that she struggled hard for two to three minutes before becoming still, her hands were observed to move repeatedly towards her throat and her un-pinioned legs kicked and padded the air. No doubt the eyes of the crowd were riveted on her poor writhing form. After hanging for the customary hour, they were taken down and returned inside Newgate from where they could be claimed by relatives for burial.
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Germans shoot a French couple during the Franco-Prussian War. 1871
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The lover of Hamnaz who has been hanged from the gallows bites off her nose when she kisses him f is a painting by Mughal India court of Akbar
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Martha Browning - for murder and theft.
On Monday, the 5th of January 1846 at 8 o’clock Martha Browning expiated her crime on the scaffold in the Old Bailey, for the murder of 60 year old Elizabeth Mundell in the early hours of the 1st of December 1845.
22 year old petite maid-servant, Martha had lodged with Elizabeth Mundell for some three weeks at her house at 1 Providence Place in Brewers Green in Westminster. In the early morning of Monday the 1st of December, she had strangled Elizabeth with a rope in her bed for the purpose of stealing a five pound note from her. She then arranged Elizabeth’s body to make it look like a suicide, before going to visit Ann Gaze who was Elizabeth’s daughter, and telling her that her mother was ill. Ann went with Martha to her mother’s house where she discovered the body lying on its back on some boxes in the bedroom. Ann was able to identify the bank note because it was actually a fake/toy note drawn on the “Bank of Elegance” not the Bank of England and it had grease marks on it. Martha did not realise this and assumed that it was real and showed it to Ann.
Martha was arrested by Inspector Francis Partridge on Wednesday the 3rd of December having gone to Gardener’s Lane Police Station with Edward Gaze, who was Elizabeth’s son-in-law. She came to trial at the Old Bailey before Mr. Justice Patteson on the 17th of December. Ann Gaze and her husband Edward were the principal witnesses for the prosecution. Another resident of Providence Place, Mary Cheshire, testified that “about seven o'clock on the Monday morning I was awoke by a cry of "Murder!"—it was Mrs. Mundell's voice—I heard a second cry of "Murder!" in the same voice, I then got out of bed; and as I was making way to my door, I heard Mrs. Mundell cry out, in a loud tone of voice, "What are you doing? what are you doing?" Martha was still in the room and had locked the door from the inside. She told Mary that nothing was wrong. Martha made a detailed confession to the crime in Newgate.
Martha had chosen a long black dress for her hanging as a sign of mourning. According to the London Weekly Chronicle, “the culprit was a fine young woman, of prepossessing figure and rather pleasing features, her stature rather under the ordinary height.” Reportedly “she showed great presence of mind and ascended the gallows with a firm and steady step, and without any assistance”. On the drop she told the Rev. Mr. Davis, the Ordinary, “I deserve it”. Her final words were “Lord God have mercy on my soul”. William Calcraft withdrew the bolt and she became still after two or three minutes. The body was cut down at 9 o’clock and a cast made of her head. She was buried within Newgate that evening. At least two broadsides were printed for her execution.
Under new regulations issued by Sir James Graham, the Secretary of State, newspaper reporters were excluded from the interior of Newgate and were only permitted to witness the execution from the Old Bailey.
Immediately after taking Martha’s body down Calcraft departed from Newgate in a cab to go Horsemonger Lane County Gaol to hang Samuel Quennell for the murder of Daniel Fitzgerald, a shipmate, by shooting him in Kennington Lane. The execution took place on the gatehouse roof precisely at 10 o’clock. Apparently “The culprit behaved himself becomingly and ascended the scaffold without assistance”
On Monday, the 5th of January 1846 at 8 o’clock Martha Browning expiated her crime on the scaffold in the Old Bailey, for the murder of 60 year old Elizabeth Mundell in the early hours of the 1st of December 1845.
22 year old petite maid-servant, Martha had lodged with Elizabeth Mundell for some three weeks at her house at 1 Providence Place in Brewers Green in Westminster. In the early morning of Monday the 1st of December, she had strangled Elizabeth with a rope in her bed for the purpose of stealing a five pound note from her. She then arranged Elizabeth’s body to make it look like a suicide, before going to visit Ann Gaze who was Elizabeth’s daughter, and telling her that her mother was ill. Ann went with Martha to her mother’s house where she discovered the body lying on its back on some boxes in the bedroom. Ann was able to identify the bank note because it was actually a fake/toy note drawn on the “Bank of Elegance” not the Bank of England and it had grease marks on it. Martha did not realise this and assumed that it was real and showed it to Ann.
Martha was arrested by Inspector Francis Partridge on Wednesday the 3rd of December having gone to Gardener’s Lane Police Station with Edward Gaze, who was Elizabeth’s son-in-law. She came to trial at the Old Bailey before Mr. Justice Patteson on the 17th of December. Ann Gaze and her husband Edward were the principal witnesses for the prosecution. Another resident of Providence Place, Mary Cheshire, testified that “about seven o'clock on the Monday morning I was awoke by a cry of "Murder!"—it was Mrs. Mundell's voice—I heard a second cry of "Murder!" in the same voice, I then got out of bed; and as I was making way to my door, I heard Mrs. Mundell cry out, in a loud tone of voice, "What are you doing? what are you doing?" Martha was still in the room and had locked the door from the inside. She told Mary that nothing was wrong. Martha made a detailed confession to the crime in Newgate.
Martha had chosen a long black dress for her hanging as a sign of mourning. According to the London Weekly Chronicle, “the culprit was a fine young woman, of prepossessing figure and rather pleasing features, her stature rather under the ordinary height.” Reportedly “she showed great presence of mind and ascended the gallows with a firm and steady step, and without any assistance”. On the drop she told the Rev. Mr. Davis, the Ordinary, “I deserve it”. Her final words were “Lord God have mercy on my soul”. William Calcraft withdrew the bolt and she became still after two or three minutes. The body was cut down at 9 o’clock and a cast made of her head. She was buried within Newgate that evening. At least two broadsides were printed for her execution.
Under new regulations issued by Sir James Graham, the Secretary of State, newspaper reporters were excluded from the interior of Newgate and were only permitted to witness the execution from the Old Bailey.
Immediately after taking Martha’s body down Calcraft departed from Newgate in a cab to go Horsemonger Lane County Gaol to hang Samuel Quennell for the murder of Daniel Fitzgerald, a shipmate, by shooting him in Kennington Lane. The execution took place on the gatehouse roof precisely at 10 o’clock. Apparently “The culprit behaved himself becomingly and ascended the scaffold without assistance”
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Witchcraft executions.
England and Wales.
Writing in 2018, some 400 years later, it is hard to take some of the accusations made against, usually defenceless, poor, elderly women, seriously. I do not therefore propose to offer any judgement about the validity or fairness of the trials or as to why certain areas of the country, particularly Essex and East Anglia had so many more of them than other areas. People in the 16th and 17th centuries did believe in witchcraft and this belief certainly continued into the 19th century. Many thought that Mary Bateman, the “Yorkshire Witch” would be able to save herself from the gallows at York in 1809. The people of Leeds had not wished to report her criminal activities to the authorities in case she put a spell on them. I photographed Mary’s skeleton in 2007, which was on display at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds.
Witchcraft was certainly a convenient scapegoat for unexplained illness and sudden deaths amongst people and livestock at the time. Doctors of the day did not have the knowledge to ascertain the causes of death as they would now.
It is estimated that less than 500 people were executed in England for witchcraft between 1566 and 1684 and that just six were put to death between 1066 and 1560. Of these six, only one is confirmed as having been burned at the stake, this being Margery Jordemaine on the 27th of October 1441. Margaret was known as the "The Witch of Eye" and was convicted of treason for using sorcery to attempt to cause the death of Henry VI. She was executed at London’s Smithfield. Three weeks later Roger Bolingbroke was executed for the same offence, by hanging, drawing and quartering at Tyburn, these being the normal punishments for treason.
Henry VIII introduced a Witchcraft Act in 1542 which defined witchcraft as felony rather than a religious offence. It was to be tried by the normal assize courts and was punishable, like all other normal felonies of the time, with a maximum penalty of death by hanging. Burning at the stake was not permitted by this Act, although it was under Scottish law and was widely used on the continent.
The Act stated: "It shall be felony to practise, or cause to be practised conjuration, witchcraft, enchantment or sorcery, to get money; or to consume any person in his body, members or goods; or to provoke any person to unlawful love; or for the despight of Christ, or lucre of money, to pull down any Cross; or to declare where goods stolen be."
Henry’s statute was abolished just five years later by his son Edward VI and it is unclear whether anybody was actually executed in that period. Elizabeth I passed a new Witchcraft Act in 1563 which came into force on June the 1st of that year. This Act specified a year’s imprisonment plus pillorying on four occasions during the year for a first offence with death by hanging for a second offence unless the person was accused of murder by witchcraft, in which case the death sentence was mandatory.
Probably the first person to suffer under this Act was 64 year old Agnes Waterhouse from the village of Hatfield Peverel, near Chelmsford in Essex, who confessed to murder by witchcraft. Agnes was tried at Chelmsford Assizes on the 26th of July 1566, along with her eighteen year old daughter Joan and one Elizabeth Francis. Agnes confessed to the murder of her husband by bewitching, Joan was acquitted and Elizabeth convicted, being sentenced to one year in prison with pillorying. She was duly released but arrested and charged with witchcraft again in 1579. As it was her second conviction she was hanged.
There were 22 witchcraft trials at Chelmsford in 1579. One of the accused was Elizabeth Francis (see above) who confessed to being a witch and witching Alice Poole. Ellen Smith (or Smyth) from Malden was convicted of bewitching a four year old child to death and was also hanged. The third woman to die was Alice Nokes of Lambourne who had been convicted of bewitching to death Elizabeth Barsett (or Barfoot). Richard and Joan Prestmary from Great Dunmow were convicted and condemned but it seems that their sentences were not carried out.
The trial of the St. Osyth witches was held at Chelmsford in 1582. St. Osyth is a village near Brightlingsea, Essex and fourteen women from the village were charged with witchcraft, of whom ten were charged with the capital felony of bewitching to death.
Of these fourteen, two were not indicted, two were remanded to prison to face other charges, four were acquitted, four were convicted, sentenced to death but later reprieved. Just two of the defendants were to hang, they were Ursula Kempe and Elizabeth Bennet. They were duly executed at Chelmsford and their bodies returned to St. Osyth for burial. In 1921 two female skeletons were discovered there who had had metal nails driven into their elbow and knee joints. This was believed at the time to be a way of preventing witches rising from the grave. Whether these were the skeletons of Ursula Kempe and Elizabeth Bennet is open to question.
In the year 1589 thirty one women and six men were tried for witchcraft at Chelmsford assizes.
A triple hanging took place at Primrose Hill, Rainsford Lane, Chelmsford when Joan Coney, Joan Upney (also given as Uptney) and Joan Prentice were executed a mere two hours after sentence. Joan Coney from Stisted was convicted of one murder by witching plus three instances where her victim became seriously ill. Joan Upney from Dagenham was convicted of the murders through bewitching of Joan Harwood and Alice Foster.
Joan Prentice from Sible Hedingham confessed to consorting the devil, in the form of a ferret, which she had commanded to nip Sara Glascock who later died.
A woodcut picture exists showing the three women hanging side by side from a simple gallows surrounded by cats or ferrets. It is unclear whether they were turned off ladders or the back of a cart.
An amazing 290 or so witchcraft trials took place in Essex between 1560 and 1675. Some resulted in executions, some of the accused died in gaol whilst others received prison sentences or were acquitted.
In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England on the death of Elizabeth I, thus uniting the kingdoms of England and Scotland. King James was very interested witchcraft and had taken part in witch trials in Scotland. His statute of 1604 strengthened the law in England and made hanging mandatory for those convicted of witchcraft where the victim was only injured rather than killed. Strangely he did not introduce burning at the stake as was the Scottish practice.
The largest recorded mass execution for witchcraft in English history took place on the 21st of August 1650, the 14 women and a man accused of being a wizard, were publicly hanged on gallows erected on Newcastle’s Town Moor.
The "Witch-Finder General".
Matthew Hopkins was the self appointed "Witch-Finder General" who lived at Manningtree in Essex and in the two year period from 1645 to 1647 set out to eradicate witchcraft in East Anglia with great zeal. He was assisted in this by John Stearne (or Sterne) and Mary Phillips. Estimates vary as to the number of witches that Hopkins and Stearne discovered, from between 200 and 300. He was certainly the most active witch finder in England. It is thought that he was born around 1820 and was the son of a church minister. He was educated and had some grasp of the law.
Hopkins started out in his home town of Manningtree, accusing an elderly spinster called Elizabeth Clarke of witchcraft.
Thirty people, including those from Manningtree were arraigned for witchcraft at the 1645 Essex Assizes at Chelmsford. Fourteen were to hang at Chelmsford on Friday the 25th of July. They were a Mrs. Wayt, Jane Brigs, Jane Browne, Rachel Flower, Mary Greene, Mary Foster, Frances Jones, Mary Rhodes, Anne West, Mother Forman, Mother Clarke, Mother Miller, Mother Benefield and Mother Goodwin. The other five women were to be returned to Manningtree for execution and the hanging is thought to have taken place on the South Street Green there on the 29th of July 1645. In fact only four were to hang because Margaret Moone collapsed on the way to the gallows and is reputed to have cried out that the “Devil had often told her she should never be hanged” with her dying breath.
Hopkins brought another group of witches to trial at the Suffolk Assizes at Bury St. Edmunds the following month resulting in the executions of sixteen women and two men. His campaign continued into Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.
Obtaining confessions by torture was illegal in England at this time so Hopkins and Stearne had to resort to other methods that were at least semi-legal and did not involve blood-shed. One was watching. The accused was striped naked, examined for “witch marks”, such as a third nipple, usually by Mary Phillips and then dressed in a loose shift and made to sit on a stool in the middle of the room watched round the clock to see if their familiars or imps would come and suckle blood from them. When the victim dozed off their watchers would immediately rouse them and walk them around the room till they were fully awake again. This watching could go on for several days and the victims became absolutely exhausted from sleep deprivation and would often confess. Another method used was swimming. The accused was trussed up with the left thumb tied to the right big toe and right thumb to the left big toe and then lowered into water. If the person floated they were guilty because the Devil had saved them, whereas if they sank they were innocent. The small problem of their drowning didn’t seem to bother Hopkins because he knew that the person would go straight to Heaven. Another method used in interrogation was pricking of the body to try and find any area of skin that did not cause the person to cry out. This area was where the familiars sucked their blood from, according to Hopkins.
Hopkins earned 20 shillings (£1) per witch, so he had a very lucrative business for the time. Hopkins published a pamphlet titled the “The Discovery of Witches” in 1647, shortly before his death. He is thought to have died of tuberculosis in 1647.
Although the persecution of witches was most widespread in East Anglia it occurred in other parts of the country as well. One of the most famous cases being that of the Pendle Witches in Lancashire. A group of thirteen people living in and around the Forest of Pendle were accused of the murder by witching of ten people. Twelve were tried at the Lancashire Assizes at Lancaster Castle between the 17th and 19th of August 1612. Of these, ten were to be hanged on Lancaster Moor on the 20th of August. They were: Elizabeth Device, her son James and daughter Alison (also Alizon), Anne Whittle, (aka Chattox), Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Jane Bulcock, her son John Bulcock and Isobel Robey. Elizabeth Southerns who was also known as Old Demdike and was considered originally to be the ring leader of the group, died in prison. A thirteenth member of the group, Jennet Preston was tried and hanged at York and Margaret Pearson was convicted and given a one year prison sentence. Much of the evidence against them was given by nine year old Jennet Device who was later to be tried and imprisoned for witchcraft. The Clerk of the Court, Thomas Potts recorded the proceedings and later published a book on the case, titled “The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.”
Witch-mania also spread to other parts of the country. In Kent Joan Cariden, Jane Holt and Joan Williford were hanged at Faversham on the 29th of September 1645.
A further seven women were to hang for witchcraft at Penenden Heath near Maidstone in Kent on the 30th of July 1652. They were Mildred Wright, Anne Wilson, Mary Reade, Anne Ashby, Anne Martyn, Mary Browne and Elizabeth Hynes.
The number of trials and executions was beginning to decline after the Restoration of the Monarchy.
It is probable but it cannot be confirmed that Alice Molland was the last person to hang for witchcraft in England, at Heavitree near Exeter in 1684. The last confirmed executions were those of the “Bideford Witches” also at Heavitree on the 25th of August 1682. They were three old women called Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles. They had been convicted of bringing illness upon their neighbours.
However people were still charged with the offence. Jane Wenham of Walkern in Herefordshire became the last person to be convicted of witchcraft in England in 1712. She was condemned to death but reprieved. Jane Clerk together with her son and daughter were charged with witchcraft at Leicester in 1717 but the case against them was thrown out by the judge.
In 1736 there was a new Witchcraft Act that read as follows:
"An Act to repeal the Statute made in the First Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the Fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments, and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the Ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment, or Conjuration.”
This Act, which came into force on the 24th of June 1736, was aimed at those who pretended to be able to procure spirits, in other words, charlatans such as some fortune tellers and mediums. The punishment, upon conviction was one year in prison plus quarterly exposure in the pillory for one hour on each occasion.
England and Wales.
Writing in 2018, some 400 years later, it is hard to take some of the accusations made against, usually defenceless, poor, elderly women, seriously. I do not therefore propose to offer any judgement about the validity or fairness of the trials or as to why certain areas of the country, particularly Essex and East Anglia had so many more of them than other areas. People in the 16th and 17th centuries did believe in witchcraft and this belief certainly continued into the 19th century. Many thought that Mary Bateman, the “Yorkshire Witch” would be able to save herself from the gallows at York in 1809. The people of Leeds had not wished to report her criminal activities to the authorities in case she put a spell on them. I photographed Mary’s skeleton in 2007, which was on display at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds.
Witchcraft was certainly a convenient scapegoat for unexplained illness and sudden deaths amongst people and livestock at the time. Doctors of the day did not have the knowledge to ascertain the causes of death as they would now.
It is estimated that less than 500 people were executed in England for witchcraft between 1566 and 1684 and that just six were put to death between 1066 and 1560. Of these six, only one is confirmed as having been burned at the stake, this being Margery Jordemaine on the 27th of October 1441. Margaret was known as the "The Witch of Eye" and was convicted of treason for using sorcery to attempt to cause the death of Henry VI. She was executed at London’s Smithfield. Three weeks later Roger Bolingbroke was executed for the same offence, by hanging, drawing and quartering at Tyburn, these being the normal punishments for treason.
Henry VIII introduced a Witchcraft Act in 1542 which defined witchcraft as felony rather than a religious offence. It was to be tried by the normal assize courts and was punishable, like all other normal felonies of the time, with a maximum penalty of death by hanging. Burning at the stake was not permitted by this Act, although it was under Scottish law and was widely used on the continent.
The Act stated: "It shall be felony to practise, or cause to be practised conjuration, witchcraft, enchantment or sorcery, to get money; or to consume any person in his body, members or goods; or to provoke any person to unlawful love; or for the despight of Christ, or lucre of money, to pull down any Cross; or to declare where goods stolen be."
Henry’s statute was abolished just five years later by his son Edward VI and it is unclear whether anybody was actually executed in that period. Elizabeth I passed a new Witchcraft Act in 1563 which came into force on June the 1st of that year. This Act specified a year’s imprisonment plus pillorying on four occasions during the year for a first offence with death by hanging for a second offence unless the person was accused of murder by witchcraft, in which case the death sentence was mandatory.
Probably the first person to suffer under this Act was 64 year old Agnes Waterhouse from the village of Hatfield Peverel, near Chelmsford in Essex, who confessed to murder by witchcraft. Agnes was tried at Chelmsford Assizes on the 26th of July 1566, along with her eighteen year old daughter Joan and one Elizabeth Francis. Agnes confessed to the murder of her husband by bewitching, Joan was acquitted and Elizabeth convicted, being sentenced to one year in prison with pillorying. She was duly released but arrested and charged with witchcraft again in 1579. As it was her second conviction she was hanged.
There were 22 witchcraft trials at Chelmsford in 1579. One of the accused was Elizabeth Francis (see above) who confessed to being a witch and witching Alice Poole. Ellen Smith (or Smyth) from Malden was convicted of bewitching a four year old child to death and was also hanged. The third woman to die was Alice Nokes of Lambourne who had been convicted of bewitching to death Elizabeth Barsett (or Barfoot). Richard and Joan Prestmary from Great Dunmow were convicted and condemned but it seems that their sentences were not carried out.
The trial of the St. Osyth witches was held at Chelmsford in 1582. St. Osyth is a village near Brightlingsea, Essex and fourteen women from the village were charged with witchcraft, of whom ten were charged with the capital felony of bewitching to death.
Of these fourteen, two were not indicted, two were remanded to prison to face other charges, four were acquitted, four were convicted, sentenced to death but later reprieved. Just two of the defendants were to hang, they were Ursula Kempe and Elizabeth Bennet. They were duly executed at Chelmsford and their bodies returned to St. Osyth for burial. In 1921 two female skeletons were discovered there who had had metal nails driven into their elbow and knee joints. This was believed at the time to be a way of preventing witches rising from the grave. Whether these were the skeletons of Ursula Kempe and Elizabeth Bennet is open to question.
In the year 1589 thirty one women and six men were tried for witchcraft at Chelmsford assizes.
A triple hanging took place at Primrose Hill, Rainsford Lane, Chelmsford when Joan Coney, Joan Upney (also given as Uptney) and Joan Prentice were executed a mere two hours after sentence. Joan Coney from Stisted was convicted of one murder by witching plus three instances where her victim became seriously ill. Joan Upney from Dagenham was convicted of the murders through bewitching of Joan Harwood and Alice Foster.
Joan Prentice from Sible Hedingham confessed to consorting the devil, in the form of a ferret, which she had commanded to nip Sara Glascock who later died.
A woodcut picture exists showing the three women hanging side by side from a simple gallows surrounded by cats or ferrets. It is unclear whether they were turned off ladders or the back of a cart.
An amazing 290 or so witchcraft trials took place in Essex between 1560 and 1675. Some resulted in executions, some of the accused died in gaol whilst others received prison sentences or were acquitted.
In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England on the death of Elizabeth I, thus uniting the kingdoms of England and Scotland. King James was very interested witchcraft and had taken part in witch trials in Scotland. His statute of 1604 strengthened the law in England and made hanging mandatory for those convicted of witchcraft where the victim was only injured rather than killed. Strangely he did not introduce burning at the stake as was the Scottish practice.
The largest recorded mass execution for witchcraft in English history took place on the 21st of August 1650, the 14 women and a man accused of being a wizard, were publicly hanged on gallows erected on Newcastle’s Town Moor.
The "Witch-Finder General".
Matthew Hopkins was the self appointed "Witch-Finder General" who lived at Manningtree in Essex and in the two year period from 1645 to 1647 set out to eradicate witchcraft in East Anglia with great zeal. He was assisted in this by John Stearne (or Sterne) and Mary Phillips. Estimates vary as to the number of witches that Hopkins and Stearne discovered, from between 200 and 300. He was certainly the most active witch finder in England. It is thought that he was born around 1820 and was the son of a church minister. He was educated and had some grasp of the law.
Hopkins started out in his home town of Manningtree, accusing an elderly spinster called Elizabeth Clarke of witchcraft.
Thirty people, including those from Manningtree were arraigned for witchcraft at the 1645 Essex Assizes at Chelmsford. Fourteen were to hang at Chelmsford on Friday the 25th of July. They were a Mrs. Wayt, Jane Brigs, Jane Browne, Rachel Flower, Mary Greene, Mary Foster, Frances Jones, Mary Rhodes, Anne West, Mother Forman, Mother Clarke, Mother Miller, Mother Benefield and Mother Goodwin. The other five women were to be returned to Manningtree for execution and the hanging is thought to have taken place on the South Street Green there on the 29th of July 1645. In fact only four were to hang because Margaret Moone collapsed on the way to the gallows and is reputed to have cried out that the “Devil had often told her she should never be hanged” with her dying breath.
Hopkins brought another group of witches to trial at the Suffolk Assizes at Bury St. Edmunds the following month resulting in the executions of sixteen women and two men. His campaign continued into Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.
Obtaining confessions by torture was illegal in England at this time so Hopkins and Stearne had to resort to other methods that were at least semi-legal and did not involve blood-shed. One was watching. The accused was striped naked, examined for “witch marks”, such as a third nipple, usually by Mary Phillips and then dressed in a loose shift and made to sit on a stool in the middle of the room watched round the clock to see if their familiars or imps would come and suckle blood from them. When the victim dozed off their watchers would immediately rouse them and walk them around the room till they were fully awake again. This watching could go on for several days and the victims became absolutely exhausted from sleep deprivation and would often confess. Another method used was swimming. The accused was trussed up with the left thumb tied to the right big toe and right thumb to the left big toe and then lowered into water. If the person floated they were guilty because the Devil had saved them, whereas if they sank they were innocent. The small problem of their drowning didn’t seem to bother Hopkins because he knew that the person would go straight to Heaven. Another method used in interrogation was pricking of the body to try and find any area of skin that did not cause the person to cry out. This area was where the familiars sucked their blood from, according to Hopkins.
Hopkins earned 20 shillings (£1) per witch, so he had a very lucrative business for the time. Hopkins published a pamphlet titled the “The Discovery of Witches” in 1647, shortly before his death. He is thought to have died of tuberculosis in 1647.
Although the persecution of witches was most widespread in East Anglia it occurred in other parts of the country as well. One of the most famous cases being that of the Pendle Witches in Lancashire. A group of thirteen people living in and around the Forest of Pendle were accused of the murder by witching of ten people. Twelve were tried at the Lancashire Assizes at Lancaster Castle between the 17th and 19th of August 1612. Of these, ten were to be hanged on Lancaster Moor on the 20th of August. They were: Elizabeth Device, her son James and daughter Alison (also Alizon), Anne Whittle, (aka Chattox), Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Jane Bulcock, her son John Bulcock and Isobel Robey. Elizabeth Southerns who was also known as Old Demdike and was considered originally to be the ring leader of the group, died in prison. A thirteenth member of the group, Jennet Preston was tried and hanged at York and Margaret Pearson was convicted and given a one year prison sentence. Much of the evidence against them was given by nine year old Jennet Device who was later to be tried and imprisoned for witchcraft. The Clerk of the Court, Thomas Potts recorded the proceedings and later published a book on the case, titled “The Wonderful Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster.”
Witch-mania also spread to other parts of the country. In Kent Joan Cariden, Jane Holt and Joan Williford were hanged at Faversham on the 29th of September 1645.
A further seven women were to hang for witchcraft at Penenden Heath near Maidstone in Kent on the 30th of July 1652. They were Mildred Wright, Anne Wilson, Mary Reade, Anne Ashby, Anne Martyn, Mary Browne and Elizabeth Hynes.
The number of trials and executions was beginning to decline after the Restoration of the Monarchy.
It is probable but it cannot be confirmed that Alice Molland was the last person to hang for witchcraft in England, at Heavitree near Exeter in 1684. The last confirmed executions were those of the “Bideford Witches” also at Heavitree on the 25th of August 1682. They were three old women called Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles. They had been convicted of bringing illness upon their neighbours.
However people were still charged with the offence. Jane Wenham of Walkern in Herefordshire became the last person to be convicted of witchcraft in England in 1712. She was condemned to death but reprieved. Jane Clerk together with her son and daughter were charged with witchcraft at Leicester in 1717 but the case against them was thrown out by the judge.
In 1736 there was a new Witchcraft Act that read as follows:
"An Act to repeal the Statute made in the First Year of the Reign of King James the First, intituled, An Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with evil and wicked Spirits, except so much thereof as repeals an Act of the Fifth Year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Against Conjurations, Inchantments, and Witchcrafts, and to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of Scotland in the Ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, intituled, Anentis Witchcrafts, and for punishing such Persons as pretend to exercise or use any kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment, or Conjuration.”
This Act, which came into force on the 24th of June 1736, was aimed at those who pretended to be able to procure spirits, in other words, charlatans such as some fortune tellers and mediums. The punishment, upon conviction was one year in prison plus quarterly exposure in the pillory for one hour on each occasion.
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Disturbances during the hanging of a man and woman at the Waag in Amsterdam
Disturbances during the hanging of a man and woman at the Waag in Amsterdam, June 28, 1748, Execution before the Waag in Amsterdam, Friday, June 28, Ao. 1748 (title on object), Disturbances during the hanging of a man and woman (Piet van Dort and the lemon and dried plaice seller Mat van den Nieuwendijk), two participants in the Pachter riot, at the Waag in Amsterdam, June 28, 1748. The militia opens fire on the spectators., print, print maker: Simon Fokke, (mentioned on object), after own design by: Simon Fokke, (mentioned on object), publisher: Arend Fokke Simonsz., (mentioned on object), Amsterdam, 1777 - 1796, paper, etching, engraving, height, 160 mm × width, 192 mm. (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Disturbances during the hanging of a man and woman at the Waag in Amsterdam, June 28, 1748, Execution before the Waag in Amsterdam, Friday, June 28, Ao. 1748 (title on object), Disturbances during the hanging of a man and woman (Piet van Dort and the lemon and dried plaice seller Mat van den Nieuwendijk), two participants in the Pachter riot, at the Waag in Amsterdam, June 28, 1748. The militia opens fire on the spectators., print, print maker: Simon Fokke, (mentioned on object), after own design by: Simon Fokke, (mentioned on object), publisher: Arend Fokke Simonsz., (mentioned on object), Amsterdam, 1777 - 1796, paper, etching, engraving, height, 160 mm × width, 192 mm. (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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Covering Cattle Kate: Newspapers and the Watson-Averell Lynching
On Saturday, July 20, 1889, eleven months before Wyoming became a state, a woman and a man were hanged from a pine tree in a gulch in the central part of the territory, not far from the Sweetwater River. The woman and the man were homesteaders. The six men who lynched them were cattlemen.
News stories about the hanging ran in the Cheyenne and Laramie papers just a few days afterwards. But the news didn’t stop there. Similar stories ran in Denver, Omaha, Chicago and New York.
The stories had only a few details consistently right: A man and a woman were hanged near the Sweetwater River on July 20. Almost all the other “facts” printed in these versions—who the victims were, who the lynchers were, exactly where the hanging took place, and, especially, why it happened—were wrong. And that was the way the lynchers wanted it. They wanted word to get out, as a warning, and they never tried to hide their participation in the deed. But they were circumspect about their motives.
Over the next several weeks, two newspapers closer to the event—the Casper Weekly Mail, and, in Rawlins, Wyo. the Carbon County Journal—got most of the details correct. Their reporters did this by interviewing people who had seen at least part of what had happened, and by interviewing others who had known the victims personally.
But because of the early, bad information from the Cheyenne Daily Leader, only the wrong versions became well known. These versions went out over the news wires and were quickly picked up by papers around the nation. By the 1920s, writers looking back to the events already accepted those incorrect versions as fact. Historians writing in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, relied in turn on these 1920s accounts as well as the original, false versions from Cheyenne. The false facts, after a while, seemed truer than ever.
Finally, in the 1990s, when two amateur history writers published books on the subject, the real characters of the hanging victims and the more complicated motives of their murderers began to come clear. These writers went back to the 1889 stories in the Casper and Rawlins papers. And they were the first to go back to the records of exactly who owned exactly what land along the Sweetwater in the 1880s. Finally, they found something like the truth.
Two homesteaders
The facts, as far as we now can tell, are these:
Jim Averell, a former soldier, cook, surveyor and rancher, built and stocked a store in the spring of 1884 where the road from Rawlins to Buffalo, Wyoming Territory, crossed the Sweetwater River. This was just a few miles downstream from Independence Rock, also on the east-west route of the old Oregon Trail, the famed Emigrant Road. Casper did not exist yet. The Rawlins-to-Buffalo road was one of the main routes north from the Union Pacific Railroad to the Powder River Basin in northern Wyoming, then filling up with cattle.
The cattle business was booming. Averell’s location would have been a good place to serve both traveling and local customers. He filed a claim on a quarter section—160 acres—of land and dug an irrigation ditch. He was at various times postmaster—the post office was for a few years named Sweetwater, Wyoming Territory—a notary public and justice of the peace. His name was sometimes misspelled as “Averill” in contemporary accounts.
Ellen Watson, called Ella, ten years younger than Averell, joined him on the Sweetwater in the spring of 1886. She was from Kansas, where she had married at 18 and then divorced her abusive husband two years later. Averell probably met her in Rawlins. They filed that spring for a marriage license in Lander, but whether they actually got married is unclear.
By the summer of 1889 he had a store, a house, a stable, an icehouse and chicken coop on the property. These would have been low, small, dirt-roofed, rough log buildings. The store was also a saloon. Averell would have sold socks, cartridges, bacon, flour, coffee and whiskey. He also had a trout pond, 16 feet square.
Watson and Averell filed back-to-back, quarter-section land claims about two miles north up Horse Creek from where it joined the Sweetwater near Jim’s store. She had built one cabin—perhaps two—on that land, had fenced 60 acres of pasture and owned about 50 head of cattle by the summer of 1889. She also helped Jim run the store.
Six cattlemen
Tom Sun ranched at Devil’s Gate, about eight miles up the Sweetwater from Averell’s store. He was French-Canadian and probably came to Wyoming about the same time the railroad did, in the late 1860s. In 1883, he married a young Irishwoman named Mary Hellihan. By 1889 they had two children.
John Durbin and his brother Tom ranched up the Sweetwater from Sun. Their ranch was by far the largest on the Sweetwater. They also owned interests in meatpacking plants and in a Chicago cattle-marketing business.
Albert Bothwell first came to the Sweetwater valley in the mid-1880s, looking for mining, ranching and real estate opportunities. In 1885, he acquired the 76 Ranch, with its headquarters less than a mile from Averell’s store, but he did not start running cattle until the summer of 1888. He had a reputation for a bad temper.
That same summer, Bothwell and a group of investors formed a company and founded the “town” of Bothwell about a mile west of Watson’s cabins and offered lots for high prices. Brochures described a town with a store, blacksmith shop, post office and a newspaper, the Sweetwater Chief, and indicated the railroad would soon link the Sweetwater Valley to Casper.
Robert Conner ranched a few miles up Horse Creek from Watson’s and Averell’s homestead claims. He was originally from eastern Pennsylvania, where his stepfather had made a fortune in the coal business.
Robert Galbraith was a well-known master railroad mechanic from Rawlins and a member of the Territorial Legislature who visited the Sweetwater in July 1889 to buy a herd of cattle from Bothwell.
Ernie McLean was a cowboy who worked for John Durbin.
Cattle and land
For few years, in the early 1880s, some people made a lot of money in the cattle business in Wyoming. Soon, however, there were too many cattle. Many went unbranded, and cattle thieves—rustlers—took advantage of this confusion.
Then, with so many cattle coming to market, prices began to fall. Much of the range had been badly overgrazed. Then came one or two hot, dry summers and a winter so bad it’s still famous. Thousands of cattle died. Many ranchers quit. But prices stayed low, and the range was still overgrazed. Cattle theft was widespread, and the belief that rustlers were seldom or never convicted circulated even more widely, though at least one scholar who tested the claim against court records found it was exaggerated. In any case, these problems made business hard for all ranchers.
Nearly all the land still belonged to the government. To control the range where their cattle grazed, ranchers needed only to control the water. That is, it was necessary to own only small scraps of land with springs or creeks on them. But when people like Watson and Averell came along, fencing pastures for their small herds, digging irrigation ditches to water their gardens or building stores, it upset familiar ways of using the land. The owners of the large herds didn’t like it. Bothwell approached Watson two or three times about buying her land, but she refused every time. This would have angered him.
Averell was a surveyor, and familiar with land law. He and Watson formally questioned the legality of some of Durbin’s and Conner’s land claims. Then in February 1889, Averell wrote a letter to the Casper Weekly Mail warning people that the brand-new “town” of Bothwell was a scam: “just a geographical expression,” he put it, without a single house. Bothwell and his investors must have been infuriated. But Averell was essentially right. The only building in Bothwell, the Carbon County Journal noted a few years later, was “a shack” where its newspaper was published, the Sweetwater Chief. Bothwell and his partners needed customers to buy the expensive lots. The paper, of course, was there to advertise the town.
Twice each year, ranches got together to round up the cattle. In the spring, cowboys cut their ranches’ calves out from the rest and then branded them. In the fall, they separated the calves from their mothers and drove some to the railroad to ship to market. The spring roundup for the lower Sweetwater ended July 19, 1889, with a branding at Beulah Belle Lake, about eight miles west of Watson’s cabins on Horse Creek, on what’s now the Dumbell Ranch. Durbin, Sun and Bothwell, the bosses on that roundup, may have been talking for months about what to do about Averell and Watson.
The hanging
On Saturday morning, July 20, Durbin, Sun, Bothwell, Galbraith and McLean rode east toward Horse Creek. Sun was driving his buggy. The rest were on horseback. They stopped at the office of the Sweetwater Chief, where they found Conner talking with the newspaper editor. Then the six men rode to Watson’s ranch, where they tore down her fence, let her cattle out and threatened to kill her unless she got in the buggy. She got in.
They headed south toward Averell’s store but met him first, driving an empty wagon toward Casper for supplies. At gunpoint they forced him, too, into the buggy. To stay out of sight of the store, the cattlemen took a roundabout route to the Sweetwater River, and then headed west, upstream, for two miles. A friend of Averell’s named Frank Buchanan followed them at a safe distance.
Finally they left the river and headed up a gulch in the rocky hills south of Independence Rock. Buchanan got close enough to see Averell and Watson standing on a large rock under a limber pine tree. Two lariats had been slung over the biggest branch. A rope was around Averell’s neck. Watson was trying to keep McLean from getting the other rope around her neck, too.
Buchanan fired his revolver at the lynchers until he ran out of bullets. They fired back with rifles. Buchanan fled and rode as far as he could toward Casper, to the ranch of a man named Healy, who rode to Casper the next morning with the news. A man and a woman, he reported, had been hanged near the Sweetwater River. Buchanan had not stayed to watch them die, but his reports proved correct when a coroner’s jury found them Monday morning, still hanging, and cut them down.
All six lynchers were named in the first of two coroner’s inquests. Five of the lynchers were charged with the crime, and made bail by signing security bonds for each other. By the time a grand jury convened in October, one witness had died, and three others had left the territory. The case was dropped for lack of evidence.
The news reports
“Double Lynching,” ran the all-capitals headline in the Cheyenne Daily Sun the Tuesday after the crime. Averell, the newspaper reported, “kept a ‘hog’ ranch,” that is, a rural brothel. Watson, it added, “was a prostitute who lived with him and is the person who recently figured in the dispatches as Cattle Kate . . .”
A much longer story in the Cheyenne Daily Leader the same day charged Averell “and a virago who has been living with him as his wife” with cattle stealing. When the ranchers learned that her corral held 50 head of newly branded steers, the Leader reported, they decided they had to act. At night, 10 to 20 men snuck up on the cabin. Inside, Watson and Averell were playing cards and drinking whiskey.
The leader stationed a man with a rifle at each window and then led a rush on the door. “The sound of ‘Hands up!’ sounded above the crash of glass as the rifles were levelled at the strangely assorted pair of thieves,” the Daily Leader reported.
They were hanged, said the paper, from the limb of a big cottonwood tree by the riverbank. Averell supposedly whined and begged for his life. The woman stayed defiant, and “died with curses on her foul lips.”
“Cattle Kate”
Among all these inaccuracies and exaggerations, perhaps most interesting are the ones surrounding Watson’s name. The Sun confused her with a notorious and perhaps fictitious prostitute named Kate Maxwell, of the town of Bessemer, Wyo., west of Casper. Maxwell had figured in news stories earlier that year about the theft of money from a gambler.
Though the nickname “Cattle Kate” was used earlier about Maxwell, there is no evidence it was ever used about Watson in her lifetime. A close reading of the story in the Daily Leader shows that it uses no name for Watson at all. Nor does it call her a prostitute. (A “virago” is just a strong, loud woman.) And even though the other Cheyenne paper, the Sun, completely reversed its tone and gave a fairly factual account in a second story on July 24, the charge that she was a prostitute and the name “Cattle Kate” have stuck ever since.
Getting out the story
As long as there have been crimes, criminals have tried to avoid responsibility by making it look as though the victims deserved what happened to them. This seems to have been what the cattlemen were doing.
Word of the hanging, said the Daily Leader, came to Rawlins by “a special courier,”—a rider, that would mean. From Rawlins, the news was telegraphed to George Henderson, “who happened to be in the capital,” Cheyenne.
Henderson was foreman of the 71 Ranch on the Sweetwater, and a friend of Sun, Durbin and Bothwell. The courier was probably Ernie McLean, Durbin’s cowboy. Henderson was sympathetic with the lynchers and his boss years later wrote that Henderson was partly involved.
Durbin arrived in Rawlins the Sunday afternoon after the lynching and that evening took the train to Cheyenne. This would have put him in Cheyenne Monday morning, in time to work with Henderson to make sure the papers printed a version the cattlemen liked. The result, writes Daniel Meschter, the scholar who has looked most closely at these questions, was “a publicity campaign, for the management of the story from that point on was nothing less.”
The campaign was immediately successful. Thanks to the news wires, the Cheyenne papers’ version went national, with a story in the New York World the same day. Three weeks later, the National Police Gazette--the National Enquirer of its time—went much further. “A Blaspheming Border Beauty Barbarously Boosted Branchward,” ran its headline, with a full page of dramatic illustrations of the capture and the gruesome death.
News versus history
The Casper and Rawlins papers worked more slowly—and their versions seem to have made little headway beyond their more limited readerships. Their reporters talked to people who knew what happened. Very soon, these two papers were claiming that land disputes, not cattle theft, were what the lynching was about.
“[T]he whole affair grew out of land troubles,” Averell’s friend Buchanan told the Casper Weekly Mail in a story published a week after the lynching. “Averell had contested the land Conners was trying to hold. He had made Durbin some trouble on a final proof [the last step before a land claim on public land could become private property] and had kept Bothwell from fencing the entire Sweetwater Valley. Averell favored the settling up of these lands in small ranches. Bothwell wanted the whole country and said that rich men did not need to obey the laws . . .”
Meschter found that the land records largely support Buchanan’s claims here. As for Bothwell’s ambitions, in the next few years he absorbed Averell’s and Watson’s land claims and water ditches into his own ranch.
And as so often happens, the most lurid version of the story—the one with sex in it—had the most staying power over time. Banker John Clay, George Henderson’s boss on the 71, was an influential, well-connected man and a good writer. In the early 1920s, he wrote in his memoir My Life on the Range that Watson “known as ‘Cattle Kate’ … was a prostitute of the lowest type, and while Averill [sic] and a man called Buchanan were her intimates, she was common property of the cowboys for miles around . . . ”
And when longtime Casper newspaperman A.J. Mokler wrote his History of Natrona County in 1922, he wrote that it was Watson, not Averell, who ran a “hog ranch,” that she had taken the name of Kate Maxwell, and that she was known to her friends as “Cattle Kate.”
Later writers picked up that version. When University of Wyoming Professor T.A. Larson first published his History of Wyoming in 1965, he was careful to separate fact from allegation. “Ella Watson, who was known thereafter as Cattle Kate, was variously described as a prostitute and Averell’s paramour [girlfriend]. … It was said also that she accepted stolen cattle from cowboys in return for her favors.”
The War on Powder River, published in 1966, is a thorough, lively history of the so-called Johnson County War, when about 50 Wyoming ranchers and hired Texas gunmen invaded Johnson County in northern Wyoming in 1892, to kill rustlers. The Watson-Averell lynching enabled the later invasion, argues author Helena Huntington Smith. And she severely criticizes the Cheyenne papers. But even Smith writes, “Ella was a prostitute who accepted recompense for her favors in the form of stolen yearlings and may have gotten in deeper. That is the accusation against her.”
Watson may have been a prostitute. There’s no way to know for sure. But by the time she was hanged in 1889, all her recorded actions—taking up a homestead claim, protesting the illegal claims of her neighbors, buying a brand for her cattle, signing a political petition, applying for a marriage license—show her as a woman who wanted to own land and be secure, and who wasn’t shy about her ambitions. These character traits may have been what got her killed.
As Wyoming moved that year toward statehood, the lynching must have made its women nervous—must have made everyone nervous, for that matter. Here they were, living in the only territory or state that allowed women to vote. At the same time they were living in a territory where a woman only recently had been hanged from the branch of a tree. It’s a troubling pair of facts. The papers owed it to their readers to get the facts right the first time out. Historians owe it to their readers to correct earlier errors. It’s never too late to get things right.
https://archive.org/details/stories-of-the-century-tv-1954-s01e06-cattle-kate
On Saturday, July 20, 1889, eleven months before Wyoming became a state, a woman and a man were hanged from a pine tree in a gulch in the central part of the territory, not far from the Sweetwater River. The woman and the man were homesteaders. The six men who lynched them were cattlemen.
News stories about the hanging ran in the Cheyenne and Laramie papers just a few days afterwards. But the news didn’t stop there. Similar stories ran in Denver, Omaha, Chicago and New York.
The stories had only a few details consistently right: A man and a woman were hanged near the Sweetwater River on July 20. Almost all the other “facts” printed in these versions—who the victims were, who the lynchers were, exactly where the hanging took place, and, especially, why it happened—were wrong. And that was the way the lynchers wanted it. They wanted word to get out, as a warning, and they never tried to hide their participation in the deed. But they were circumspect about their motives.
Over the next several weeks, two newspapers closer to the event—the Casper Weekly Mail, and, in Rawlins, Wyo. the Carbon County Journal—got most of the details correct. Their reporters did this by interviewing people who had seen at least part of what had happened, and by interviewing others who had known the victims personally.
But because of the early, bad information from the Cheyenne Daily Leader, only the wrong versions became well known. These versions went out over the news wires and were quickly picked up by papers around the nation. By the 1920s, writers looking back to the events already accepted those incorrect versions as fact. Historians writing in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, relied in turn on these 1920s accounts as well as the original, false versions from Cheyenne. The false facts, after a while, seemed truer than ever.
Finally, in the 1990s, when two amateur history writers published books on the subject, the real characters of the hanging victims and the more complicated motives of their murderers began to come clear. These writers went back to the 1889 stories in the Casper and Rawlins papers. And they were the first to go back to the records of exactly who owned exactly what land along the Sweetwater in the 1880s. Finally, they found something like the truth.
Two homesteaders
The facts, as far as we now can tell, are these:
Jim Averell, a former soldier, cook, surveyor and rancher, built and stocked a store in the spring of 1884 where the road from Rawlins to Buffalo, Wyoming Territory, crossed the Sweetwater River. This was just a few miles downstream from Independence Rock, also on the east-west route of the old Oregon Trail, the famed Emigrant Road. Casper did not exist yet. The Rawlins-to-Buffalo road was one of the main routes north from the Union Pacific Railroad to the Powder River Basin in northern Wyoming, then filling up with cattle.
The cattle business was booming. Averell’s location would have been a good place to serve both traveling and local customers. He filed a claim on a quarter section—160 acres—of land and dug an irrigation ditch. He was at various times postmaster—the post office was for a few years named Sweetwater, Wyoming Territory—a notary public and justice of the peace. His name was sometimes misspelled as “Averill” in contemporary accounts.
Ellen Watson, called Ella, ten years younger than Averell, joined him on the Sweetwater in the spring of 1886. She was from Kansas, where she had married at 18 and then divorced her abusive husband two years later. Averell probably met her in Rawlins. They filed that spring for a marriage license in Lander, but whether they actually got married is unclear.
By the summer of 1889 he had a store, a house, a stable, an icehouse and chicken coop on the property. These would have been low, small, dirt-roofed, rough log buildings. The store was also a saloon. Averell would have sold socks, cartridges, bacon, flour, coffee and whiskey. He also had a trout pond, 16 feet square.
Watson and Averell filed back-to-back, quarter-section land claims about two miles north up Horse Creek from where it joined the Sweetwater near Jim’s store. She had built one cabin—perhaps two—on that land, had fenced 60 acres of pasture and owned about 50 head of cattle by the summer of 1889. She also helped Jim run the store.
Six cattlemen
Tom Sun ranched at Devil’s Gate, about eight miles up the Sweetwater from Averell’s store. He was French-Canadian and probably came to Wyoming about the same time the railroad did, in the late 1860s. In 1883, he married a young Irishwoman named Mary Hellihan. By 1889 they had two children.
John Durbin and his brother Tom ranched up the Sweetwater from Sun. Their ranch was by far the largest on the Sweetwater. They also owned interests in meatpacking plants and in a Chicago cattle-marketing business.
Albert Bothwell first came to the Sweetwater valley in the mid-1880s, looking for mining, ranching and real estate opportunities. In 1885, he acquired the 76 Ranch, with its headquarters less than a mile from Averell’s store, but he did not start running cattle until the summer of 1888. He had a reputation for a bad temper.
That same summer, Bothwell and a group of investors formed a company and founded the “town” of Bothwell about a mile west of Watson’s cabins and offered lots for high prices. Brochures described a town with a store, blacksmith shop, post office and a newspaper, the Sweetwater Chief, and indicated the railroad would soon link the Sweetwater Valley to Casper.
Robert Conner ranched a few miles up Horse Creek from Watson’s and Averell’s homestead claims. He was originally from eastern Pennsylvania, where his stepfather had made a fortune in the coal business.
Robert Galbraith was a well-known master railroad mechanic from Rawlins and a member of the Territorial Legislature who visited the Sweetwater in July 1889 to buy a herd of cattle from Bothwell.
Ernie McLean was a cowboy who worked for John Durbin.
Cattle and land
For few years, in the early 1880s, some people made a lot of money in the cattle business in Wyoming. Soon, however, there were too many cattle. Many went unbranded, and cattle thieves—rustlers—took advantage of this confusion.
Then, with so many cattle coming to market, prices began to fall. Much of the range had been badly overgrazed. Then came one or two hot, dry summers and a winter so bad it’s still famous. Thousands of cattle died. Many ranchers quit. But prices stayed low, and the range was still overgrazed. Cattle theft was widespread, and the belief that rustlers were seldom or never convicted circulated even more widely, though at least one scholar who tested the claim against court records found it was exaggerated. In any case, these problems made business hard for all ranchers.
Nearly all the land still belonged to the government. To control the range where their cattle grazed, ranchers needed only to control the water. That is, it was necessary to own only small scraps of land with springs or creeks on them. But when people like Watson and Averell came along, fencing pastures for their small herds, digging irrigation ditches to water their gardens or building stores, it upset familiar ways of using the land. The owners of the large herds didn’t like it. Bothwell approached Watson two or three times about buying her land, but she refused every time. This would have angered him.
Averell was a surveyor, and familiar with land law. He and Watson formally questioned the legality of some of Durbin’s and Conner’s land claims. Then in February 1889, Averell wrote a letter to the Casper Weekly Mail warning people that the brand-new “town” of Bothwell was a scam: “just a geographical expression,” he put it, without a single house. Bothwell and his investors must have been infuriated. But Averell was essentially right. The only building in Bothwell, the Carbon County Journal noted a few years later, was “a shack” where its newspaper was published, the Sweetwater Chief. Bothwell and his partners needed customers to buy the expensive lots. The paper, of course, was there to advertise the town.
Twice each year, ranches got together to round up the cattle. In the spring, cowboys cut their ranches’ calves out from the rest and then branded them. In the fall, they separated the calves from their mothers and drove some to the railroad to ship to market. The spring roundup for the lower Sweetwater ended July 19, 1889, with a branding at Beulah Belle Lake, about eight miles west of Watson’s cabins on Horse Creek, on what’s now the Dumbell Ranch. Durbin, Sun and Bothwell, the bosses on that roundup, may have been talking for months about what to do about Averell and Watson.
The hanging
On Saturday morning, July 20, Durbin, Sun, Bothwell, Galbraith and McLean rode east toward Horse Creek. Sun was driving his buggy. The rest were on horseback. They stopped at the office of the Sweetwater Chief, where they found Conner talking with the newspaper editor. Then the six men rode to Watson’s ranch, where they tore down her fence, let her cattle out and threatened to kill her unless she got in the buggy. She got in.
They headed south toward Averell’s store but met him first, driving an empty wagon toward Casper for supplies. At gunpoint they forced him, too, into the buggy. To stay out of sight of the store, the cattlemen took a roundabout route to the Sweetwater River, and then headed west, upstream, for two miles. A friend of Averell’s named Frank Buchanan followed them at a safe distance.
Finally they left the river and headed up a gulch in the rocky hills south of Independence Rock. Buchanan got close enough to see Averell and Watson standing on a large rock under a limber pine tree. Two lariats had been slung over the biggest branch. A rope was around Averell’s neck. Watson was trying to keep McLean from getting the other rope around her neck, too.
Buchanan fired his revolver at the lynchers until he ran out of bullets. They fired back with rifles. Buchanan fled and rode as far as he could toward Casper, to the ranch of a man named Healy, who rode to Casper the next morning with the news. A man and a woman, he reported, had been hanged near the Sweetwater River. Buchanan had not stayed to watch them die, but his reports proved correct when a coroner’s jury found them Monday morning, still hanging, and cut them down.
All six lynchers were named in the first of two coroner’s inquests. Five of the lynchers were charged with the crime, and made bail by signing security bonds for each other. By the time a grand jury convened in October, one witness had died, and three others had left the territory. The case was dropped for lack of evidence.
The news reports
“Double Lynching,” ran the all-capitals headline in the Cheyenne Daily Sun the Tuesday after the crime. Averell, the newspaper reported, “kept a ‘hog’ ranch,” that is, a rural brothel. Watson, it added, “was a prostitute who lived with him and is the person who recently figured in the dispatches as Cattle Kate . . .”
A much longer story in the Cheyenne Daily Leader the same day charged Averell “and a virago who has been living with him as his wife” with cattle stealing. When the ranchers learned that her corral held 50 head of newly branded steers, the Leader reported, they decided they had to act. At night, 10 to 20 men snuck up on the cabin. Inside, Watson and Averell were playing cards and drinking whiskey.
The leader stationed a man with a rifle at each window and then led a rush on the door. “The sound of ‘Hands up!’ sounded above the crash of glass as the rifles were levelled at the strangely assorted pair of thieves,” the Daily Leader reported.
They were hanged, said the paper, from the limb of a big cottonwood tree by the riverbank. Averell supposedly whined and begged for his life. The woman stayed defiant, and “died with curses on her foul lips.”
“Cattle Kate”
Among all these inaccuracies and exaggerations, perhaps most interesting are the ones surrounding Watson’s name. The Sun confused her with a notorious and perhaps fictitious prostitute named Kate Maxwell, of the town of Bessemer, Wyo., west of Casper. Maxwell had figured in news stories earlier that year about the theft of money from a gambler.
Though the nickname “Cattle Kate” was used earlier about Maxwell, there is no evidence it was ever used about Watson in her lifetime. A close reading of the story in the Daily Leader shows that it uses no name for Watson at all. Nor does it call her a prostitute. (A “virago” is just a strong, loud woman.) And even though the other Cheyenne paper, the Sun, completely reversed its tone and gave a fairly factual account in a second story on July 24, the charge that she was a prostitute and the name “Cattle Kate” have stuck ever since.
Getting out the story
As long as there have been crimes, criminals have tried to avoid responsibility by making it look as though the victims deserved what happened to them. This seems to have been what the cattlemen were doing.
Word of the hanging, said the Daily Leader, came to Rawlins by “a special courier,”—a rider, that would mean. From Rawlins, the news was telegraphed to George Henderson, “who happened to be in the capital,” Cheyenne.
Henderson was foreman of the 71 Ranch on the Sweetwater, and a friend of Sun, Durbin and Bothwell. The courier was probably Ernie McLean, Durbin’s cowboy. Henderson was sympathetic with the lynchers and his boss years later wrote that Henderson was partly involved.
Durbin arrived in Rawlins the Sunday afternoon after the lynching and that evening took the train to Cheyenne. This would have put him in Cheyenne Monday morning, in time to work with Henderson to make sure the papers printed a version the cattlemen liked. The result, writes Daniel Meschter, the scholar who has looked most closely at these questions, was “a publicity campaign, for the management of the story from that point on was nothing less.”
The campaign was immediately successful. Thanks to the news wires, the Cheyenne papers’ version went national, with a story in the New York World the same day. Three weeks later, the National Police Gazette--the National Enquirer of its time—went much further. “A Blaspheming Border Beauty Barbarously Boosted Branchward,” ran its headline, with a full page of dramatic illustrations of the capture and the gruesome death.
News versus history
The Casper and Rawlins papers worked more slowly—and their versions seem to have made little headway beyond their more limited readerships. Their reporters talked to people who knew what happened. Very soon, these two papers were claiming that land disputes, not cattle theft, were what the lynching was about.
“[T]he whole affair grew out of land troubles,” Averell’s friend Buchanan told the Casper Weekly Mail in a story published a week after the lynching. “Averell had contested the land Conners was trying to hold. He had made Durbin some trouble on a final proof [the last step before a land claim on public land could become private property] and had kept Bothwell from fencing the entire Sweetwater Valley. Averell favored the settling up of these lands in small ranches. Bothwell wanted the whole country and said that rich men did not need to obey the laws . . .”
Meschter found that the land records largely support Buchanan’s claims here. As for Bothwell’s ambitions, in the next few years he absorbed Averell’s and Watson’s land claims and water ditches into his own ranch.
And as so often happens, the most lurid version of the story—the one with sex in it—had the most staying power over time. Banker John Clay, George Henderson’s boss on the 71, was an influential, well-connected man and a good writer. In the early 1920s, he wrote in his memoir My Life on the Range that Watson “known as ‘Cattle Kate’ … was a prostitute of the lowest type, and while Averill [sic] and a man called Buchanan were her intimates, she was common property of the cowboys for miles around . . . ”
And when longtime Casper newspaperman A.J. Mokler wrote his History of Natrona County in 1922, he wrote that it was Watson, not Averell, who ran a “hog ranch,” that she had taken the name of Kate Maxwell, and that she was known to her friends as “Cattle Kate.”
Later writers picked up that version. When University of Wyoming Professor T.A. Larson first published his History of Wyoming in 1965, he was careful to separate fact from allegation. “Ella Watson, who was known thereafter as Cattle Kate, was variously described as a prostitute and Averell’s paramour [girlfriend]. … It was said also that she accepted stolen cattle from cowboys in return for her favors.”
The War on Powder River, published in 1966, is a thorough, lively history of the so-called Johnson County War, when about 50 Wyoming ranchers and hired Texas gunmen invaded Johnson County in northern Wyoming in 1892, to kill rustlers. The Watson-Averell lynching enabled the later invasion, argues author Helena Huntington Smith. And she severely criticizes the Cheyenne papers. But even Smith writes, “Ella was a prostitute who accepted recompense for her favors in the form of stolen yearlings and may have gotten in deeper. That is the accusation against her.”
Watson may have been a prostitute. There’s no way to know for sure. But by the time she was hanged in 1889, all her recorded actions—taking up a homestead claim, protesting the illegal claims of her neighbors, buying a brand for her cattle, signing a political petition, applying for a marriage license—show her as a woman who wanted to own land and be secure, and who wasn’t shy about her ambitions. These character traits may have been what got her killed.
As Wyoming moved that year toward statehood, the lynching must have made its women nervous—must have made everyone nervous, for that matter. Here they were, living in the only territory or state that allowed women to vote. At the same time they were living in a territory where a woman only recently had been hanged from the branch of a tree. It’s a troubling pair of facts. The papers owed it to their readers to get the facts right the first time out. Historians owe it to their readers to correct earlier errors. It’s never too late to get things right.
https://archive.org/details/stories-of-the-century-tv-1954-s01e06-cattle-kate
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Konstantin Shchekotov (1909-1975). Interrogation of a Partisan (Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya). 1959
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Vietnam; late 19th century.
Punishment of a married couple for stealing. The woman is tied up awaiting a spanking.
Punishment of a married couple for stealing. The woman is tied up awaiting a spanking.
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The Jewish pogrom in Lviv took place from June 30 to July 2, 1941
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The Jewish pogrom in Lviv took place from June 30 to July 2, 1941
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The Jewish pogrom in Lviv took place from June 30 to July 2, 1941
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A colorized photo of the execution of two Soviet intelligence officers, Alexandra Pavlovskaya-Anfinogenova and Maria Sakharova (the names of the intelligence officers may be fictitious), by Finnish soldiers. Under the guise of civilians with forged documents, they carried out tasks to observe Finnish troops and organize underground activities in Povenets and Medvezhegorsk.
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