The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-18 00:00:00

The Capital Punishment of Females.

When the Government bill on capital punishment
comes down from the Upper to the Lower House we
understand that Mr. William Ewart will move the
total abolition of the capital punishment of females,
His motion is based upon the following reasons :-
1. The peculiarly disgusting and revolting nature
of the cold-blooded strangulation of females in a
Christian age and country.

2. The special hindrances to the carrying out of
the law (both as to verdict and execution) which
have to be encountered in almost every instance
where a woman is charged capitally.

3. The peculiar liabiuty of women to influences of
sudden, unexpected, or previously latent, violent in-
sanity arising from puerperal causes or other sexual
and physiological conditions.
2. The now practically and recognised precedent
of the Home Office that no execution of a woman
shall be carried into effect if, between her sentence
and the timed fixed for its execution, she be found
to be pregnant, as in the case of Charlotte Harris,
sentenced to death at the Somerset assizes, in 1849.
but subsequently found pregnant, and respited on
that account. After the birth of the child their ap-
peared some probability of her execution being car-
ried into effect, whereupon nearly forty thousand
women appealed to the Queen in a memorial for
mercy. Eventually the fatal sentence was commuted,
and since that period there have been other commu-
tations in similar cases.

But it is an anomaly in the admnistration of law
that whilst women capitally condemned are thus
commuted if found pregnant after sentence, yet
that if found pregnant before sentence they may
be detained from trial till after childbirth and
then banged. As a case in point we may cite
that of Alice Holt, who, in June, 1863, was com-
mitted for trial to Chester for murder. Being
found pregnant, her trial was postponed till the
winter assizes. In the interval she was lelivered
of a child. She was then tried, sentenced, and
finally hanged, notwithstanding earnest local peti-
tions to the contrary. In Mr. Dymond's " Law on
its Trial" it is recorded of this execution :

"The scene upon the scaffold was more than
usually distressing. The wretched woman, weak
and faint, was kept several minutes waiting for the
drop to fall, owing to some difficulty with the bolt.
Meantime her cries to the hangman to Make haste'
excited the pity and sympathy of the crowd who
had come to witness the revolting spectacle."
5. There arises from the capital punishment of
females a certain degree of danger of sacrificing in-
nocent life with the guilty, through the execution
of women who may be really pregnant, though de-
clared not to be so. This horrible occurrence is not
very likely to happen, but there is a reasonable pos-
sibility of it, as the following tolerably recent in-
stances prove :—At the Norwich Spring Assizes,
March, 1833, Mary Wright, the daughter of an
insane mother, was tried fcr murder, and, in spite
of strong evidence of her own insanity, was sen-
tenced to death. Through the vigilance of Mr.
Sydney Taylor, a plea of pregnancy was immedi-
ately adduced, whereupon a jury of 12 matrons was
empanelled after more than:an hour's absence,
returned a verdict in the usual form—that they
did not find the prisoner pregnant of a quick
child." At the earnest solicitation of Mr. Taylor a
further examination of the prisoner by three medi-
cal gentlemen took place, and, in consequence of
their representation, execution was stayed. Shortly
before the next assizes Mary Wright was delivered
of a daughter. Through the benevolent exertions
of Mr. Joseph John Gurney and other gentlemen
abundant proof of the prisoner's insanity, down to
the very day of her crime, was obtained and for-
warded to the Home-office, and this led to a com-
mutation of the sentence.
A more recent instance of a similar error was ad-
duced before the late Royal Commission on Capital
Punishment by Mr. Sergeant Parry. In 1847 Mary
Ann Hunt was convicted of murder at the Central
Criminal Court. Pregnancy being alleged, she was
examined by a jury of matrons, who declared her
not pregnant. Subsequently medical men arrived
at an opposite conclusion, which was eventually
proved correct by the birth of a son.
6. The peculiar liability of females to temptation
and crime through their circumstances of weakness
and of frequently compelled submission to the
violence of male ruffians. A striking instance is
mentioned in the " Judicial Statistics " for 1863. In
that year a commutation of the capital sentence was
extended to one Elizabeth Benyon, condemned to
death at Liverpool. Her age was only seventeen.
She had murdered her child of one year old by
drowning it in a canal. Her own father had com-
pelled her to horrible and unnatural immorality, and
had afterwards turned her and her child into the
streets.

These illustrations of the peculiar and unavoid-
able evils connected with the capital punishment of
females are in themselves sufficient to justify the
prompt abolition of exhibitions so revolting as the
judicial strangulation of women.

PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1867.—A meeting of the
Special Committee of her Majesty's Commissioners for the
Paris Exhibition of 1867 on Navigation was held on Satur-
day afternoon, at half-past two-oclock, at the South Ken-
sington Museum. The Right Hon. Sir John Pakington,
M.P., presided. There were present the Marquis of
Drogheda, Lord Vane, Mr. John Fowler, Mr. I. D. A.
Samuda, M.P., Rear-Admiral Ryder, Mr. J. White, Mr.
Isaac Watts, Captain M. C. Close, of the Trinity-house,
Mr. J. H. Richie, and Mr. J. M‘Gregor. Mr H. Cole,
C. 8., the secretary of the Commission, attended.
Woo s xO•JR DOCTOR MORISON'S PILL $.