Bellevue gazette. [volume] (Bellevue City, N.T. [i.e. Neb.]) 1856-1858, 1857-01-08
MISCELLANEOUS.
Remarkable Cases.
CRIMINALS WHO HAVE BEEN RETURNED
TO LIFE AFTER EXECUTION.
BELLEVUE.

The following singular circumstance is
recorded by DR.. Plot, in his Natural His
tory of Oxfordshire
In the year 1850, Anne Green, a SER
want of Sir Thomas Reed, was tried for
the murder of her newborn child, and
found guilty. She was executed in the
courtyard at Oxford, where she hung
about half an hour. Being cut down, she
was put into coffin, and brought away to
a house to be dissected, where, when they
opened the coffin, Notwithstanding the
rope remained unloosed, and straight
about her neck, they perceived her breast
to rise, whereupon one Mason, tailor,
intending only an act of charity, set his
foot upon her, and, as some say, one
Drum, soldier, struck her with the butt
end of his musket. Notwithstanding oil
which, when the learned and eminent Sir
William Perry, ancestor Of the present
Marquis of Landsdownc, then Anatomy
Professor of the University, DIR. Wallis
and DIR. Clark, then President Of Mngda-
len College, and Vice. Chancellor Of the
University, came to prepare the body for
dissection, they perceived some small rat
Ting in her throat; hereupon desisting
from their former purpose, they presently
used means for her recovery by opening
vein, laying her in a warm bed, and
also using divers remedies respecting her
senselessness, insomuch that within four
teen hours she began to speak, ,-and the
next day talked and prayed very heartily.
During the time of this her recovering,
the officers concerned in her execution
would needs have had her away again to
have completed it on her; but by the me-
diation of the worthy doctors and some
other friends with the then governor of
the city, Col. Kelsy, there was a guard
put upon her from all further disturbance
until they had sued out her pardon from
the government. Much doubt indeed
arose as to her actual guilt. Crowds Of
people in the meantime came to see her,
and many asserted that it must be the
providence Of God who would thus assert
her innocence.
After some time, DIR. Perry, hearing
she discoursed with those about her, and
suspecting that the women might suggest
unto her to relate something of strange
visions and apparations she had seen
during the time she seemed to be dead
(Which they had already begun to do, tell
ing that she said she had been in fine
green meadow, having a river running
round it, and all things there glittered
like silver and gold), he caused all to de-
part from the room but the gentlemen Of
the faculty who were to have been at the
dissection, and asked her concerning her
sense and apprehensions during the time
she was hanged. To which she answer
ed, that she neither remembered how the
feuers we're knocked off, how she wen
out of the prison, when she was turned of
the ladder, whether any psalm was sung
or not, nor was she sensible Of any pain
that she could remember. She came Il
herself as if she had awakened out O
sleep, not recovering the use of her speecl
by slow degrees, but in a manner alto
gether, beginning to speak just where sh'
left on the gallows.
Being thus at length perfectly recovered
after thanks given to God, and The PEI
sons instrumental in bringing her to life
and procuring her an Immunity from ful
ther punishment, she retired into III
country to her friends at Steeple BartoI
where she was afterwards married, an
: lived in good rcpdte amOags. her neigl
4 bors, having three children, and not dym
till 1859 ".' o. F.. '. '''' .''