The following male convicts, viz., Edward Griffiths, George Woodward, William Watts, Daniel Keefe, Jonathan Harwood, and William Smith, were executed pursuant to their sentence, on the scaffold usually erected opposite Newgate. They were brought out at half-past seven in the morning, and the platform dropped about eight o’clock. Woodward was so exceedingly weak, that he was obliged to sit down till the executioneer had tied up the rest, and was then supported by two men.
The Barbarious Execution and Burning of Phœbe Harris.
Soon after the above execution, Phœbe Harris, convicted the session before last of coining silver, was brought out at the debtor’s door, from whence she walked to a stake fixed in the ground, about half way between the scaffold and Newgate street. She was immediately tied by the neck to an iron bolt fixed near the top of the stake, and after praying very fervently for a few minutes, the steps on which she stood were drawn away, and she immediately became suspended. The executioner, with some assistants, put a chain round her body, which was fastened by strong nails to the stake. Two cart-loads of faggots were then piled round her, and after she had hung about half an hour, the fire was kindled. The flames presently burning the halter, the convict fell a few inches, and was then suspended by the iron chain passed over her chest and affixed to the stakes. Some scattered remains of the body were perceptible in the fire at half-past ten o’clock. The fire had not quite burnt out even at twelve. The unhappy woman was so exceedingly affected on Monday night, that it was generally supposed (and indeed wished) that she could not have survived.
Phœbe Harris was a well made little woman, something more than thirty years of age, of a pale complexion, and not of disagreeable features. When she came out of prison she appeared languid and terrified, and trembled greatly as she advanced to the stake, where the apparatus for the punishment she was about to experience seemed to strike her mind with horror and consternation, to the exclusion of all power of recollectedness in preparation for the approaching awful moment. A great concourse of people attended on the melancholy occasion.
THE GAOL DELIVERY,
AND THE
TRIALS AND SENTENCES
OF ALL THE PRISONERS
AT THE OLD BAILEY SESSIONS,
TOGETHER WITH A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE
EXECUTION OF FIFTEEN UNFORTUNATE CONVICTS.
The April sessions ended at the Old Bailey, on the 25th, when 13 convicts received judgment of death; 60 were sentenced to be transported, two of whom, for stripping children, are to be sent to Africa, the other women to New South Wales; 8 to be imprisoned in Newgate; 1 to hard labour in the house of correction; 5 to be whipped; and 31 discharged by proclamation.
Elizabeth Kirvan, a convict for forgery, whose execution was respited on her plea of pregnancy, is referred to her former judgment, she not being pregnant.