"Nuremberg, 4to., 1655. On a maid who recovered after being hanged.
"This is the remarkable case of Elizabeth Gren, whom Bathurst and Dr. Willis restored after being executed, i. e. hanged, for infanticide. 'Vena incisa refocillata est.'
"These poor creatures are seldom considered as maids, after being hanged for infanticide. A similar recovery also happened to a man who had been executed for murder at York. My father had the body for public dissection. Whether the law then required the body to be hung for one hour or not, I cannot say; but I well remember my father's observation, that it was a pity the wretch had ever been restored, as his morals were by no means improved. Hanging is therefore by no means a cure for immorality, and it will be needless (in any of us) trying the experiment'—P. 255.
H. J.
Sheffield.
There is a record of a person being alive immediately after hanging, in the Local Historian's Table-book, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44., and under the date May 23, 1752. It is there stated, Ewan Macdonald, a recruit in General Guise's regiment of
Highlanders, then quartered in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, murdered a cooper named Parker, and was executed on September 28, pursuant to his sentence. He was only nineteen years of age, and at the gallows endeavoured to throw the executioner off the ladder. The statement concludes with—"his body was taken to the surgeons' hall and there dissected;" and the following is appended as a foot-note:
"It was said that, after the body was taken to the surgeons' hall, and placed ready for dissection, the surgeons were called to attend a case at the infirmary, who, on their return, found Macdonald so far recovered as to be sitting up. He immediately begged for mercy; but a young surgeon, not wishing to be disappointed of the dissection, seized a wooden mall, with which he deprived him of life. It was farther reported, as the just vengeance of God, that this young man was soon after killed in the stable by his own horse. They used to show a mall at the surgeons' hall, as the identical one used by the surgeon."
Robert S. Salmon.
Newcastle-on-Tyne.
The case of Anne Green is attested by a third witness:
"In December, 1650, he was one of the persons concerned in recovering Anne Green to life, who was hanged at Oxford on the 14th, for the supposed murther of her bastard child."—"Memoir of Sir William Petty, Knt.," prefixed to Several Essays on Political Arithmetic, p. 3., 4th edit., London, 1755.