Elizabeth Butchill
Elizabeth Butchill (ca. 1758–1780) was an English woman who was tried and executed for the murder of her illegitimate new-born child.
Life
Little of Butchill's early life is known except that she came from Saffron Walden, Essex.[1] In about 1777, Butchill—unmarried—moved to Cambridge to live with her uncle and aunt, William and Esther Hall.[2] Like her aunt, she worked as a college bed maker at Trinity College.[3] On 6 January 1780 Butchill spent the day in bed groaning and complaining of colic. She was tended to by her aunt in the morning and later in the evening. On 7 January the body of a new-born girl was found in the river near the Halls' home on the grounds of the college.[2] At an inquest, the coroner—Mr Bond—determined that the baby had died of a fractured skull.[1][2] William Hall believed that the infant was Butchill's and arranged for a surgeon to examine her.[2] On examination, she admitted that she had given birth to the baby. She said that the child was born alive and that she had thrown her down a "necessary" (toilet) into the river and buried the placenta.[1]
Butchill was charged by the coroner's jury with wilful murder.[2] Unusually for an unmarried woman, she was not charged as the mother, that is, under the Concealment of Birth of Bastards Act 1623 (21 Jas. 1. c. 27).[1] Under this act, it was a capital offence for a mother to conceal the birth of a child.[1] Butchill was simply tried for murder, and convicted.[2] Despite pleading for mercy, she was sentenced to death and her body was to be anatomized. She was executed on 17 March 1780 at Cambridge.[1] According to The Newgate Calendar, on the day of her death, she was "firm, resigned, and exemplary ... reconciled to her fate".[2]
References
- ^ a b c d e f Smith, Greg T. (2004). "Butchill, Elizabeth (c.1758–1780)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65516. Retrieved 11 June 2011. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ a b c d e f g Knapp, Andrew; Baldwin, William (1825), The Newgate Calendar: Volume 3, London: J. Robins and Co., pp. 111–112, OCLC 587422
- ^ McLynn, Frank (1989), Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England, Routledge, p. 111, ISBN 978-0-415-01014-6
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