Last Woman Hanged

Author : Caroline Overington
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2014-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781460703625

Get Book

Last Woman Hanged by Caroline Overington Pdf

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins. In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction, to the horror of many in the legal community. Louisa protested her innocence until the end. Much of the evidence against Louisa was circumstantial. Some of the most important testimony was given by her only daughter, May, who was just 10-years-old when asked to take the stand. Louisa Collins was hanged at a time when women were in no sense equal under the law -- except when it came to the gallows. They could not vote or stand for parliament -- or sit on juries. Against this background, a small group of women rose up to try to save Louisa's life, arguing that a legal system comprised only of men -- male judges, all-male jury, male prosecutor, governor and Premier -- could not with any integrity hang a woman. The tenacity of these women would not save Louisa but it would ultimately carry women from their homes all the way to Parliament House. Caroline Overington is the author of eleven books of fiction and non-fiction, including the top-selling THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY psychological crime novel. She has said: 'My hope is that LAST WOMAN HANGED will be read not only as a true crime story but as a letter of profound thanks to that generation of women who fought so hard for the rights we still enjoy today.' Praise for LAST WOMAN HANGED 'The story she tells ... is a useful challenge to any tendency to simple moral indignation' -- Beverley Kingston, Sydney Morning Herald 'This is a fascinating book, a terrific read, and an excellent reminder of who tells the stories, and whose stories are forgotten' -- Frances Rand, South Coast Register '... what's ... interesting is Caroline Overington's even-handed appraisal of Collins's alleged crime(s) that led her to become the last woman hanged in New South Wales in 1889' -- Launceston Sunday Examiner

Author : Robert Hancock
Publisher : Seven Dials
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-26
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781841884486

Get Book

The Last Woman to be Hanged by Robert Hancock Pdf

On the eve of her hanging, Ruth Ellis wrote to a friend: 'I must close now but remember I am quite happy with the verdict, but not the way the story was told, there is so much that people don't know.' Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain. This is her story. In July 1955 Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death for the shooting of her lover, motor-racing driver David Blakely. Barely three months later she was executed at Holloway prison. In this book, Robert Hancock sets the record straight. Using official documents including the transcript of her trial at the Old Bailey, he unlocks the full, secret background to the story of the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Meticulous and fair in its analysis, The Last Woman to be Hanged is an absorbing portrait of the tragic life of a young woman, a vivid snapshot of an era and a gripping account of a notorious case that shocked the nation.

Author : Georgie Ellis,Rod Taylor
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1996-02
Category : Murder
ISBN : 1856851052

Get Book

Ruth Ellis, My Mother by Georgie Ellis,Rod Taylor Pdf

On July 13, 1955, Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of the lover who jilted her, motor-racing driver David Blakely. Forty years on, her only surviving child, Georgie, recalls her mother's tragic life that culminated in the murder for which she was executed. She tells it with the insight and intimate knowledge that only a daughter could have, supported by family reminiscences and photographs.

Author : Nellie P. Strowbridge
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1897317468

Get Book

Catherine Snow by Nellie P. Strowbridge Pdf

An exotic drama in which one man's mysterious disappearance brings a dark end to three other people. What would it take to destroy an Irish girl who had survived famine and war in Ireland, and a hazardous journey across the Atlantic Ocean, to become a servant-wife on an island where God's truth and the Devil's tale are entwined as tight as the strands of a rope? This novel is based on the true story of the last woman hanged in Britain's oldest colony, the only woman in the colony to have a gruesome sentence - the ultimate desecration - carried out on her body. A novel in which truth lies suspended between fact and fiction. A haunting mystery.

Author : Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé
Publisher : Liberties Press
Page : 112 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2013-04-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781909718036

Get Book

Lucinda Sly by Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé Pdf

Lucinda Sly is a historical novel from one of the great contemporary Irish language prose writers, Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé. Now celebrated poet Gabriel Fitzmaurice brings this gripping account alive in English. Based on real events that took place in Carlow in 1834-35, Lucinda Sly tells the story of Lucinda Singleton, a widowed mother who married Walter Sly, a well-to-do farmer. He was a drunkard and a brute who so abused his wife that she and her lover, their farm hand John Dempsey, conspired to murder him. They were hanged side by side in public outside Carlow Gaol on March 30, 1835. Lucinda Sly draws a vivid picture of nineteenth-century Ireland, revealing what was often a harsh and unjust society. A haunting and vibrant tale that will remain with you. Lucinda Sly was an award winner at Oireachtas na Gaeilge 2008.

Author : Muriel Jakubait,Monica Weller
Publisher : Constable
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2012-11-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781472106940

Get Book

Ruth Ellis: My Sister's Secret Life by Muriel Jakubait,Monica Weller Pdf

The secret double-life of Ruth Ellis and the Establishment cover-up that led to her unjust hanging Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, was convicted fifty years ago for shooting her lover David Blakely. The case became a notorious part of British criminal history and was turned into the film, Dance with a Stranger. The story that has been perpetuated ever since is that of a peroxide tart who killed in a fit of passion. Yet, crucial questions were left unasked in the original trial. Ruth Ellis's sister, Muriel Jakubait, knew her longest of all. She has never given up her search for justice. Now after fifty years she has decided to reveal the hard facts about their shared upbringing, and seek to piece together the full true story of her sister. As she is at pains to point out, the jealous killer tag has never been substantiated. This is a story of power, espionage, lies, loyalty, poverty, sex and betrayal. It suggests a third man may have pulled the trigger for the fatal shots. And that he belonged to a web of espionage into which Ruth Ellis fell long before the shooting. Above all, it indicates that Ruth was being run by Stephen Ward, at least a decade before his name became public in the Profumo Scandal. Muriel's motive is about more than proving her sister Ruth's innocence. It's about reclaiming the right to tell the story of her own family, stripped bare of the many tabloid myths that have accrued over the decades. She shows that Ruth was somebody damaged at a very early age - who strove to make something of herself, only to be caught up in something much bigger and end up paying with her life.

Author : Carol Ann Lee
Publisher : Random House
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2012-09-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781780573694

Get Book

A Fine Day for a Hanging by Carol Ann Lee Pdf

In 1955, former nightclub manageress Ruth Ellis shot dead her lover, David Blakely. Following a trial that lasted less than two days, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. She became the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and her execution is the most notorious of hangman Albert Pierrepoint's 'duties'. Despite Ruth's infamy, the story of her life has never been fully told. Often wilfully misinterpreted, the reality behind the headlines was buried by an avalanche of hearsay. But now, through new interviews and comprehensive research into previously unpublished sources, Carol Ann Lee examines the facts without agenda or sensation. A portrait of the era and an evocation of 1950s club life in all its seedy glamour, A Fine Day for a Hanging sets Ruth's gripping story firmly in its historical context in order to tell the truth about both her timeless crime and a punishment that was very much of its time.

Author : Robert Hancock
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Capital punishment
ISBN : 0752834495

Get Book

Ruth Ellis by Robert Hancock Pdf

In July 1955, Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death for the shooting of her lover, motor-racing driver David Blakely. On the eve of her execution she wrote ...there is so much that people don't know about; this book attempts to set the record straight, revealing the full background to the story.

Author : Nellie P. Strowbridge
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2021-03-10
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1774570246

Get Book

The Hanged Woman's Daughter by Nellie P. Strowbridge Pdf

Newfoundland, 1835 Where does a person go when she loses her family, her home, and her place in a community? What can she do when she feels she doesn't belong anywhere and to anyone? The disappearance of John Snow from Salmon Cove is shrouded in mystery. Nevertheless, Catherine, his wife, was convicted of complicity in his murder and hanged. Now, Bridget, their eldest daughter, faces the challenge of losing more than her family and their home. She risks losing herself as she sets out on a mysterious journey, and her future unfolds in a way she had not dared imagine. Award-winning author Nellie P. Strowbridge weaves a tantalizing tale of the elusive Bridget Snow, the scattering of her family by a heartless magistrate, and her attempt at anonymity all on the heels of her mother's execution. A poignant and engrossing novel, sure to enthrall Strowbridge's readers to its astonishing conclusion.

Author : Tom Mitchell,Reinhold Kramer
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2004-02-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781442692145

Get Book

Walk Towards the Gallows by Tom Mitchell,Reinhold Kramer Pdf

On 5 July 1899 Hilda Blake, a 21-year-old maidservant in Brandon, Manitoba, who had come to Canada from England ten years earlier as an orphan immigrant, shot and killed her mistress. Two days after Christmas she was hanged, one of the few women in Canadian history to die for her crime. Blake unintentionally left a remarkable documentary record, ranging from Poorhouse records, courts dockets of custody and criminal cases in which she was the central figure, popular, journalistic, and professional assessments of her character, and a poem, 'My Downfall', that she penned in Brandon Gaol while awaiting execution. To explain why Hilda bought a gun and why she fired it, Kramer and Mitchell employee both historical and literary techniques. The result is a richly textured story of late Victorian social, cultural, and political life. This remarkable book - part mystery, part historical detective story - uncovers Hilda Blake's life, from her origins in Norfolk, England, to her tragic death. It also examines the lives of other principals in the story: successful Brandon businessman Robert Lane and his wife Mary, the murdered woman; Lane's business partner, Alexander McIlvride; Police Chief James Kircaldy; A.P. Stewart and his wife, Letitia Singer Stewart, the family for whom the 12-year-old orphaned Hilda first worked as a domestic servant; Rev. C.C. McLaurin, the Baptist minister who knew Hilda and counselled the condemned woman in her final days; social purity activist Dr Amelia Yeomans, who petitioned for clemency; Governor-General Minto, who urged the Laurier government to stay the execution, even Clifford Sifton, the MP from Brandon, federal minister of Immigration, and the most powerful western Liberal in the Laurier cabinet, for whom the case was a potential minefield. As the authors write, 'We tell a story because only a story can expose the real workings of a culture, and only a story can express our protest against time.'

Author : Malcolm Moyes
Publisher : Matador
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2021-03-28
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1800462646

Get Book

By Force of Circumstances: the Lefley Case Reopened by Malcolm Moyes Pdf

Mary Lefley was the last woman to be executed in Lincoln, arraigned for the alleged brutal poisoning of her husband in 1884 with enough arsenic to kill fifty men. Despite there being little hard evidence, including a lack of motive, as well as a total absence of poison in the house.

Author : Anna Haebich
Publisher : UWA Publishing
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1921401451

Get Book

Murdering Stepmothers by Anna Haebich Pdf

Sensational rumours of the murder of three small children by their stepmother ignite the passions of Perth citizens in 1909. Shocked by horrific descriptions of how she poisoned the children, they demand her execution as one voice. But did she do it? Or was she a victim of the prejudices of her persecutors? Based on a true story and meticulously researched, this compelling novel is driven by passion, imagination and an eerie conjuring up of the past.

Author : Robert Hancock
Publisher : Seven Dials
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2020-11-26
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781841884486

Get Book

The Last Woman to be Hanged by Robert Hancock Pdf

On the eve of her hanging, Ruth Ellis wrote to a friend: 'I must close now but remember I am quite happy with the verdict, but not the way the story was told, there is so much that people don't know.' Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain. This is her story. In July 1955 Ruth Ellis was sentenced to death for the shooting of her lover, motor-racing driver David Blakely. Barely three months later she was executed at Holloway prison. In this book, Robert Hancock sets the record straight. Using official documents including the transcript of her trial at the Old Bailey, he unlocks the full, secret background to the story of the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Meticulous and fair in its analysis, The Last Woman to be Hanged is an absorbing portrait of the tragic life of a young woman, a vivid snapshot of an era and a gripping account of a notorious case that shocked the nation.

Author : Carolyn Marvin
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 125 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1596298278

Get Book

Hanging Ruth Blay by Carolyn Marvin Pdf

On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay approached the gallows erected for her execution. Standing on the high ground in the northwest corner of what is now Portsmouth's old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her readers come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

Author : Caroline Overington
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : True crime stories
ISBN : OCLC:908203876

Get Book

Last Woman Hanged by Caroline Overington Pdf