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anything, so the trestle was removed and replaced by another which was three and a half feet high, so that her body was distended so tightly that the cords cut into her limbs. ‘You are tearing me to pieces!’ she cried. ‘Good Lord have mercy on me!’ Four more jars were then administered, causing her to sink into unconsciousness.
    She was placed on a mattress in front of a large fire and revived with eggs and wine, and after a little while she was clothed in a white gown and hood for the amende honorable . Accompanied by the executioner, his assistant and her confessor, she was taken by tumbril from the Conciergerie Prison to the porch of the Notre Dame, a dense crowd swarming about the vehicle screaming abuse. Through swollen lips she uttered the words of the amende : ‘I admit that wickedly and for vengeance I poisoned my father and my brothers, and attempted to poison my sisterin-law, in order to possess myself of their property. For which I ask pardon of God, of the King and of Justice.’
    She was then taken to the execution site, the Place de Grève where she had to kneel for half an hour amid the execrations of the crowd, while the executioner, with deliberate and inhumane slowness, cut away the thick swathes of her hair. While her confessor intoned the Salve Regina , her eyes were bandaged; the abbé’s voice fell silent – and the last sound she heard was the terrifying hiss of the headsman’s sword.

A murder case which was the talk of the town, indeed of the whole of Scotland in 1857, was that of Madeleine Hamilton Smith who was arraigned on three charges of administering at least thirty grains of arsenic to her erstwhile lover Pierre Emile L’Angelier. A member of Glasgow’s upper classes, Madeleine, according to a journalist who was present in court, ‘entered the dock with the air of a belle entering the ballroom or a box at the opera. Her steps were buoyant and she carried a silver-topped bottle of smelling salts. She was stylishly dressed and wore a pair of lavender gloves.’
As the lengthy trial went on, the young lady remained calm and composed, showing little reaction when the jury brought in the verdicts on the three charges: ‘not guilty’ on the first charge and ‘not proven’ on the other two, so Madeleine went free. Some years later it was reported that a member of her family, dining with them on the day of Pierre’s death, noticed that although Madeleine usually made no effort to hide her long and slender hands, she seemed to be keeping them out of sight as much as possible on this occasion. However, he happened to catch a glimpse of them and casually noticed that they were stained a bluish colour. And it was not until the trial ended that he discovered the rat poison used to kill Pierre L’Angelier was impregnated with a bluish compound to signify its toxicity and he realised the truth – too late.
    Britland, Mary Ann (England)
    In his book My Experiences as an Executioner , published shortly before his resignation in 1892, James Berry expressed the opinion that those murderers who are most brutal and cold-blooded while committing the act for which they had been condemned to death, were the most cowardly when they had to face the consequences. This was most certainly the case with Mary Ann Britland, whom he hanged at Strangeways Prison, Manchester, on 9 August 1886.
    Mary Ann, her husband and daughter lived in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, in the house of a Mr and Mrs Dixon. It might have been that Mary Ann feared her daughter had discovered the fixation she had for Mr Dixon which impelled her to poison the girl, and then remove, by the same means, the next obstacle to her desires – her husband. But not until Mrs Mary Dixon had also been removed would the way be clear, and so out came the poison bottle again.
    At the trial, no evidence whatsoever was produced to show that Mr Dixon ever responded to any of Mary Ann’s approaches, and he was acquitted. But she was found guilty,