News from the Dead

In 1650, at Oxford Castle, Anne Greene was hanged for infanticide.

She had worked as a scullery maid for Sir Thomas Read, Justice of the Peace, at his house in Duns Tew, seventeen miles north of Oxford. Her story is as old as time. She was seduced by Sir Thomas’s teenage grandson, Geoffrey. She was, she said, “often sollicited by faire promises and other amorous enticements”. Just the sort of behaviour that leads to pregnancy as was the case here. After seventeen weeks she had a miscarriage in the privy and hid the foetus. However, it was found and Sir Thomas prosecuted her under the Concealment of Birth of Bastards Act of 1624. The Act stated there was a legal presumption that a woman who concealed the death of her illegitimate child had murdered it. However, a midwife testified the foetus was so under-developed it was impossible for it to have been alive. Nevertheless Sir Thomas sentenced her to death. One wonders if he wanted her out of the way to protect his grandson. So far so normal in 17th century England.

A macabre detail of her hanging was that she asked some friends to pull her swinging body to make sure she was dead. Additionally a soldier struck her four or five times with the butt of his musket. After half an hour she was presumed dead, popped in a coffin and sent to Oxford to be dissected by physicians in that seat of learning. Apparently there was no mutilation of corpses Act.

The next day her coffin was opened and she was found to be still alive. After some medical procedures that might well have killed her they decided to put her in bed beside another woman to keep her warm. This proved efficacious. She was able to talk after twelve hours and eat solids after four days and she recovered after a month. Technically she was well enough to be hanged again but she had another stroke of luck; Sir Thomas died three days after her first hanging and it transpired many people were censorious of his harsh judgement.

She was pardoned on the grounds that she had been saved by divine intervention, proving her innocence. At first she stayed with friends before getting married and having three children. She kept her coffin, no doubt a useful place to keep clothes and blankets. So she lived happily ever after, although that was only until 1659 when she died.