LOCAL journalist and historian, Sally Hendry, has written a new book that details the shocking story behind the Wiltshire woman who was hanged for killing her own children.
Sally launched her new book, Mother and Murderer, published by Hobnob Press at the Westbury Museum (formerly the Westbury Heritage Society) on Monday 20th June.
Sally said, “Rebecca Smith, from Wiltshire, was the last woman in England to be hanged for infanticide of her own child. Her appalling crime, murdering her baby son with arsenic, shocked Victorian society and created nationwide headlines.
“Then, only days before she was due to go to the gallows for public execution, she confessed to murdering the seven babies who came before him.
“But why did she do it? In the book I unravel Rebecca’s story from her early life in the village of Bratton to her trial at Devizes Assizes, and her eventual public hanging at Devizes prison in 1849. The gruesome event attracted thousands to the town.
“The much-loved daughter of a Wiltshire farming family Rebecca was both religious and hard working. Her mistake in life was to marry a drunkard who didn’t share her family’s work ethic.
“Sliding into poverty, and at the mercy of her husband, she had barely given birth to one baby before she was pregnant with the next.
“Her first child, a daughter called Jane, survived, and later signed a petition for clemency for her mother, before emigrating to Australia. Rebecca’s other ten children died in infancy, two of them dying of natural causes.
“But when her apparently healthy baby son Richard died not long after birth, gossip pointed to Rebecca’s purchase of arsenic only days before. New forensic science proved the baby was poisoned, and the law swung into action.”
Mother and Murderer examines the poverty and circumstances of Rebecca’s life, the society in which she lived with women as men’s chattels, and the notoriety of her crime.
Author Sally Hendry asks what provoked Rebecca’s actions. Did her religious beliefs play a part? Did she feel her babies would be better off with God than in want on earth? Or did she kill them in a vengeful act against her husband for his treatment of her?
Sally added, “Today it’s likely the possibility of post-natal depression and mental illness would be taken into consideration, but neither were considered in mitigation at her trial.”
Sally Hendry’s telling of the sad tale of Rebecca Smith draws on historical documents and evidence painting a detailed picture of life in Victorian rural England as well as the downfall of one mother whose life would never have been documented, but for her crime.
The book is available in bookshops, Westbury Museum (found at the top floor of the library), on Amazon and at www.hobnobpress.co.uk
