On 27 January 1688, French midwife Mary Aubry murdered her abusive husband in London and dismembered his body. Tried at the Old Bailey on 22 February, she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to burning at the stake, carried out at Leicester Fields on 2 March 1688. Her case became one of early modern England’s most notorious.
Tag Archives: true-crime
This Day in History: 17 January 1681 — Elizabeth Wigenton and the Murder of Her Apprentice
On 17 January 1681, Elizabeth Wigenton, a coat-maker of Ratcliff Parish, was tried at the Old Bailey for the wilful murder of her thirteen-year-old apprentice. After binding and beating the girl so violently that she died, Wigenton was found guilty of murder. This case reveals the brutal realities of apprenticeship and justice in seventeenth-century London.
This Day in History – 16 September 1812
16 September 1812 — Old Bailey Manslaughter: Thomas Oakley was tried for manslaughter at the Old Bailey after a death for which the court found him responsible but not guilty of murder.
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