ABSTRACT
Judges occasionally ordered that the bodies of those convicted of egregious crimes and hanged should be hung in chains near the scene of their offence. The Murder Act of 1752 supplemented this by directing that the bodies of those found guilty of murder and hanged should either be delivered to the surgeons to be “dissected and anatomized” or hung in chains. The document that follows is a first-hand account of the hanging, decapitation, and disemboweling of the convicted French spy Francis de la Motte in 1781. Women were also subject to these harsh aggravations. On 7 May 1788, Jeremiah Grace and Margaret Sullivan were indicted for “a piece of base coin resembling the current silver coin of this kingdom, called a shilling, falsly and deceitfully, feloniously and traiterously did colour with materials, producing the colour of silver.”.
