On Monday 12th of March 1716 William Jennings (also given as Jenkins and Atkins) was hanged at Tyburn for housebreaking. His age was reported as just 12 in a newspaper of the time, but there is no Ordinary’s report to corroborate this.
Sixteen year old Thomas Smith was hanged at Tyburn on Wednesday, the 25th of April 1716 together with William King who was 18, also for housebreaking. Edward Elton was hanged there the following year for the same offence.
Four teenagers were hanged at Tyburn on Monday, the 20th of May 1717. They were 18 year old Martha Pillah (also Pillow) who had been convicted of stealing in a shop, 17 year old Thomas Price and 18 year old Joseph Cornbach for housebreaking and 17 year old Christopher Ward for burglary.
16 year old James Booty suffered at Tyburn on Monday, the 21st of May 1722 for the rape of a five year old girl.
On Saturday 18th March 1738, sixteen year old Mary Grote (also given as Troke and Groke) was tied a hurdle and drawn along in a procession behind a cart containing two men, John Boyd and James Warwick, to Gallows Hill on the outskirts of Winchester in Hampshire.
Here she was held until the two men had been hanged before being led to a large wooden stake nearby. She was chained to this and bundles of faggots placed round her. The executioner would have endeavoured to strangle her with a rope noose before igniting the fire and reducing the hopefully unconscious girl to ashes. Mary had been convicted of the Petty Treason murder, by poisoning, of her mistress, Justine Turner.
16 year old William Duell was hanged, along with four others, at Tyburn on the 24th of November 1740. He had been convicted of raping and murdering Sarah Griffin and was to be anatomised after execution. He was taken to Surgeon’s Hall for this but signs of life were discovered and he was revived and later had his sentence commuted to transportation.
Seventeen year old Catharine Connor went to the gallows at Tyburn on Monday the 31st December 1750 for publishing a false, forged and counterfeit Will, purporting to be the Will of Michael Canty, a sailor in the Navy, on October the 29th of that year. She told the court that she could neither read nor write and that the forgery was made by a Mr. Dunn, although she was present at the time. Catherine was one of fifteen prisoners to hang that day.
Elizabeth Morton, aged fifteen, was hanged at Gallows Hill, Nottingham on the 8th of April 1763 for the murder of the two year old child of her employer, John Oliver.
Susannah Underwood was hanged at Gloucester on Friday the 19th of April 1776 for setting fire to a barn and a hay stack at Longhope on 31st January 1776. The Hereford Journal newspaper criticised the bad manners of the 15 year old girl for refusing to shake hands with her master at her execution, but did not criticise the authorities for hanging her.
On Saturday the 16th of September 1786, seventeen year old Susannah Minton suffered for arson at Hereford before a large number of onlookers. She had been convicted of “voluntarily and maliciously setting fire to and burning a barn, the property of Paul Gwatkin, in the parish of Kilpeck on the 11th of November 1785.” She had been tried at the Lent Assizes but was respited to the Summer Assizes, possibly because she had claimed that she was pregnant.
Sarah Shenston, an eighteen year old, was hanged at Moor Heath on the outskirts of Shrewsbury in Shropshire on Thursday, the 22nd of March 1792. She suffered for the murder of her illegitimate male child whose throat she had cut immediately after birth, on the 30th of September 1791.
At the Dorset Lent Assizes in Dorchester in March 1794, fifteen year old Elizabeth Marsh was convicted of the murder of her grandfather, John Nevil. In accordance with the provisions of the Murder Act of July 1752 she was required to be hanged two days later, which would have been a Sunday, a day on which executions were not permitted.
As was normal the judge in her case delayed sentencing her to the end of the Assize on thus giving her an extra day of life. Elizabeth would have been kept in chains and only allowed bread and water between sentence and execution. She was hanged on Monday the 17th of March and was the first person to be executed outside the new County Gaol in Dorchester. Her body was afterwards given to local surgeons for dissection.
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