Page 11 - Gen Mag Online November 2020

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Prior to her execution, while in the condemned cell, she confessed the murder to Reverend Fraser.
She was visited twice by her husband, William whilst here and on both occasions they quarrelled
over his relationship with her younger sister, which he strongly denied at the first meeting although
he admitted it at the second. She was also visited by her parents and Emma. She frequently became
hysterical while awaiting her death, and this behaviour continued until the moment she was hanged.

The execution was set for midday on Thursday the 2nd of April. The gallows that had been used to
execute Ann Lawrence the year before was again erected for the hanging outside the main gate in
County Road in full view of the public.

Around noon the under sheriff of the county, the chaplain, Calcraft and the other prison officers
formed up outside her cell and Calcraft went in to pinion her, with a strap around her body and arms
at elbow level and another around her wrists. She was then led out across the yard to the main gate
which opened to reveal the gallows. Frances had to be helped up the steps onto the platform by two
warders. Frances is said to have prayed intently while Calcraft made the final preparations.

Her last words were “Lord Jesus forgive me”. With that Calcraft released the trap and she dropped
some eighteen inches, struggling hard for two or three minutes, writhing in the agonies of
strangulation. A well behaved, but quite small crowd estimated at 2,000 people, a lot of them women,
had come to watch her final moments although they could only see the top half of her body above
the platform. Her body was left hanging for an hour before being taken down and buried in an
unmarked grave within the prison.

There was some sympathy for Frances in the press and amongst the public. The Times commented
on the way her husband William had treated her, including the fact that he had deserted her and
taken up with her sister. It was reported that an effigy of him was burned in Hythe after the execution.

On the 29th of May 1868 Parliament passed the Capital Punishment Within Prisons Bill ending public
hanging. Six more men however were to die in public before this Act came into force. The last of
these was Michael Barrett, who was hanged at Newgate on the 26th of May for his part in the Fenian
bomb outrage in Clerkenwell.

ALL THINGS MANX

As someone with direct male line Manx ancestry, I have always had a fascination with the land of
my ancestors. My great grandfather arrived in mainland Britain in the 1870s, hitched up with an Irish
girl and settled down to produce a huge family.

As such, rather than just regurgitate family history information, I think it makes a nice change for you
the reader to know a little more about this fabulous island in the middle of the Irish Sea.

For such a small island, the Manx have had some major influences on the world. For instance,
although the so called mother of parliaments is considered to be the Houses of Commons and Lords
in Westminster, London, the island boasts the oldest continuous parliament in the world; only Iceland
can boast the oldest parliament. The word continuous is important as it has never stopped sitting.
Ever!

Tynwald Day - the ceremony of reading the
laws in the past year.

So, I hope you will allow me to indulge in my passion of
all things Manx and give you a flavour in this section of
the magazine about its past, people and those who
have influenced the rest of the world as well as the
island.