234
THE GREEN BAG
SHOULD FEMALE MURDERERS
BE
HANGED?
By Maynard Shipley A LITTLE over a year ago the whole Women guilty of murder or adultery were country was aroused over the hanging ruthlessly extermi ated under the Hebraic of Mrs. Mary Rogers, of Vermont, the second codes. Under the ( regal laws of Rome the woman to be executed for murder in that death penalty wa i inflicted upon women state. More recently, sentence of death for merely tasting of wine. Pliny speaks has been passed upon a female fiend in Mis of a certain Roman lady who was starved souri, and Governor Folk has been besieged to death by her family for leaving open a with letters from an excited public demand purse in which thje keys of the wine cellar ing that her sentence be commuted to what were kept. In Graece women offenders were is popularly known as "life imprisonment." executed by poisoning, or were hurled merci Twice has the day of Mrs. Myers' execution lessly from a high rock. The punishment been set, and twice has a stay of execution of either sex for theft of grain was hanging, been granted, on one pretext or another. the culprit being regarded as an expiatory Only a month or two since, to quote another offering to Ceres. In Rome, as late as the instance, a husband-poisoner in California second century B.C., unchastity on the part received the law's supreme sentence, and of a sacred virgin of Vesta was punished protests are now being made everywhere by burial alive, while her paramour was against the hanging of a woman, though scourged to death. Incest was punished by this was the penalty decreed by a jury which precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock. As had the right to choose, as an alternative for female slaves, they had no rights before penalty, life imprisonment.1 The recent the law in either Greece or Rome, and might State Convention of the W.C.T.U. adopted a be tortured or killed at the pleasure of the resolution asking Governor Pardee to use his master. Anglo-Saxon law was particularly best offices for the abolishment of capital severe in the punishment of female delin punishment, which is obviously a move to quents. A female slave was burned at the prevent the hanging of Mrs. Le Doux. stake even for simple theft, the executioners While it is not at all likely that the legisla being mostly women, eighty of whom were tures of California will abolish the death required to contribute one log each to feed penalty at this time, it is almost certain the flames. The free woman who was con that public sentiment in that state will pre victed of theft fared little better, her punish ment consisting of drowning, or of being vent the execution of Mrs. Le Doux, con victed of the cold-blooded murder of her hurled from a cliff. Under English law, women were publicly hanged, often whipped husband. The question naturally arises, "Whence through the streets, just as were male comes this prejudice in favor of women offenders. The penalty for high or petty murderers?" One finds no trace of senti treason, which included the murder of mas ment in favor of female offenders among ter or husband, was death at the stake. As the ancients. We know that executions of late as 1784, one Mary Bayley was put to women were of relatively frequent occur the flames for the murder of her husband, rence among the Assyrians and Egyptians. and it was not until the thirteenth year of the reign of George III, that this inhuman penalty was abolished. The only favor 1 There are eleven states in the Union in which shown women guilty of capital crimes in the jury fixes punishment of death or imprison England up to that time was the hangman's ment for life.
