THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CHRISTIAN BOWMAN, ALIAS MURPHY;
Reading edition
Who was burnt at a Stake, in the Old Bailey, on Wednesday the 18th of March 1789 for High Treason, in feloniously and traitorously counterfeiting the Silver Coin of the Realm.
Containing her Birth and Parentage, youthful Adventures, Love Amours, fatal Marriage, unhappy Connections, and untimely Death.
ARREST OF HUGH MURPHY AND CHRISTIAN BOWMAN.
This book is specially interesting, as being an account of the last execution by burning in England.
There is nothing uncommon in her story. Originally a servant, she married, but was deserted by her husband; she then lived with a man named Murphy, a coiner. Of course they were found out, tried, and condemned to death. The man was hanged, and the woman, according to the then law, was burned. Blackstone gives the following curious reason for this punishment:—"In treasons of every kind the punishment of the woman is the same, and different from that of men. For as the decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and public mangling their bodies, the sentence is, to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burned alive." The law was altered by 30 George III. c. 48 (1790), which provided that after June 5, 1790, women under this sentence should be hanged.
It must be borne in mind that the culprits were strangled before burning (Christian Bowman was hanging forty minutes); although, by the carelessness of the executioner, one woman, Katherine Hayes, was actually burned alive at Tyburn, November 3, 1726.