highway robbery.] They were brought upon the scaffold, about
half an hour after seven, and _turned off_ about a quarter past
eight. The woman for coining was brought out after the rest were
turned off, and fixed to a stake and burnt; being first
strangled by the stool being taken from under her."

This is the execution at which I was present; the number of those who
suffered, and the burning of the female, attracted a very great crowd.
Eight of the malefactors suffered on the scaffold, then known as "the
new drop." After they were suspended, the woman, in a white dress, was
brought out of Newgate alone; and after some time spent in devotion, was
hung on the projecting arm of a low gibbet, fixed at a little distance
from the scaffold. After the lapse of a sufficient time to extinguish
life, faggots were piled around her, and over her head, so that her
person was completely covered: fire was then set to the pile, and the
woman was consumed to ashes.

In the following year, 1790, I heard sentence passed in the Criminal
Court, in the Old Bailey, upon other persons convicted of coining: one
of them was a female. The sentence upon her was, that she should be
"drawn to the place of execution, and there burnt with fire till she was
dead."

The case of this unfortunate woman, and the cruel state of the law in
regard to females, then attracted attention. On the 10th of May, 1790,
Sir Benjamin Hammett, in his place in the House of Commons, called the
attention of that House to the then state of the law. He mentioned that
it had been his official duty to attend on the melancholy occasion of
the burning of the female in the preceding year (it is understood he was
then one of the sheriffs of London), he moved for leave to bring in a