In 1879, several English newspapers remarked on how the ‘sayings and doings’ of condemned criminals had been more fully reported in the past, adding to readers’ knowledge of their psychology, although also ‘ministering to the morbid tastes of the public’. The newspapers put this change in how executions were reported down to modernity – the more civilised editors, reporters, and readers of this time did not indulge in such trivia, and did nothing to educate; therefore, the decreased detail in such reporting was a sign of progress. What the press failed to note, however, was that the change was actually more due to the move from public executions to private; the public nature of executions had also enabled some of the detail of these to be reported in a way that private hangings weren’t. Private hangings were of less interest to the press, because there was less opportunity to record the trivia.

The first-hand reports of public hangings were more sympathetic in tone, a sympathy gained from the graphic nature of public hangings, whereby the detail of suffering could be seen and not avoided. Once private hangings were brought in, whereby women were killed behind prison walls, unseen by spectators and reporters, coverage became more distanced from the individual experience, and therefore sympathy is less in evidence. In addition, the move from public to private hangings had a negative impact on the press, with the fuller, but more factual reporting, of hangings being replaced by more sensational articles.

Let’s use the example of Mary Sheming. Mary was executed at Suffolk on 11 January 1845, after being found guilty of murdering her grandson, John – the illegitimate son of her daughter Caroline. Mary was a middle-aged mother, married to an agricultural labourer and living in Martlesham; she had been convicted of poisoning the little boy with arsenic while Caroline was at work one day in the summer of 1844.

Press coverage of her execution went beyond the local area, beyond East Anglia, and as far as Ireland. There was a blow-by-blow account of her last minutes ‘when the executioner attempted to pinion her arms, she complained, in a firm tone, that he hurt her wrists, and begged hard that he would not pull the cap over her face so as to prevent her breathing the air’. The account suggests a woman trying to maintain some individual agency even with her last breaths, negotiating with her executioner the usual routines of being brought to the noose.

Her perceived lack of emotion was recorded in sympathetic terms; it was noted that ‘she belonged to a very bad family, her brother some years ago having been implicated in a murder, and he was eventually transported for life. She herself is stated, especially in early life, to have been an abandoned character.’ Therefore, her actions appear to have been, at least partially, excused on the ground of her own problematic background, and a lack of a stable, law-abiding family – despite the one mention of her attempting to blame her offence on her own daughter.

This account was gleaned from the Dublin-based Saunder’s News-Letter. Saunder’s, presumably, obtained the story either from an English-based correspondent or, more likely, and especially given the week between the execution and publication of its story, from an account in an English publication, in an example of Victorian cut-and-paste journalism. However, Saunder’s News-Letter was regarded for its unusually neutral journalism, and so the balanced reporting of Mary Sheming – noting both her attempts to shift blame, but also her neglected upbringing – reflected its own approach to journalism.

This was not the case with a more local newspaper’s report into Sheming’s execution. The Cambridge Independent Press started by recording that Mary had been convicted of murdering her grandchild – stressing the abhorrence of this family act – and wrote, ‘Her demeanour during her incarceration was such as to revolt the feelings of her attendants.’ This ‘revolting’ attitude referred to her attempts to accuse her daughters, Elizabeth and Matilda, of the crime, and her insistence on her innocence was treated as a negative, along with her over-confident comment that ‘she knew they would never hang her’. Yet even this harsher report stressed the love and continuing support offered to Mary by her family, including Matilda, the daughter she was said to have accused:

She had a last interview with her husband and all her children. The meeting, strange as it may seem, was particularly affectionate on all sides; she manifested great emotion when she saw her daughter Caroline, with whom she exchanged forgiveness… The parting between her and Matilda was extremely painful; the shrieks of the latter were heard all over the prison upon being separated from her mother, who…appeared to pray heartily for her child’s future welfare.’

The account is notable for its reference to the affection between Mary and her daughter, Caroline: after all, Mary had been convicted of murdering Caroline’s young son. This suggests a possible collusion between the women – one account of Mary’s trial heard that she had frequently been ‘in great distress’ and had complained of the cost of keeping ‘her daughter’s children’ financially. She had told a neighbour that ‘If I do not soon receive some relief, we must all go to the union workhouse.’ She, and her husband, were struggling to maintain this illegitimate child, and in light of this, perhaps Caroline had made an awful decision about what to do – but this was, then, a remarkable forgiveness on the part of Caroline, if she had not been involved in her mother’s actions, or perhaps, even, a belief that her mother was, as she herself maintained, innocent of the offence. It was not commented on by the paper despite the acknowledgement that the family’s affection may be regarded by some as ‘strange’. It does, though, provide another sympathetic portrayal of the condemned woman, loved by her family.

The Cambridge Independent Press’s account was very detailed, consisting of virtually a minute-by-minute account of Mary’s last 24 hours. The article built up a picture of life in the gaol, the shrieks of Mary’s daughter echoing around the prison, and their effect on others nearby. This went beyond the usual phrasing of a sad procession to the noose, the prayers being read, and the ‘firm’ tread of the prisoner. Speech was regularly recorded; Mary exclaimed ‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ several times, and sighed deeply. Unlike the Irish account, there was no mention of Mary asking the executioner to not pinion her too tightly; instead, there was a comment that, after being pinioned, ‘as she was going up the steps a slight impediment arose from her gown getting entangled, and she contrived partially to shift the cap from her face’. The two accounts appeared, therefore, to be detailed, but partial, eye-witness accounts. The Cambridge account was very intimate, focusing on the relationship between Mary and her children, and Mary and her executioner; it was only in the last short paragraph that it becomes obvious that this was, in fact, a very public event – as ‘the execution was witnessed by about 5,000 or 6,000 people, many of whom had come from considerable distances’.

The coverage of Mary Sheming’s case devoted the majority of its words to her execution and its immediate hours. The trial and conviction itself garnered fewer column inches. The coverage of her execution mentioned her age and demeanour, but the focus was on her family. Reports of the execution itself included minor details that could have only been taken from eye-witnesses, and the reports were individual in their nature, with different newspapers picking up on different details. The public nature of the hanging enabled the press to construct quite different accounts of the event, as there was plenty of information available for them to choose to use or not use. This would not be the case once private hangings replaced their public predecessors.