"About a quarter of an hour after the platform had dropped, the female convicted" (Phoebe Harris, convicted of counterfeiting the coin called shillings) "was led by two officers of justice from Newgate to a stake fixed in the ground about midway between the scaffold and the pump. The stake was about eleven feet high, and, near the top of it was inserted a curved piece of iron, to which the end of the halter was tied. The prisoner stood on a low stool, which, after the ordinary had prayed with her a short time, being taken away, she was suspended by the neck (her feet being scarcely more than twelve or fourteen inches from the pavement). Soon after the signs of life had ceased, two cart-loads of fagots were placed round her and set on fire; the flames presently burning the halter, the convict fell a few inches, and was then sustained by an iron chain passed over her chest and affixed to the stake. Some scattered remains of the body were perceptible in the fire at half-past ten o'clock. The fire had not completely burnt out at twelve o'clock." The latest instance on record is that of Christian Murphy, _alias_ Bowman, who was burnt on March 18th, 1789, for coining. The barbarous laws which permitted such repugnant exhibitions were repealed by the 30th George III., cap. 48, which provided that, after the 5th of June, 1790, women were to suffer hanging, as in the case of men. FOOTNOTES: [23] Glyde's "New Suffolk Garland," 1866. Boiling to Death. In the year 1531, when Henry VIII. was king, an act was passed for boiling poisoners to death. The preamble of the statute states that one Richard Roose or Coke, a cook, by putting poison in some food intended for the household of the Bishop of Rochester, and for the poor of the parish in which his lordship's palace was situated in Lambeth Marsh, occasioned the death of a man and a woman, and the serious illness of several others. He was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be boiled to death, without benefit of clergy, that is, that no abatement of the sentence was to be made on account of his ecclesiastical connection, nor to be allowed any indemnity such as was commonly the privilege of clerical offenders. He was publicly boiled to death at Smithfield, and the act ordained that all manner of poisoners should meet with the same doom henceforth. A maid-servant, for poisoning her mistress, was, in 1531, boiled to death in the market-place of King's Lynn. Another instance of a servant poisoning the persons with whom she lived was Margaret Davy, who perished at Smithfield, in 1542. This cruel law did not remain long on the Statute Books; shortly after the death of Henry VIII., and in the reign of the next king, Edward VI., it was, in 1547 repealed. The punishment of boiling alive was by no means uncommon before the enactment of Henry VIII., both in England and on the Continent. Beheading.