Billings shortly did the same; but Mrs. Hayes obstinately refused to admit her guilt. This atrocious creature was for the moment the centre of interest; numbers visited her in Newgate, and sought to learn her reasons for committing so dreadful a crime; but she gave different and evasive answers to all. At her trial she pleaded hard to be exempted from the penalty of petty treason, which was at that time burning, alleging that she was not guilty of striking the fatal blow. The crime of petty treason was established when any person out of malice took away the life of another to whom he or she owed special obedience—as when a servant killed his master, a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastic his superior. The wife's accomplices in the murder of a husband were not deemed guilty of petty treason. She was told the law must take its course. Billings and Wood hoped they might not be hung in chains, but received no answer. Wood actually died in prison before execution; Billings suffered at Tyburn, and was hung in chains near the pond in Marylebone. Mrs. Hayes tried to destroy herself, but failed, and was literally burnt alive. The fire reaching the hands of the hangman, he let go the rope by which she was to have been strangled, and the flames slowly consumed her, as she pushed the blazing fagots from her, and rent the air with her agonized cries. Her execution, which took place on 9th May, 1726, was not the last of its kind. In November, 1750, Amy Hutchinson was burnt at Ely, after a conviction of petty treason, having poisoned a husband newly married, whom she had taken to spite a truant lover. In 1767, again, Ann Sowerly underwent the same awful sentence at York. She also had poisoned her husband. Last of all, on the 10th March, 1788, a woman was burnt before the debtors' door of Newgate. Having been tied to a stake and seated on a stool, the stool was withdrawn and she was strangled. After that she was burnt. Her offence was coining. In the following year, 1789, an act was passed which abolished this cruel custom of burning women for petty treason.