Sometimes a great number of persons were made to touch in turn the dead body, hoping thus to discover the murderer. It has been said that few women were taught to write in colonial days, and that those few wrote so ill their letters could scarce be read. I have seen a goodly number of letters written by women in those times, and the handwriting is comparatively as good as that of their husbands and brothers. Margaret Winthrop wrote with precision and elegance. A letter of Anne Winthrop’s dated 1737 is clear, regular, and beautiful. Mary Higginson’s writing is fair, and Elizabeth Cushing’s irregular and uncertain, as if of infrequent occurrence. Elizabeth Corwin’s is clear, though irregular; Mehitable Parkman’s more careless and wavering; all are easily read. But the most beautiful old writing I have ever seen,--elegant, regular, wonderfully clear and well-proportioned, was written by the hand of a woman,--a criminal, a condemned murderer, Elizabeth Attwood, who was executed in 1720 for the murder of her infant child. The letter was written from “Ipswitch Gole in Bonds” to Cotton Mather, and is a most pathetic and intelligent appeal for his interference to save her life. The beauty and simplicity of her language, the force and directness of her expressions, her firm denial of the crime, her calm religious assurance, are most touching to read, even after the lapse of centuries, and make one wonder that any one--magistrate or priest,--even Cotton Mather--could doubt her innocence. But she was hanged before a vast concourse of eager people, and was declared most impenitent and bold in her denial of her guilt; and it was brought up against her, as a most hardened brazenry, that to cheat the hangman (who always took as handsel of his victim the garments in which she was “turned off”), she appeared in her worst attire, and announced that he would get but a sorry suit from her. I do not know the estate in life of Elizabeth Attwood, but it could not have been mean, for her letter shows great refinement. CHAPTER IV. BOSTON NEIGHBORS. Accounts of isolated figures are often more interesting than chapters of general history, and biographies more attractive than state records, because more petty details of vivid human interest can be learned; so, in order to present clearly a picture of the social life of women in the earliest days of New England, I give a description of a group of women, contiguous in residence, and contemporary in life, rather than an account of some special dame of dignity or note; and I call this group Boston Neighbors.