A woman was strangled and burnt for coining in front of the Debtors door, Newgate, on the 10th of March, 1789. I believe this to be the last instance in which this old punishment was inflicted, at least in the metropolis. The burning part of the ceremony was abolished by the 30 Geo. III., c. 48., and death by hanging made the penalty for women in cases of high or petty treason. E. S. S. W.'s informants are wrong in supposing that the criminals were burnt whilst living. The law, indeed, prescribed it, but the practice was more humane. They were first strangled; although it sometimes happened that, through the bungling of the executioner, a criminal was actually burnt alive, as occurred in the celebrated case of Katherine Hayes, executed for the murder of her husband in 1726. The circumstances of this case are so remarkable, that, having referred to it, I am induced to recapitulate the chief of them, in the belief that they will interest your readers. Hayes, who was possessed of some little property, lodged with his wife Katherine in Tyburn, now Oxford Road. Mrs. Hayes prevailed upon two men, named Billings (who lodged in the house) and Wood, a friend of Hayes, to assist her in murdering her husband. To facilitate that object, Hayes was induced to drink the enormous quantity of seven bottles (at that time full quarts) of Mountain wine, besides other intoxicating drinks. After finishing the seventh bottle he fell on the floor, but soon after arose and threw himself on a bed. There, whilst in a state of stupefaction, he was despatched by Billings and Wood striking him on the head with a hatchet. The murderers then held council as to the best mode of concealing their crime, and it was determined that they should mutilate and dispose of the body. They cut off the head, Mrs. Hayes holding a pail to catch the blood; and she proposed that the head should be boiled until the flesh came from the skull. This advice was rejected on account of the time which the process suggested would occupy, and Billings and Wood carried the head in the pail (it was at night) to the Horseferry at Westminster, and there cast it into the Thames. On the following day the murderers separated the limbs from the body, and wrapping them, together with the trunk, in two blankets, carried them to Marylebone fields, and placed them in a pond. Hayes' head not having been carried away by the tide, as the murderers expected it would have been, was found floating at the Horseferry in the morning. The attention of the authorities was drawn to the circumstance, and the magistrates being of opinion that a murder had been committed, caused the head to be washed and the hair combed out, and then had it placed on a pole and exposed to public view in St. Margaret's churchyard, in the hope that it might lead to the discovery of the suspected crime. Great crowds of persons of all ranks flocked to St. Margaret's churchyard to see the head,