The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2Griffiths, Arthur
History
The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
she was in a state of insensibility when hanged.
Elizabeth Brownrigg was the wife of a plumber who carried on business in
Flower de Luce Court, Fleet St. She practised midwifery, and received
parish apprentices, whom she took to save the expense of keeping
servants. Two girls, victims of her cruel ill-usage, ran away, but a
third, Mary Clifford, bound to her by the parish of Whitefriars,
remained to endure still worse. Her inhuman mistress repeatedly beat
her, now with a hearth-broom, now with a horse-whip or a cane. The girl
was forced to lie at nights in a coal-hole, with no bed but a sack and
some straw. She was often nearly perished with cold. Once after a long
diet of bread and water, when nearly starved to death, she rashly broke
into a cupboard in search of food and was caught in the act. Mrs.
Brownrigg, to punish her, made her strip, and while she was naked
repeatedly beat her with the butt end of a whip. Then fastening a
jack-chain around her neck she drew it as tight as possible without
strangling, and sent her back to the coal-hole with her hands tied
behind her back. Mrs. Brownrigg’s son vied with his mother in
ill-treating the apprentices, and when the mistress was tired of
horsewhipping the lad continued the savage punishment. When Mary
Clifford complained to a French lodger of the barbarity she experienced,
Mrs. Brownrigg flew at her and cut her tongue in two places with a pair
of scissors. Other apprentices were equally ill-used, and they were all
covered with wounds and bruises from the cruel flagellations they
received.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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