Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Legends -- England -- Yorkshire; Yorkshire (England) -- Miscellanea
Though the prisoner behaved with her usual decorum during the time that
remained to her, and joined with apparent fervour in the customary
offices of devotion, she exhibited no compunction for crimes of which
she would not acknowledge herself to be guilty. She maintained her
caution and mystery to the last. On the day preceding her execution she
wrote a letter to her husband, in which she enclosed her wedding-ring,
with a request that it might be given to her daughter. In this letter
she lamented the disgrace she had brought upon her husband and family,
but declared her entire innocence of the crime laid to her charge, and
for which she was about to suffer, though she acknowledged--what,
indeed, she could not deny to her husband--that she had been guilty of
several frauds. "I have made my peace with my God, and am easy in mind.
To-morrow will end all here, and the Lord will care for me hereafter."
It will hardly be credited, though it is a certain fact, that this
unhappy woman was so addicted to fraud that even then she was incapable
of refraining from her trickery and deception. A young female prisoner
had, in her presence, expressed a wish to see her sweetheart. Mary
Bateman took her aside, and said that if she could procure a sum of
money to be made into a charm, and sewed into her stays, the young man
would be compelled to visit her. The simple girl complied, and Mary
Bateman having prepared a potent spell, it was bound round the breast
of the young woman. No sweetheart made his appearance, and the girl's
confidence beginning to waver, she unbound the charm to take out her
money, and found that it had vanished.
The circumstance having been reported to the Governor of York Castle,
where Mary Bateman and the girl were confined, part of the spoil was
refunded, and Mary Bateman directed to balance the account by giving to
the dupe some of her clothes. Exhortations and remonstrances failed to
move her to confess her crimes. At five o'clock on the morning of
Monday, March 20th, 1809, she was removed from her cell and from her
infant child, which lay sleeping on the bed, unconscious of the fate of
its wretched mother. She stopped and kissed it for the last time, but
without showing any emotion at having to leave it for ever. Every
possible effort, every religious influence was brought to bear on her to
make her confess, but in vain. At twelve o'clock she was led forth to
execution. On the scaffold she again denied her guilt, and with this
denial on her lips was launched into eternity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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