1724: Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson

ExecutedToday.com ^ | September 2, 2008 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

Allegedly on this date in 1724, a young woman was hanged at Edinburgh’s Grassmarket for concealing her pregnancy.

Any number of details in this horrible/wonderful story are shaky, including the date: some sources make it 1728, a few say 1723, and only a handful attest a specific calendar date. Nobody seems to doubt the tale in the main, however — and it’s certainly excellent enough lore to deserve even a heavily asterisked entry.

Deserted by her husband, young Maggie Dickson took lodgings at an inn in exchange for work, and became pregnant by either the innkeeper or his son. (Again — details in the various sources available read like a game of telephone.) Since single* pregnant working-class women had about as many employment options as birth control options, Maggie kept quiet about her condition in the interest of keeping her job...

[Deaf Smith]

So this was the precident for the term Double Jeapordy?

That they could not hang her twice?

[CheshireTheCat]

I think it was probably more the case that people may have felt that divine providence was saying she wasn’t guilty of killing the child and that he or she was born dead and that perhaps Maggie had no choice in the conception to boot.

[jocon307]

“That they could not hang her twice?”

Well, indeed she had been hanged. But don’t they say: hanged by the neck until dead?

But, even if that was the case I agree that the “people” are entitled to a change of heart.

The quality of Mercy is not strained.