Catherine Murphy (counterfeiter)
Catherine Murphy (died March 18, 1789) was an English counterfeiter, the last woman to be officially sentenced and executed by the method of burning in England and Great Britain.
Catherine Murphy, along with several co-defendants, including her husband, was charged with coining in London, judged guilty and sentenced to death. She was executed at Newgate prison on March 18, 1789, for coining. Her co-defendants, including her husband, were executed at the same time by hanging, but as a woman, the law provided that Murphy should be burnt at the stake.
She was brought out past the hanging bodies of eight men and made to stand on a foot high, 10-inch-square platform in front of the stake. She was secured to the stake with ropes and an iron ring. When she finished her prayers, executioner William Brunskill piled faggots of straw around the stake and lit them. According to testimony given by Sir Benjamin Hammett, then Sheriff of London, he gave instructions that she should be strangled before being burned.[1] She was, reportedly, tied with one rope around her neck, after which the platform was removed from under her feet and 30 minutes passed before the fire was lit, and thus, she was not actually burned alive. Whatever the case, Catherine Murphy remains the last person to have been sentenced and at least officially executed by the method of burning. In part through the efforts of Sir Benjamin Hammett, who took the execution of Murphy as an example when he criticised the execution of burning, burning as a method of execution was abolished the next year, by the Treason Act 1790.[1]
