Cambridgeshire Murders Read Free Page B

receive a summons were John Hammant, John Clark, John Stona, William Benning, William Hawk, Thomas Boon, Ann Baggerley and Alice Setchells, and that failure to appear in court ‘and there give such evidence as one knoweth against Amey Hutchinson’ would result in a £20 fine being issued upon the individual and their heirs. Of course £20 would have been a vast sum of money and these witnesses would have taken their duty very seriously.
    Prudence Watson elaborated on her previous statement and claimed that Amy did not care about her husband, would like to ‘get shot of him’ and ‘that she didst not go to bed without taking a knife along with her’. Prudence also named Thomas Reed, butcher, as a regular visitor to Amy’s house, although she only said that he had attempted to get in and made no mention of reports that he had moved in after John Hutchinson’s death. Strangely, Thomas Reed was not called to give evidence.
    Nor do there appear to be any surviving copies of Amy’s own statements or the numerous appeals that were said to have taken place.
    Amy was arrested and charged with petit (petty) treason, which was essentially the same as murder, but was considered to be more serious because the murderer was in a position of trust in relation to the victim. Petit treason applied to the murder by a woman of her husband or a servant of his master or a clergyman of his superior: in all these cases the victims were considered to be the killer’s superiors in law. In the 1750s William Blackstone wrote the following in his Commentaries on the Laws of England : ‘The punishment of petit treason in a man was to be drawn and hanged, and in a woman to be drawn and burnt’ and later in the same publication that this ‘was the usual punishment for all sorts of treasons committed by those of the female sex’.
    Burning at the stake was abolished in 1790. From 1700 until this date women who were sentenced to be burned were strangled with a rope first. However, in several instances this was attempted only as the fire was kindling, the result being that the fire often started burning the unfortunate condemned before the executioner could strangle her. The last time a woman had been burnt at the stake in Ely was when Mary Bird had been executed for petit treason on 1 July 1737.
    The final surviving document on the Amy Hutchinson case from the Ely Diocese Records is dated 10 October 1749, almost a year later than the other statements; it is the verdict from a trial said to have lasted for four hours at which Amy always protested her innocence. It concludes:
    The said John Hutchinson not in the least suspecting any poison to have been mixed or compounded with the said potion but believing the said potion to be wholesome . . . by which taking and swallowing the said potion so as aforesaid compounded mixed vitiated and infected with the said poison called Arsenick the said John Hutchinson then and there became sick and greatly distempered in his body of which sickness and distemper the said John Hutchinson from the aforesaid fourteenth day of October in the year aforesaid until the fifteenth day of the same month of October did languish and languishing did live on which said fifteenth day of October died.
    And so the jurors upon their oaths do say that the said Amey Hutchinson the said John Hutchinson her late husband in manner and form aforesaid feloniously, traitorously, wilfully and of her malice aforethought did poison kill and murder against the law of our said Lord the King his Crown and Dignity.
    Ely Assizes were held only once each year, and while awaiting trial Amy was held in the Ely Gaol (now Ely Museum). The assizes were regarded as a great social event and attracted large crowds. Many assize towns in the shire counties had designated ‘hanging days’, often market days to ensure the biggest crowd: the spectacle of the execution was intended to deter as many as