And yet she lives

The Flemish kitchenmaid, after Gerrit Dou. Etching and engraving. British Museum, London

Describes miscarriage and death by hanging 

Anne Greene was 22 years old when she was hanged for the crime of infanticide after she miscarried a pregnancy. She was working as a domestic servant in the manor of a member of the gentry and fell pregnant by her employer’s grandson, circumstances which suggest that perhaps her harsh sentence was influenced by the powerful family trying to protect their interests. However the law under which she was prosecuted (the Infanticide Statue of 1624) led to many such convictions, and probably executions, of women who had miscarried. Anne’s name is still known today not because her fate was uniquely unjust, but because she survived it.

Anne was convicted and hanged in 1650 in Oxfordshire. One would like to think that such punitive and sexist laws belong in the distant past, but unfortunately similar prosecutions continue today. When I first read Anne’s story it made me think of women who have been prosecuted for miscarrying in the United States since Roe v. Wade was overturned (I had heard of the high profile case of Brittany Watts). In the year after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, over 200 people were prosecuted in the US for conduct relating to their pregnancies - the highest number documented in a single year. However even before 2022 this has been a significant issue in the US, with prosecutions trending upwards since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Like the law under which Anne Greene was charged, the vast majority of these charges were for offenses which don’t require proof that the fetus or infant was harmed for conviction. Under the Infanticide Statute of 1624, a woman who concealed a miscarriage or stillbirth of a child outside of wedlock was assumed to be guilty of infanticide, unless someone else had witnessed that there was no live birth. Of course this law would not have been applied equally, with more suspicion being placed on working-class women.

In modern times the criminalisation of abortion is the central issue behind this scrutiny of people who lose pregnancies. However in Anne’s time abortion wasn’t even illegal. Self-aborting a pregnancy before quickening (when the fetus starts to move at around 20 weeks) was not considered to be a legal matter at all. Abortion wasn’t codified as an offense in English law until 1803, and even then only applied after quickening (the distinction between a pregnancy being quick or not was removed in 1837). The moral issues behind the laws of Anne’s time were fornication (sex between unmarried people), adultery (sex outside of marriage) and bastardy (conceiving a child with someone you’re not married to). Which nowadays amounts to a pretty eventful Tuesday night, but nothing illegal or necessarily immoral. It’s hard for me to follow the logic of effectively criminalising miscarriage to reduce the economic burden of unwed mothers and bastard children on parishes. I guess it was a reaction to the perceived threat of women having children out of wedlock and killing them to avoid revealing who the father was. Maybe they thought that if that option was off the cards, then women wouldn’t risk having sex before marriage. But realistically female servants would have been walking a fine line trying to earn a living while being subject to sexual harassment and assault by their employers with no legal recourse. It’s hard to understand from a modern point of view. Either way though, whether it’s abortion or bastardy it all amounts to controlling and punishing women. Tangentially, the Commonwealth (Adultery) Act of 1650 made it punishable by death if a married woman had sex with someone other than her husband. Conveniently if a married man did the same thing it was classed as the lesser crime of fornication, which was only punishable by a 3 month prison sentence.

Anyway before I went into a deep dive on the legal context of mid-17th century England, I read the story of Anne Greene’s death and resurrection, which at first sounded miraculous. Anne was described as “of a middle stature, strong, fleshie, and of an indifferent good feature”. She worked as a scullery maid at Duns Tew manor, the home of Sir Thomas Reade. She was “often sollicited by faire promises and other amorous enticements of Mr Jeffery Read, Grand-child to the said Sir Thomas, a youth of about 16 or 17 years of age, but of a forward growth and stature" and "at last contented to satisfy his unlawful pleasure.” I don’t think they really did age-gap discourse back then, but I found it interesting that Jeffery’s father (also named Thomas Reade) married a woman 6 years older than him without his father’s consent, at the age of 17. Thomas Reade (Jeffery’s father) was somewhat estranged from Sir Thomas, and died soon after his son’s birth. Anne became pregnant from her affair with the forward and fatherless Jeffery. It’s plausible that she didn’t know she was pregnant, as she would have missed only 2-3 periods and then started bleeding after doing some heavy physical labour stirring a vat of malt. A month after that she miscarried in the privy, which was somehow discovered. The fetus was smaller than a hand-span and definitely not viable. Nevertheless Anne was sent to Oxford jail where she spent 3 weeks in wretched conditions “in continual affrights and terrors” awaiting trial. She was convicted of infanticide and condemned to death by an Assize Court with her execution set for the following day.

On Saturday 14th December, Anne was brought to the place of execution. She took off her bodice and coat and bequeathed them to her mother. She sang a Psalm and her last words were in defense of herself, protesting her innocence and “touched on the lewdness of the family wherein she had lately lived”. She had barely finished what she was saying before she was pushed off the ladder and hanged by the neck for nearly half an hour. Some of her friends or family hung onto her legs and jerked her down to end her pain sooner, until the under-sheriff forbade them to continue for fear of breaking the rope. When everyone thought she was dead she was cut down, put in a coffin and taken to a private house where some physicians were to dissect her body for science. At the house the coffin was opened and she was observed to breathe. An unidentified man nearby stomped on her chest and stomach as hard as he could, thinking to put her out of her misery. But when the physicians arrived at 9am, her breath still rattled.

I’m not sure if it’s possible to disentangle altruistic motivations from professional curiosity, but the physicians took it in their stride that there would be no dissection that day and devoted themselves to Anne’s recovery. They prised open her teeth and administered cordial, rubbed her extremities, let blood and applied ligatures. She was placed in a warm bed and anointed with oils. A plaster was applied to her chest and she was given a smoke enema (possibly tobacco? How's that for a bum puff). At this stage she was still unresponsive, but had moved her eyelids. The physicians persuaded an unnamed woman to get into bed with her and rub her gently. During this time Anne was granted a reprieve by the Governor until a full pardon could be obtained. They saw the hand of God in her preservation. The physicians left Anne for the night and two hours later she began to talk. From my reading of the source material it sounds like she became lucid while under the care of the woman who was left in bed with her, possibly a fellow-servant. Her first words were the same as her last, protesting her innocence of the crime she had been hanged for. When the physicians arrived the next morning she was able to speak and answer questions. She complained of her throat and thirst, refusing warm beer but taking some cold. By noon she felt extreme soreness around her chest and sides (thanks stomping guy!) and she developed terrible bruising over the next few days. By 9pm she talked and laughed merrily. The next day they asked her what she remembered, and thankfully her last memory was giving the clothing to her mother and hearing someone say that they were coming to take her now. Two weeks later she recalled seeing the executioner, but didn’t remember anything else. She also didn’t recall anything other-worldly from when she was near death, although people were keen to ask her about this.

Within the space of a month Anne made a full recovery. People crowded in to see her until the number became too disruptive and a guard was placed at the door. Eminent persons were still allowed and it was suggested that they make a donation towards Anne’s care. Many pounds were raised (collected at the door by Anne’s father), which covered her medical expenses and the legal expenses to get her pardon. Anne went to go and live with her friends in the country, taking the coffin with her as a trophy. She married and had 3 children, living for another 15 years. Her former boss Sir Thomas died within 3 days of Anne’s execution, shortly after being told that she would probably survive. Sir Thomas left his grandson Jeffery Reade a farm in Northampton. Some suggest that he was set to inherit more, but was cut out as punishment for the scandal. Anne became famous through pamphlets telling her story, including Newes from the Dead, which was the main source for this. Newes comprises of a chapter recounting the facts of Anne’s story and a number of poetic tributes in French, Latin and English. I read a little of the poetry but none of it was as evocative as Anne “talking and laughing merrily” the day after her execution, denouncing the lewdness of her chief accuser’s family as she was about to be hanged, and taking her coffin with her as a souvenir as she went off to live a happy life. Other pamphlets sensationalised Anne’s story, crediting her with long and sanctimonious speeches at the point of revival and claiming that she had visions of the next world while she was unconscious. Her preservation was understood to be an intervention from God to prove her innocence, and if anyone deserved that Anne certainly did. But from a secular point of view, why did Anne survive?

It turns out that it was not vanishingly rare to survive hanging back then. Hanging from a drop to break the neck was not done until the latter half of the 19th century. Before then it was possible to survive, perhaps if the knot was poorly positioned. In fact only 8 years later another woman, Elizabeth Russell, was hanged for the same crime as Anne and was also revived by physicians who were expecting to dissect her body. Sadly this time the hand of God was not seen and the town bailiffs abducted her in the night and lynched her. The townswomen were “exceedingly enraged at it”, cutting down the tree she was hanged from and cussing the bailiff who was chiefly responsible whenever he passed in the streets. Another reason Anne may have survived is the cold winter weather and her lack of outerwear lowering her body temperature. This may have helped protect her brain and avoid permanent injury to her central nervous system. It’s also possible that the “lusty fellow” stomping on her chest acted like a version of CPR, restoring the flagging circulation to her heart (thanks stomping guy!).

Anyway I was really just looking for a cool story about a woman dying and coming back to life and this took me in some interesting directions. If you want to read further some of the reference material is public domain and for the rest, libgen is praxaaaas. Happy Easter!

Hooper, Mary. Newes from the Dead. Roaring Brook Press, 2010.
[This is a fictionalised re-telling partly from Anne’s point of view, which contains a bit of dramatic license and a lot of plausible embellishment. It’s quite a good read, but leaves out my favourite parts!]

Watkins, Richard. Newes from the Dead, or a true and exact narration of the miraculous deliverance of Anne Greene. Leonard Lichfield, 1651. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Newes_from_the_Dead/Newes_from_the_Dead

Mandelbrote, Scott. "William Petty and Anne Greene: Medical and Political Reform in Commonwealth Oxford." The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000. Routledge, 2017. 125-149.

Wood, Anthony. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood: Antiquary, of Oxford, 1632-1695, Described by Himself. Vol. 19. Oxford historical society, at the Clarendon Press, 1900.

Breathnach CS, Moynihan JB. Intensive care 1650: the revival of Anne Greene (c. 1628–59). Journal of Medical Biography. 2009;17(1):35-38. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1258/jmb.2007.007041

Spivack, Carla. "To bring down the flowers: the cultural context of abortion law in early modern England." Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 14 (2007).
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/wmjowl/article/1042/&path_info=jowl14_no1_p107_spivack.pdf

Sir Thomas Reade genealogy
https://www.geni.com/people/Sir-Thomas-Reade-Knt-of-Barton-Court/6000000002766794977

Adultery Act 1650
https://engole.info/commonwealth-adultery-act-1650

Baldwin, Robert. “Losing a pregnancy could land you in jail in post-Roe America”. npr.org, 3rd July 2022.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/03/1109015302/abortion-prosecuting-pregnancy-loss

Bach, Wendy A., and Madalyn K. Wasilczuk. "Pregnancy as a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs." (2024).
https://www.pregnancyjusticeus.org/resources/pregnancy-as-a-crime-a-preliminary-report-on-the-first-year-after-dobbs/

Tobacco enema, yea or nay? Sound off below Purgies!