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Elizabeth
and Mary BRANCH
Classification: Murderers
Characteristics:
Torture
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
February 13, 1740
Date of birth:
Elizabeth, aged 67, and her daughter Mary, 24
Victim profile: Their maid, Jane Buttersworth, 13
Method of murder:
Beating
Location: Phillips
Norton, Somersetshire, England, United Kingdom
Status:
Executed
by hanging on May 3, 1740
Elizabeth Branch (1673–1740) and her
daughter Mary (1716–1740) were English murderers convicted of the
beating death of a servant-girl, Jane Buttersworth.
Elizabeth was born in Phillips Norton, Somersetshire, England. She
married a wealthy farmer and began mistreating the family's servants.
She tortured them and would force them to sleep outside when they
particularly irritated her. Her daughter, Mary, manifested the same
behavior toward the servants and was soon following in her mother's
footsteps in her maltreatment toward the help.
Jane
Buttersworth was singled out for a variety of cruelties as she was
considered to be too slow in completing her chores. On the day of her
death, the Branches beat her with broomsticks, stripped her naked, and
poured salt into her wounds. Eventually, their assaults on the girl
proved fatal.
A
milkmaid, Ann Somers, happened upon the scene of the crime and was
ordered to sleep with the dead girl's body. She panicked and ran to
the police at the earliest opportunity. Her employers were arrested
immediately.
Both
women were taken to Ovelchester where they were hanged.
References
Look For the Woman by Jay Robert Nash M.
Evans and Company, Inc. 1981. ISBN 087131367
Elizabeth Branch
Mary Branch
This vicious mother and daughter
pair were hanged in 1740 for the murder of a servant. Elizabeth Branch
was born in Phillips-Norton, in Somerset, and was cruel, even as a
child. She married a wealthy farmer and she soon began to beat their
servants on any pretext and making them sleep outside when it took her
fancy. It was little wonder that their daughter, Mary, grew up like
her mother.
Mr Branch eventually died leaving
Elizabeth and Mary quite a fortune. Once he was out of the way they
started abusing and torturing their servants with a vengeance. Jane
Butterworth was a rather slow-minded orphan and she became the focus
of the pair's manic cruelty, being beaten senseless at every
opportunity.
One day Jane had been too slow to
buy some yeast and the pair stripped the girl and beat her with
broomsticks and then poured salt into her wounds. Ann Somers, a
milkmaid, entered the farmhouse and found Jane lying in a pool of
blood while Elizabeth sat in front of the fire.
That night they ordered Ann to
sleep with the body of the dead girl. In the middle of the night the
pair decided that they ought to dispose of the body. They dragged the
body into a field where they buried it.
As can be imagined, Ann Somers did
not feel particularly secure with the couple and raced off to the
police the first time she got the chance. Mary and Elizabeth were
arrested.
They came up for trial in Taunton
in March 1740. The pair were condemned to death after the jury heard
Ann Somers' testimony. Word got to the local authorities that local
residents intended to "tear them apart while alive" so they were taken
to Ilchester to be executed.
On 31st March they were taken to
Gallows Field for their execution. Mrs Branch confessed her crime
while her 24-year-old daughter wept openly at her side. Both women
were left to hang for over an hour while a stream of clergymen
lectured the audience on the evils of beating servants. Apparently,
the crowd was not particularly interested in the sermons and was only
concerned with ensuring the pair were properly despatched.
Murder-uk.com
ELIZABETH AND MARY BRANCH
Mother and Daughter, executed on the 3rd of May, 1740, for murdering a
Girl
THESE cruel women were born at Philips Norton, in Somersetshire. The
mother was distinguished from her childhood by the cruelty of her
disposition. She married a farmer, named Branch, but the husband soon
found what an unfortunate choice he had made; for his wife no sooner
came into possession of her matrimonial power than she began to
exercise her tyranny on her servants, whom she treated with undeserved
and unaccountable cruelty, frequently denying them the common
necessaries of life, and sometimes turning them out of doors at night
in the midst of winter; but their wages in these cases were sent them
by Mr Branch, who was as remarkable for his humanity and justice as
his wife for the opposite qualities. Mary Branch, the daughter, was an
exact resemblance of her mother in every part of her diabolical
temper.
Mr Branch dying, and leaving an
estate of about three hundred pounds a year, he was no sooner buried
than all the servants quitted the family, determined not to live with
so tyrannical a mistress; and her character became so notorious that
she could obtain no servants but poor creatures who were put out by
the parish, or casual vagrants who strolled the country.
It is needless to
mention the particulars of the cruelties of this inhuman mother and
daughter to their other servants, at whom they used to throw plates,
knives and forks on any offence, real or supposed; we shall therefore
proceed to an account of their trial and execution for the murder of
Jane Buttersworth, a poor girl, who had been placed with them by the
parish officers.
At the assizes held at Taunton,
in Somersetshire, in March, 1740, Elizabeth Branch and Mary, her
daughter, were indicted for the wilful murder of Jane Buttersworth;
when the principal evidence against them was in substance as follows:
Ann Somers, the dairymaid, deposed that the deceased, having been sent
for some yeast, and staying longer than was necessary, excused herself
to her old mistress on her return by telling a lie; on which the
daughter struck her violently on the head with her fist, and pinched
her ears. Then both of them threw her on the ground, and the daughter
knelt on her neck, while the mother whipped her with twigs till the
blood ran on the ground, and the daughter, taking off one of the
girl's shoes, beat her with it in a cruel manner.
The deceased cried for mercy,
and after some struggle ran into the parlour, where they followed her
and beat her with broomsticks till she fell down senseless; after
which the daughter threw a pail of water on her, and used her with
other circumstances of cruelty too gross to mention. Somers now went
out to milk her cows, and on her return, at the expiration of
half-an-hour, found her mistress sitting by the fire and the girl
lying dead on the floor; but she observed that a clean cap had been
put on her head since she went out, and that the blood had run through
it. At night the body was privately buried.
This transaction, added to the
character of the mistress, having raised a suspicion in the
neighbourhood, a warrant was issued by the coroner to take up the
body, and an inquest being made into the cause of the girl's death, Mr
Salmon, a surgeon, declared that she had received several wounds,
almost any one of which would have proved mortal.
The jury found both prisoners
guilty, and they were sentenced to die. As the country people were
violently enraged against them, they were conducted to the place of
execution between three and four in the morning, attended only by the
jailer and about half-a-dozen people, lest they should have been torn
in pieces.
When they came to the spot, it
was found that the gibbet had been cut down; on which a carpenter was
sent for, who immediately put up another, and mother and daughter were
executed before six o'clock, to the disappointment of the country to
witness the death of two such unworthy wretches.
The Newgate Calendar -
Exclassics.com
BRANCH, Elizabeth and
Mary (England)
Elizabeth, aged 67,
and her daughter Mary, 24, were both charged with the cruel murder of
their maid, Jane Butterworth. A transcript of their trial, which took
place at Taunton, Somerset, in March 1740, reported that:
“It was obvious,
judging by the suspicions of their neighbours, that both the accused
had also committed other murders in the past. Mrs Branch’s husband
died under circumstances that led others who lived nearby to believe
she had poisoned him and they were convinced
that she had hanged her mother, after murdering her, to avoid an
investigation into the cause of the death. Human bones were also
discovered in a well near her [Elizabeth’s] farm, which were believed
to be those of one of her servant girls who disappeared and was never
heard from again.
With such a reputation
Mrs Branch found it difficult to get female staff in the locality and
when she was in need of one she went further afield and brought Jane
Butterfield from Bristol.
The young girl was
hardly in the house before the two women subjected her to a brutal
regime, and eventually beat her so Elizabeth Branch and her Daughter
Beating their Victim savagely that she died. The older woman had
Jane’s corpse buried secretly in the graveyard and might have escaped
blame, in spite of the complaint of her other maid, who had witnessed
the murder and had been forced to lie next to her in bed, if a strange
light had not been seen over the girl’s grave, by several persons.
This unearthly manifestation confirmed the neighbours’ suspicions, and
when the body was secretly removed at night, it was found by Mr
Salmon, a surgeon, to be covered with wounds and other marks of
violence.”
When the case was
first called, it was discovered that Mrs Branch had bribed some of the
jurors, and there was some delay before they could be replaced. The
trial lasted over six hours, and after a short consultation the jury
brought in a verdict of guilty. It was noticed that Mrs Branch’s
expression remained unchanged at their findings, but several times
kicked Mary Vigor, one of the prosecution witnesses, as she stood by
her at the bar while she was giving evidence. When sentence was passed
the next day, the condemned elder woman complained bitterly to the
court about the illegality of changing the jury, exclaiming that if
she and her daughter had been tried by the first jury, they would not
have been convicted.
Some time after they
had both been removed from the court, Mary Branch, realising what was
to happen to her, fainted, and when she was revived by a wardress her
mother cried, ‘Zounds, what are you going to do? Hadn’t she better die
like this than be hanged?’
During their
imprisonment Mrs Branch behaved sullenly and seemed more concerned by
the conditions under which they were confined rather than the welfare
of her soul, but her daughter told the gaoler, with whom, before the
trial, she had been allowed to take a walk past Ilchester churchyard,
that she would like to be buried there.
The women were
sentenced to die on 3 May 1740, Mrs Branch expressing a wish to be
hanged early in the morning before the expectedly large crowd of
spectators could assemble.
She got up early,
called her daughter and told her to get ready, ‘because if they didn’t
make haste, the mob would be in on them and they should not be hanged
in peace’. On being escorted from the gaol, Mrs Branch called out to a
passer-by: ‘I have forgotten my cloak and clogs; pray fetch them, lest
I should catch cold.’
When they reached the
execution site at about 6 a.m. it was found that one of the gallows’
uprights and the crosspiece had been cut down, probably by vandals
rather than by anyone who might have been in sympathy with the two
women. In order to get the ordeal over, Mrs Branch said she would be
prepared to be hanged from a nearby tree instead (as befitted her
name!) but a carpenter was sent for and a new gallows quickly
constructed and erected.
Giving her cloak and
purse to a friend, Elizabeth then helped the hangman to position the
noose around her daughter’s neck, afterwards asking him for a dram of
strong drink, but he refused, saying that she had already had a couple
of drinks earlier in the prison. After brief speeches, in which Mrs
Branch swore that she had never intended to kill the deceased and
begged for forgiveness, and her daughter Mary beseeched the crowd to
pray for her, the halters around their necks tightened as the drop was
operated. The bodies were allowed to hang for three-quarters of an
hour before being cut down and taken away to be interred in Ilchester
churchyard.
Horace Walpole, the
renowned eighteenth-century author, reported an appalling breach of
the law committed by those whose job was to uphold it! In 1742 he
wrote:
“There has lately been
the most shocking scene of murder imaginable; a arcel of drunken
constables took it into their heads to put the law into execution
against disorderly persons and so took up every woman they met, till
they had collected five- or six-and-twenty, all of whom they thrust
into St Martin’s lock-up [a small, temporary gaol] where they kept
them all night, with doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who
could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath
left, begging at least for water; one poor wretch said she had
eighteen pence on her and would gladly give it for a draught of water,
but in vain!
So well did they keep
them there, that in the morning four were found stifled to death, two
died soon after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way. Several of
them were beggars who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found
in the street, and others were honest labouring women.
One of the dead was a
poor washerwoman, big with child, who was returning home late from
washing.
One of the constables
has been arrested and others absconded, but I question if any of them
will suffer death; there is no tyranny the police do not exercise, no
villainy they do not partake. These same men broke into a bagnio [a
house of ill-repute] in Covent Garden and arrested a number of men,
among them Lord George Graham, and would have also thrust them into
the lock-up with the poor women, if they had not had more than
eighteen pence on them!”
Amazing True Stories
of Female Executions by Geoffrey Abbott
Jane Butterworth is beaten
by Elizabeth and Mary Branch.