Elizabeth Martha Brown(e) was an ordinary woman of humble birth who worked as a servant. Not much is known about her, not even her date and place of birth. She became the last woman to be publicly hanged in Dorset, and is only remembered as the inspiration for Thomas Hardy's famous novel "Tess of the D'Urbervilles".

Elizabeth was nearly twenty years older than her husband, John Brown(e), and they had met when they were both servants together. It was claimed at the time that he had married her for money. They lived at Birdsmoorgate, near Beaminster in Dorset.

The marriage was problematic and she caught John in bed with another woman. A quarrel naturally ensued and later that day erupted into violence. She struck out at John and he replied by hitting her with his whip. This was the last straw for Elizabeth who retaliated by hitting him over the head with the wood chopping axe, smashing his skull and killing him.

She was arrested but claimed that her husband's death had been caused by being kicked in the head by a horse. The police did not believe this and thus she was charged with murder.

She came to trial at Dorchester Assizes, as Dorchester is the County town of Dorset. The jury did not believe the horse story either and brought back a guilty verdict. The mandatory death sentence was passed on her and she was taken to Dorchester prison to await her execution some three weeks later.

There were obvious mitigating circumstances which led to substantial agitation for a reprieve. Reprieves even for murder although rare, were by no means unknown at this time. There was however much public sympathy for her in view of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband. The Home Secretary however, refused a reprieve even in view of the evidence of obvious provocation, perhaps because Elizabeth had made the fatal mistake of maintaining, virtually to the last, the lie that her husband had died from a horse kick. (c.f. the case of Tracy Andrews in 1997, where she claimed that her boyfriend had been stabbed in a road rage attack, a story which she later retracted).

Elizabeth became "locked into" this lie as so many have before and since. Ultimately, in the condemned cell she confessed that she had killed him with the axe and therefore was responsible for his death and accepted her fate with great courage. Diminished responsibility was not a defence open to her in 1856, it would be another 101 years before it was recognised in English law.

The Sheriff of Dorset made the necessary preparations for her execution, appointing William Calcraft as the hangman. He was Britain's principal executioner from 1829 - 1874 - the longest serving hangman of all. He was noted for his "short drops" causing most of his victims to die a slow and agonising death.

Elizabeth's execution was set for 9 o'clock on the morning of Saturday 9th August 1856. Calcraft travelled to Dorchester by train and he and his assistant arrived at the prison the day before as required by the Home Office to make the necessary preparations.

Elizabeth would have been treated very well in the condemned cell where she would have been looked after by two matrons (female warders). Even then there was a strange dichotomy between the harsh sentences of the law, her treatment in the condemned cell, and her cruel and humiliating execution.

The gallows was erected outside the gates of Dorchester prison the evening before, on what is today the prison car park in North Square and was a very impressive affair.

A crowd of between 3 and 4,000 had gathered for, what was by then quite a rare event, the public hanging of a woman. To add to the public interest Elizabeth was an attractive woman, who looked younger than her years and had lovely hair. She was also incredibly brave in the face of death. So much so that her vicar regarded it as a sign of callousness. She had chosen a long, tight fitting thin black silk dress for her hanging.

At the prison gates she shook hands with the officials but declined to be driven to the place of execution in the prison van, even though it was raining. Instead she chose to walk from the prison to it. She walked up the first flight of eleven steps where William Calcraft, a forbidding figure in his black clothes and bushy white beard, pinioned her arms in front of her before leading her up the next flight of 19 steps, across a platform and on up the last flight of steps to the actual trap. Here Calcraft put the white hood over her head and the simple noose around her neck.

He then began to go down below the trap to withdraw the bolts (there was no lever in those days) when it was pointed out to him that he had not pinioned Elizabeth's legs. He returned to her and put a strap around her legs, outside of her dress to prevent it billowing up and exposing her as she hanged. (The Victorian preoccupation with decency!) While this was going on Elizabeth stood stoically on the gallows, supported by a male warder on each side, just waiting for her death. The rain made the hood damp and it clung to her features, giving her an almost statuesque appearance. It must also have made it hard for her to breath through the damp cloth.

Once again Calcraft went below and pulled the bolts thus releasing the trap doors. Elizabeth dropped through a distance of about a foot with a resounding thud. Death was certainly not instantaneous and she struggled some and her "body wheeled half round and back", according to Thomas Hardy, taking a few moments to loose consciousness, as the rope constricted the major blood vessels and put pressure on the nerves in her neck. She was left to hang for the regulation hour before being taken down and buried within the prison. Fortunately anatomisation of the body had been ended by law some 25 years previously.

Her execution caused a leading article in the Dorset County Chronicle advocating the abolition of the death penalty.

Thomas Hardy was boy of 16 when he went to watch this spectacle with a friend and was able to secure a good vantage point in a tree very close to the gallows. He noted "what a fine figure she showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain, and how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half round and back", after Calcraft had tied her dress close to her body. It made an impression on him that lasted until old age, he still wrote about the event in his eighties. It was to provide the inspiration and some of the matter for 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'. It seems possible that Hardy found something erotic about the execution and particularly her body and facial features through the tight dress and rain soaked hood. Charles Dickens who had also witness public hangings and campaigned strongly against them referred to the "fascination of the repulsive, something most of us have experienced."