ing
usually allowed to such traitors as are condemned to be drawn, and there
being very few instances (and those accidental and by negligence) of any
persons being disemboweled or burnt till previously deprived of
sensation by strangling."

We gather from the annals of King's Lynn that, in the year 1515, a woman
was burnt in the market-place for the murder of her husband. Twenty
years later, a Dutchman was burnt for reputed heresy. In the same town,
in 1590, Margaret Read was burnt for witchcraft. Eight years later, a
woman was executed for witchcraft, and in the year 1616, another woman
suffered death for the same crime. In 1791, at King's Lynn, the landlady
of a public-house was murdered by a man let into the house at the dead
of night by a servant girl. The man was hanged for committing the
crime, and the girl was burnt at the stake for assisting the murderer to
enter the dwelling.

There is an account of a burning at Lincoln, in 1722. Eleanor Elsom was
condemned to death for the murder of her husband, and was ordered to be
burnt at the stake. She was clothed in a cloth, "made like a shift,"
saturated with tar, and her limbs were also smeared with the same
inflammable substance, while a tarred bonnet had been placed on her
head. She was brought out of the prison barefoot, and, being put on a
hurdle, was drawn on a sledge to the place of execution near the
gallows. Upon arrival, some time was passed in prayer, after which the
executioner placed her on a tar barrel, a height of three feet, against
the stake. A rope ran through a pulley in the stake, and was placed
around her neck, she herself fixing it with her hands. Three irons also
held her body to the stake, and the rope being pulled tight, the tar
barrel was taken aside and the fire lighted. The details in the "Lincoln
Date Book" state that she was probably quite dead before the fire
reached her, as the executioner pulled upon the rope several times
whilst the irons were being fixed. The body was seen amid the flames
for nearly half-an-hour, though, through the dryness of the wood and the
quantity of tar, the fire was exceedingly fierce.

An instance in which the negligence of the executioner caused death to
be unnecessarily prolonged is found in the case of Catherine Hayes, who
was executed at Tyburn, November 3rd, 1726, for the murder of her
husband. She was being strangled in the accustomed manner, but the fire
scorching the hands of the executioner, he rela