It was the 9th of August 1856: the weather was sombre enveloping Dorchester in drizzle, perhaps anticipating, but unable to stop “several thousand” people of the town and thereabouts from congregating to witness the awful event to take place there that morning.
Christened Elizabeth Martha Clark the daughter of John and Elizabeth Clark at a simple ceremony in St.James’ church Allington on the 22nd of July 1802 at the end of which the rector John Blessed entered her name in the church registers to confirm her entry in to the Church. Who could possibly have foreseen the ordeal that her life was to be and the horrors she was to face at the end of it?
Her father John Clark was an agricultural labourer surviving on a meagre income. Elizabeth, would have quickly learnt to help her parents with the family chores. Childhood would have been short.
Martha’s confession made in Dorchester Prison 7 August 1856 before The Governor and the Prison Chaplain the Rev, Dacre Clemetson.
“My husband, John Anthony Brown, came home on Sunday morning, the 6th of July at two o’clock, in liquor, and was sick. He had no hat on. I asked him what he had done with his hat. He abused me, and said “What is that to you? Damn you!” He then asked for some cold tea. I said I had none, but would make him some warm. His answer was “Drink it yourself and be damned.” I then said, “What makes you so cross? Have you been to Mary Davis’s?”
He then kicked out the bottom of the chair on which I had been sitting, and we continued quarrelling until 3 o’clock, when he struck me a severe blow on the side of the head, which confused me so much I was obliged to sit down.
He then said (supper being on the table at the time) “Eat it yourself and be damned,” and reached down from the mantelpiece a heavy hand whip, with a plaited head and struck me across the shoulders with it 3 times, and every time I screamed out I said “if you strike me again, I will cry murder” He replied “if you do I will knock your brains through the window,” and said hoped he should find me dead in the morning, and then kicked me on the left side, which caused me much pain.
He immediately stooped down to unbuckle his boots, and being much enraged, and in an ungovernable passion at being so abused and struck, I seized a hatchet that was lying close to where I sat, and which I had been making use of to break coal for keeping up the fire to keep his supper warm, and struck him several violent blows on the head – I could not say how many – and he fell at the first blow on his side, with his face to the fireplace and he never spoke or moved afterwards.
As soon as I had done it I would have given the world not to have done it. I had never struck him before after all his ill treatment, but when he hit me so hard at this time I was almost out of my senses, and hardly knew what I was doing!”
Martha’s journey from this world to the next took four to five minutes and this can be put down to the cruelty of her executioner: William Calcraft, the hangman who favoured the short drop technique and presided over her departure from this world. Calcraft’s successor later commented “Calcraft killed, I execute….” Today society would see Martha as a victim not a killer. We must hope a more sympathetic justice awaited her.