1887: Roxalana Druse, the last woman hanged in New York
February 28th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1887, 40-year-old Roxalana Druse was hanged in Herkimer, N.Y.
Ms. Druse and her daughter* had slain, chopped to pieces and destroyed the remains of Roxalana’s 72-year-old husband William.
Attention to her case ran toward the hyperbolic.
As Roxalana Druse’s fatal date approached, said the Saturday Globe (an early national paper here mining the product-moving public fascination with mayhem we have noted across the pond), “she has dwindled to a mere shadow of her former self and would hardly tip the scales at 85 pounds.”
Still, this infamous-at-the-time crime would be little more than a piece of period folklore were it not for the horrible end Druse suffered.
Shrieking with terror as she was hooded (so says the New York Times account, which also reports that she deferred her last statement to her Universalist spiritual counselor, who made a general denunciation of the death penalty), Roxalana Druse was hanged on an upward-jerking gallows — and the rope reportedly failed to snap her neck, leaving her to slowly strangle to death.
This botched job in a high-profile hanging intensified pressure on the New York legislature to do away with the gallows; the next year, it became the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt electrocution for death sentences.
And Roxalana? She’s preserved in local lore in Herkimer, where she is said to haunt the courthouse where she heard her sentence.
* Roxalana Druse insisted that her teenage daughter Mary had nothing to do with it. Mary received a prison sentence, and was pardoned in 1895.
On this day..
- 1930: Dr. James Snook, Ohio State University professor - 2020
- 1616: Vincenz Fettmilch - 2019
- 1525: Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor - 2018
- 1785: Horea and Closca, Transylvanian rebels - 2017
- 1975: The Gold Bar Murderers - 2016
- 628: Khosrau II, Sassanid emperor - 2015
- 1800: Roddy McCorley, at Toomebridge - 2014
- 1946: Bela Imredy, Hungarian fascist prime minister - 2013
- 1476: The Garrison of Grandson, by Charles the Bold - 2012
- 2000: Hassan bin Awad al-Zubair, Sudanese sorcerer - 2011
- 1810: Tommaso Tintori, the first guillotined in Rome - 2010
- 2002: Monty Allen Delk, in a Three-Pronged Failure - 2008
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Botched Executions,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,Milestones,Murder,New York,The Supernatural,USA,Women
Tags: 1880s, 1887, february 28, herkimer, roxalana druse
There is a revision in the title of my forthcoming book: AN EARNEST APPEAL: The Execution of Roxalana Druse, The Last Woman Hanged In New York State.The above sub-title is incorrect.
The case of Roxalana Druse is my present work-in-progress and is entitled: AN EARNEST APPEAL, The Execution of Roxalana Druse, First and Last Woman Hung In Herkimer County (Based On True Accounts). Anyone desiring a reserve copy of hardcover when published may contact me at anytime.
My husband was doing some ancestry research and as soon as we saw pictures of her….we knew he was related to her. It’s uncanny how much he resembles her. I’d like to read your book when it’s published.
It is ironic that Governor Hill stated in his first inaugural address that he regarded this mode of punishment (hanging) as barbaric yet failed to commute the execution of a woman by the same method he so abhorred!