(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)
On this date in 1546, one Alice Glaston was hanged in the town of Much Wenlock in Shopshire, England together with two other prisoners.
The court records for that time and place have been lost, so so the crime for which Alice was hanged is not known. We do know one thing about her, though: she was, at eleven years old, the youngest girl to be executed in England’s history. (But not the youngest person. That honor goes to eight-year-old John Dean, who was hanged for arson in Abingdon in 1629.)
In 2014, Paul Evans released a radio play about Alice’s death titled The Spirit Child.
On this day..
- 1560: Giambatista Cardano, "crowning misfortune" - 2020
- 2011: Mao Ran, young drug lord - 2019
- 1725: William Dickson, collared - 2018
- 1979: Major Bijan Yahyahi, prison torturer - 2017
- 1805: Mary Morgan, anomalously - 2015
- 1923: Paul Hadley - 2014
- 1942: Four Jews from Bedzin and Sosnowiec - 2013
- 1961: Marie Fikacková, Beast of Sušice - 2012
- 1942: Anton Schmid - 2011
- 1816: John Allen and John Penny, poachers - 2010
- 1961: John A. Bennett, the last American military execution (so far) - 2009
- 1794: Lucile Duplessis and Marie Hebert, friends at the end - 2008
Alan, it’s so good you feel empathy for this poor kid from so long ago, but it seems that’s a quality our ancestors were lacking in. What’s even worse, there may have been no crime.
It’s been speculated that this execution was for witchcraft. We can imagine that somebody’s cow had died or there had been bad weather which wiped out a farmer’s crops, and somebody had to be scapegoated for it.
Our Tudor forebears were barbaric, barbaric, and irrational. An there’s always a danger that we will slide back to that kind of society.
re alice glaston doesn’t anyone want to comment on the execution of an 11 year old girl alice glaston in 1546 she was led in chains to her death the poor girl must have been petrified .she might have deserved a smack on the bum for her whatever she did but to be executed that is barbaric in any language alan
alice glaston was only 11 years old when she was executed by hanging in 1546 her crime one can only guess what a barbaric country England was then read executions of young people in early England it will leave you cold bye alan