On this date in 1684, Jane Voss was hanged

We pass over for this entry her four companions in death: a couple of forgettable gentleman highwaymen; a murderer fled to the continent; a coiner named D’Coiner.

Each a fellow with an interesting tale of his own, no doubt, but for Jane Voss one notices her perpetual proximity to the gallows. It’s a reminder that for a certain class of person, the omnipresent prospect of a sudden trip to the hanging-tree — intended as a mortal terror — was little but the everyday circumstance of a life nasty, brutish and too often short.

A chapbook of the day’s crop* records that the notorious Jane’s “frequent felonies and often Convictions have made her known to most in and about London, she having been above 12 times in Newgate, and several times Condemned to dye.”

She fortuitously escaped such a fate as an an accessory to Thomas Sadler’s theft of the High Chancellor’s ceremonial mace eight years before.

Not being a principal culprit in that escapade, Voss got off with penal transportation, only returning (at least insofar as the English authorities knew) legally after her transportation term had ended.

Our correspondent alleges that “no less than 7 Persons, whom had passed for her Husbands, have at several times been Executed for Robberies, &c.” Indeed, one notorious highwayman named John Smith (alias Ashburnham) hanged earlier in April 1684 had made a point of asking the Newgate Ordinary to send word to Jane Voss to cool it lest she follow him.

Alas, it was right about this time that Jane snatched her last silver tankard. She’d had too many reprieves to escape this time … save for the mandatory stalling mechanism of pleading her belly.**

* “True account of the behaviour, confessions, and last dying words, of Capt. James Watts, Capt. Peter Barnwell, Daniel D’Coiner alias Walker, Richard Jones, and Jane Voss alias Roberts,” 1684. (via Early English Books Online)

** Here’s Jane Voss’s Old Time Restoration England Pregnancy-Simulating Potion: drink “a Gallon of New Ale and Honey” before examination. Use as needed.

On this day..

• 2008: Charles Laplace
• 1890: Elmer Sharkey, wretched matricide
• 1835: Patrick O'Brien, Francis Spaight apprentice boy
• 1919: Frank Ezell and Brown Ezell, "Atticus Finch" clients
• 1750: John Young, resisting
• 1694: James Whitney, highwayman
• 1475: Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol
• 1932: Yoon Bong-Gil, nationalist assassin
• 1909: Valgrand in place of Fantomas
• 1862: An unknown Confederate deserter
• 1922: Seven Republican guerrillas in the Curragh of Kildare
• 1948: Amir Sjarifuddin