1781: Margaret Tinkler, abortionist
November 20th, 2016 Headsman
British Evening Post, Nov. 27-29, 1781
On this date in 1781, midwife Margaret Tinkler hanged at Durham.
Tinkler had care of Jane Parkinson who wished to rid her belly of a pregnancy. The reader might well guess that procuring an abortion in 18th century England was a frightful procedure; in Parkinson’s case it took her life thanks to (as the court found) Tinkler’s “thrusting and inserting 2 pieces of wood into & against the private parts & womb of the said Jane giving the said Jane diverse mortal wounds punctures and bruises of which she languished from 1st to 23rd July & then died.” (Source) All that “languishing” gave the dying Parkinson time to accuse Tinkler; the midwife’s insistence that she had merely counseled her patient how to contrive an abortion rather than performing that abortion fell on deaf ears. (Tinkler maintained that story to her last confession.)
As a murderer, Tinkler was posthumously anatomized. The surgeons discovered “two long black double wire pins, as used at that time in women’s hair … in her belly, which it was supposed she had swallowed to destroy her life.”
On this day..
- 1663: Volkmar Limprecht - 2019
- 1928: William Charles Benson - 2018
- 2013: Joseph Paul Franklin, Larry Flynt's would-be assassin - 2017
- 1829: The slaves of the Greenup revolt - 2015
- 1936: Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Falange founder - 2014
- 1903: Peter Mortensen, divinely accused - 2013
- 2010: Mohsen bin Faisal Al Barik Al-Dossary, Saudi cop-killer - 2012
- 869 or 870: St. Edmund the Martyr - 2011
- 1903: Tom Horn - 2010
- 1676: Johan Johansson Griis, the Gävle Boy - 2009
- 284: Aper, by Diocletian - 2008
- 1695: Zumbi dos Palmares - 2007
Entry Filed under: 18th Century,Abortion and Infanticide,Capital Punishment,Crime,Death Penalty,Doctors,England,Execution,Hanged,History,Murder,Public Executions,Women
Tags: 1780s, 1781, abortion, durham, margaret tinkler, november 20
