(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"
- 2011: Mao Ran, young drug lord
- 1725: William Dickson, collared
- 1979: Major Bijan Yahyahi, prison torturer
- 1805: Mary Morgan, anomalously
- 1923: Paul Hadley
- 1942: Four Jews from Bedzin and Sosnowiec
- 1961: Marie Fikacková, Beast of Sušice
- 1942: Anton Schmid
- 1816: John Allen and John Penny, poachers
- 1961: John A. Bennett, the last American military execution (so far)
- 1794: Lucile Duplessis and Marie Hebert, friends at the end