Elizabeth Butchill was an English woman who was tried and executed for the murder of her illegitimate newborn child.

Life

Little of Butchill's early life is known except that she came from Saffron Walden

Saffron Walden

Saffron Walden is a medium-sized market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England. It is located north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and approx north of London...

, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

. In about 1777, Butchill—unmarried—moved to Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 to live with her uncle and aunt, William and Esther Hall. Like her aunt, she worked as a college bed maker at Trinity College

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

. On 6 January 1780, Butchill spent the day in bed groaning and complaining of colic

Colic

Colic is a form of pain which starts and stops abruptly. Types include:*Baby colic, a condition, usually in infants, characterized by incessant crying*Renal colic, a pain in the flank, characteristic of kidney stones...

. She was tended to by her aunt in the morning and later in the evening. On 7 January, the body of a newborn girl was found in the river near the Halls' home on the grounds of the college. At an inquest

Inquest

Inquests in England and Wales are held into sudden and unexplained deaths and also into the circumstances of discovery of a certain class of valuable artefacts known as "treasure trove"...

, the coroner—Mr Bond—determined that the baby had died of a fractured skull. William Hall believed that the infant was Butchill's and arranged for a surgeon to examine her. On examination, she admitted that she had given birth to the baby. She said that the child was born alive and that she had thrown her down a "necessary" (toilet) into the river and buried the placenta

Placenta

The placenta is an organ that connects the developing fetus to the uterine wall to allow nutrient uptake, waste elimination, and gas exchange via the mother's blood supply. "True" placentas are a defining characteristic of eutherian or "placental" mammals, but are also found in some snakes and...

.

Butchill was charged by the coroner's jury with wilful murder. Unusually for an unmarried woman, she was not charged as the mother, that is, under the Concealment of Birth of Bastards Act 1623. Under this act, it was a capital offence for a mother to conceal the birth of a child. Butchill was simply tried for murder, and convicted. Despite pleading for mercy, she was sentenced to death and her body was to be anatomized

Dissection

Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components....

. She was executed 17 March 1780 at Cambridge. According to The Newgate Calendar

The Newgate Calendar

The Newgate Calendar, subtitled The Malefactors' Bloody Register, was a popular work of improving literature in the 18th and 19th centuries....

, on the day of her death, she was "firm, resigned, and exemplary ... reconciled to her fate".