General Chat

It comes up Frances Kidder The last woman to be hanged in public was 25 year old Frances Kidder, who was executed in front of Maidstone prison at midday on Thursday, the 2nd of April 1868. She had murdered Louisa Kidder-Staples, her 11 year old stepdaughter, by drowning her in a ditch. Frances was married to William Kidder, who had Louisa and a younger child by his previous relationship and whom Frances deeply resented. Only Louisa lived with them and Frances consistently abused her. She came to trial on Thursday, the 12th of March 1868 at the Spring Assizes, before Mr. Justice Byles, and was convicted by the jury after just 12 minutes deliberation. In the condemned cell, she confessed the murder to the prison chaplain. Frances had to be helped up the steps onto the gallows and held on the trapdoors by two warders, where she prayed intently, while Calcraft made the final preparations strapping her wrists in front of her and putting a leather strap around her body and arms at elbow level and another around her legs to hold her long skirt down. A white cotton hood was placed over her head and the noose adjusted around her neck. He released the trap and she struggled hard for two or three minutes afterwards. Some 2,000 people, a lot of them women, had come to watch her final moments