DOC The Confederate Navy: The Ships; Men and Organization; 1861-65 by From Brand: US Naval Institute Press in History

Description

In March 1778; Joshua Spooner; a wealthy gentleman farmer in Brookfield; Massachusetts; was beaten to death and his body stuffed down a well. Four people were hanged for the crime: two British soldiers; a young Continental soldier; and Spooner's wife; Bathsheba; who was charged with instigating the murder. She was thirty-two years old and five months pregnant when executed. Newspapers described the case as "the most extraordinary crime ever perpetrated in New England." Murdered by His Wife provides a vivid reconstruction of this dramatic but little-known episode. Beautiful; intelligent; high-spirited; and witty; Bathsheba was the mother of three young children and in her own words felt "an utter aversion" for her husband; who was known to be an abusive drunk. A year before the murder; she took in and nursed a sixteen-year-old Continental soldier who was returning from a year's enlistment under George Washington. The two became lovers and conceived a child. Divorces were all but impossible for women at that time and adulteresses were stripped to the waist and publicly whipped. Bathsheba's pregnancy occasioned a series of desperate plots to murder her husband; finally brought to fruition with the aid of two British deserters from General Burgoyne's defeated army. The plots; the crime; the trial; and the aftermath are presented against a backdrop of revolutionary turmoil in Massachusetts. As the daughter of the state's most prominent and despised Loyalist; Bathsheba bore the brunt of the political; cultural; and gender prejudices of her day. When she sought a stay of execution to deliver her baby; the Massachusetts Council rejected her petition and she was promptly hanged before a crowd of 5;000 spectators.