The Fate of Mary Nicholson

Mary Nicholson was an orphan.  Strike One.  She was penniless.  Strike Two.  She was of limited intelligence, being described as "of very weak intellect."  In eighteenth century England, all of this generally amounted to "Strike Three, and you're out!"

Mary, however, at first seemed an exception to this grim rule.  She was given a position as a servant in the household of John Atkinson, a farmer in the village of Little Stainton.  The family was a prosperous and respectable one, and Mary proved to be a gentle-natured, industrious, and honest worker.  To any outside observer, all would appear to be very well.

The Atkinson household, unfortunately, harbored a very dark secret.  It later emerged that the head of the house had taken advantage of Mary's powerlessness by taking "great liberties" and behaving "very cruelly to her."  (It does not take much imagination to guess what these "liberties" might have been.)

Mary had no choice but to submit to Atkinson's abuse, and both of them knew it.  Someone in her position simply did not have the option of handing in her notice and finding work elsewhere.  Go to the local authorities?  What were the chances that they would take the side of a friendless servant over a leading member of the community?  And even if they did, the likely result would still be that Mary would find herself homeless and jobless, with few, if any, options.

After years of this emotional and physical abuse, something snapped in the mind of this hitherto exemplary young woman.  In April 1798, Mary went to Darlington to buy supplies for the household.  Unbeknownst to everyone in the Atkinson household, she also bought something not on her shopping list: a quantity of arsenic powder.  She told the shopkeepers it was needed for washing sheep.

When Mary returned home, she added the arsenic to the flour used to make puddings for John Atkinson--it was his favorite dish, and she knew he commonly asked for one to be prepared when his daily work around the farm was over.  However, on this particular day--just proving that some people have the devil's own luck--Atkinson lost his taste for pudding.  He said he was not hungry, and went straight to bed.

Rather than let the flour go unused, Atkinson's mother, Elizabeth, used it to bake a cake, which was shared by the family at dinner-time.  They all quickly became deathly ill.  The family doctor was able to save the lives of four of them, but Elizabeth Atkinson died two weeks later.

Nicholson was horrified by the dreadful way her murderous little plot had backfired.  She naively confessed to at least three people that she had poisoned the flour, with the intention of punishing John Atkinson for the many "bad deeds" she had suffered at his hands.  Naturally, the Atkinsons had little trouble ascertaining who was responsible for the tragic event.  However, John settled for telling Mary that if she left Little Stainton and never came back, the family would not pursue any charges against her.  (This ready willingness to ignore his mother's murder in return for Mary's silence says much about what the Atkinson patriarch must have done to her.)

Mary may have had her freedom, but there was little she could do with it.  Nicholson literally had no idea where to go or what to do.  For some days, she aimlessly wandered the countryside, surviving by begging or scavenging what food she could.  A Newfield family named Ord finally offered the starving, desperate girl shelter, but when they had heard her story, they insisted that she return to Little Stainton and face the music.  Feeling she had no other choice, Nicholson went back to the Atkinson home and begged for mercy.  They responded by having her arrested.

In the summer of 1798, Nicholson stood trial for murder at the Durham City assizes.  It was hard to imagine a more open-and-shut poisoning case than this one, leaving the jury no options other than to find Mary guilty and sentence her to death.  All very neat and tidy.

All that saved Nicholson from an immediate visit to the gallows was an irregularity in the official indictment.  Mary was charged with intentionally plotting to murder not John Atkinson, but the actual victim, Elizabeth.  This clearly was not the case.  Mary may have freely confessed to poisoning the flour with the expectation that it would kill John, but her actions ended there.  Nicholson had no intention of murdering anyone else in the household, and it was Elizabeth herself who prepared and served the fatal loaf of bread.  It could be argued that Elizabeth Atkinson's death was not premeditated murder, but an appallingly unlucky accident.  In short, a strong legal argument could be made for having the indictment thrown out of court, and the guilty verdict reversed.

Nicholson had no legal representative to make this case for her.  However, her sad story had won her a lot of sympathy, and court officials felt uneasy sending this pitiful girl to her death on dodgy legal grounds.  Her case was kicked upstairs to the Common Law Courts in Westminster to see what these judges made of the matter.

It was known that it would take weeks, probably months, for this higher court to make its ruling on Mary's fate.  In the meantime, Nicholson remained in custody in Durham's prison.

Durham prison, circa 1750

Ironically enough, this turned out to be possibly the happiest time in Mary's life. Her jailer became so fond of the unfortunate girl that he eventually entrusted her with the position of unofficial housekeeper for his family.  She soon impressed the household as amiable, capable and trustworthy.  Eventually, she was given the freedom to run errands throughout the city.  Her many dealings with Durham tradesmen and shopkeepers made her a well-known and popular figure throughout the town.  Mary never made any attempts to escape, and was evidently completely willing to accept her fate--whatever it might be.  The "Caledonian Mercury" reported that she behaved with "the utmost penitence and devotion."

Mary's legal limbo lasted for a full year, until the town's Summer Assizes met again.  The final ruling on Mary's case was the first one before the presiding judge.  The justices of the Common Law Courts had made their decision: Imperfect indictment be damned, Mary was to hang at Framwellgate Moor on the following week, July 22, 1799.

Durham was horrified, and not a little surprised, by this draconian verdict.  No one who knew Mary wanted to see her die.  However, there was no arguing with this higher court: if Westminster said Nicholson must be hanged, hanged she would be, no matter what anyone had to say about the matter.

On the morning of the 22nd, a large crowd gathered around the gallows, not to gawk, or mock, as was generally the case with public executions, but to show what support they could for a young woman they believed was being unjustly put to death.  Mary made a sad, but dignified farewell to her friends.  The last rites were read, the noose put about her neck, and Nicholson was left to hang.

Then something shocking happened.  The rope around her neck suddenly snapped, leaving the still-living woman to fall to the ground.  Everyone there thought this was as clear an example of divine intervention as one could ever hope to see.  They did not want Mary hanged, and now it was looking as if God opposed her execution, as well.

After conferring with each other over this unexpected development, the authorities present decided they had no choice but to carry on with execution.  Someone was sent back to the city to get another rope.  During the hour or so of waiting for this messenger of death to return, Mary, surrounded by her weeping friends, "prayed fervently" and remained calm.  She may have thought that, after all, there were worse things than the gallows: namely, the household of John Atkinson.

The replacement rope arrived, and the macabre performance was re-enacted.  Once again, Mary took her place on the cart and the rope was replaced on her neck.  The cart was pulled out from under her, and within a few minutes, Mary Nicholson's earthly sufferings were finally at an end.   The "Ipswich Journal" reported that the prisoner was "launched into eternity amidst the shrieks and cries of the surrounding spectators."  She would be the last woman hanged in the county of Durham.

Meanwhile, the real villain of our piece, John Atkinson, was left to live out his natural life, as free as a bird to strike terror into the hearts of other servant girls.

Just another day in this strange world of ours.