Mary Hobry (sometimes spelled Mary Hobrey/Aubrey) (d. 1688) was a 17th-century midwife living in England, convicted for murdering her abusive husband and burnt at the stake.
Mary Hobry was a French Catholic midwife living in London. [1] She was married to Denis Hobry in 1684. [2] Her husband was a drunkard, squandered the money she earned and frequently used to beat her up. [3] [4] She sought for his approval to their mutual separation but her husband disagreed. She reportedly considered suicide and running away from him. Fed up of the constant beatings, Hobry told her husband that if he did not change, she "would kill him". [3]
On the night of 27 January 1687, Denis returned home inebriated at five in the morning, punched Mary in her stomach, forced himself upon her and, when she resisted, beat her up violently causing her to bleed. [5] [6] When he was sleeping Hobry strangled him with his garter, decapitated him and chopped off his limbs. [3] [7] [6] His son suggested her not to throw the body parts in river. [5] She threw the torso on a dunghill at some distance from her house and the head and limbs in separate privies in the Savoy Palace. [8]
Mary was arrested after the identity of the deceased was discerned from the body parts and she was arraigned at the Old Bailey on 22 February. [4] [9] She pleaded guilty and the following day was sentenced to be burnt. [10]
Hobry's act caused a sensation in England and her trial and confession were reported in pamphlets and a ballad was made on her crime. [11] She was burnt at the stake on 2 March 1688. [12]
Roger L'Estrange published A Hellish Murder based on his interrogation with her. [4] An Epilogue to the French Midwife's Tragedy was poet Elkanah Settle's interpretation of the murder. [5]
Mary II was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband, William III & II, from 1689 until her death in 1694. She was also Princess of Orange following her marriage on 4 November 1677.
Death by burning is an execution, murder, or suicide method involving combustion or exposure to extreme heat. It has a long history as a form of public capital punishment, and many societies have employed it as a punishment for and warning against crimes such as treason, heresy, and witchcraft. The best-known execution of this type is burning at the stake, where the condemned is bound to a large wooden stake and a fire lit beneath.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762.
Mary Toft, also spelled Tofts, was an English woman from Godalming, Surrey, who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
Mary Astell was an English protofeminist writer, philosopher, and rhetorician. Her advocacy of equal educational opportunities for women has earned her the title "the first English feminist." Astell is primarily remembered as one of England's inaugural advocates for women's rights. Her works, particularly "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies" and "Some Reflections Upon Marriage," argue for the fundamental intellectual equality between men and women. Her philosophical writings are thought to have influenced subsequent generations of educated women, including the literary group known as the Bluestockings. Astell, who never married, formed the majority of her close personal relationships with women. During the early 1700s, she withdrew from public life and dedicated herself to planning and managing a charitable school for girls. Astell considered herself a self-reliant, modern female; one who was on a definite mission to rescue her sex from the oppression of males.
Mariticide literally means the killing of one's own husband. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. It can also be used in the context of the killing of one's own boyfriend. In current common law terminology, it is used as a gender-neutral term for killing one's own spouse or significant other of either sex. The killing of a wife or girlfriend is called uxoricide.
Events from the year 1687 in England.
Elizabeth Cellier, commonly known as Mrs. Cellier or 'Popish Midwife', was a notable Catholic midwife in seventeenth-century England. She stood trial for treason in 1679 for her alleged part in the 'Meal-Tub Plot' against the future King James II, but was eventually freed. Cellier was later imprisoned for allegations made in her 1680 work Malice Defeated, in which she recounted the events of the alleged conspiracy against the future King. She later became a pamphleteer and advocated for advancements in the field of midwifery. Cellier published A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital in 1687, where she outlined plans for a hospital and a college for instructions in midwifery, as well as proposing that midwives of London should enter into a corporation and use their fees to establish parish houses where any woman could give birth. Cellier resided in London, England until her death.
Catherine Hayes, sometimes spelled Catharine Hayes, was an English woman who was burned at the stake for committing petty treason by killing her husband.
Anne Greene was an English domestic servant who was accused of committing infanticide in 1650. She survived her attempted execution and was revived by physicians from the University of Oxford.
Louise (Bourgeois) Boursier (1563–1636) was a French Royal Court midwife who delivered babies for many women in her twenty-six year professional career. Marie de Médicis, the wife of Henry the Great of France, was one of her patients, and Bourgeois delivered her six children. Bourgeois' income was about ten times the average midwife's. She believed she was blessed with practical midwifery talents from Phaenarete, the mother of Socrates.
The Guernsey Martyrs were three women who were burned at the stake for their Protestant beliefs, in Guernsey, Channel Islands, in 1556 during the Marian persecutions.
Sidney Kennon, known as Mrs. Cannon, was an 18th-century British midwife who delivered the babies of royalty and other great families. She collected numerous creatures, curiosities and specimens. Her collections were auctioned after her death and she left a large sum of money to promote the delivery of babies by women rather than men.
Thomas Moundeford M.D. (1550–1630) was an English academic and physician, President of the London College of Physicians for three periods.
In England, burning was a legal punishment inflicted on women found guilty of high treason, petty treason, and heresy. Over a period of several centuries, female convicts were publicly burnt at the stake, sometimes alive, for a range of activities including coining and mariticide.
The Pittenweem witches were five Scottish women accused of witchcraft in the small fishing village of Pittenweem in Fife on the east coast of Scotland in 1704. Another two women and a man were named as accomplices. Accusations made by a teenage boy, Patrick Morton, against a local woman, Beatrix Layng, led to the death in prison of Thomas Brown, and, in January 1705, the murder of Janet Cornfoot by a lynch mob in the village.
Anne Hooper or Anne de Tscerlas was a Flemish Protestant activist. She became one of the first wives of an English bishop when her husband became the Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester. She corresponded with other activists and died of the plague in the same year as her husband, John Hooper became a Protestant martyr.
Mary Channing was an English woman from the county of Dorset. Channing is known for being convicted of poisoning her husband and being burnt at the stake.
Theodosia, Lady Ivie or Ivy (1628–1697) was an aristocratic heiress and a figure of notoriety in the east end of London in the 17th century. Famed for her “wit, beauty and cunning in law above all others,” her claims to own land stretching from Wapping to Ratcliff led to a constant stream of litigation which ran for almost 75 years. At one particular trial, presided over by Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, evidence emerged that Ivie had presented the court with forged deeds on which she made her land claims and Jeffreys subsequently arranged for charges to be brought against her for forgery.
Mary Lakeland also known as Mother Lakeland and the “Ipswich Witch”, was an English woman executed for witchcraft in Ipswich. She belonged to the few people in England to have been executed by burning after a conviction of witchcraft. She was the last person executed for witchcraft in the town of Ipswich.