Bathsheba Spooner

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Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner (c. 1746 – July 2, 1778) was the first woman to be executed in the United States by Americans rather than the British. She was the daughter of Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles.

Spooner had become involved with a sixteen year-old soldier in the Continental Army, Ezra Ross, whom she was nursing from injury. She became pregnant by him and convinced him and two escaped British prisoners of war, Williams Brooks and James Buchanan, to kill her husband, a wealthy gentleman farmer in Brookfield, Massachusetts. The three men ambushed him in his front yard as he returned home. After beating him to death, they dumped his body down a well.

Spooner and the three men were convicted in April 1778 and sentenced to death. Spooner pleaded extenuating circumstances due to her pregnancy, but her plea was rejected and she was hanged alongside Ross, Brooks and Buchanan on July 2. An autopsy revealed that she had indeed been pregnant.

[edit] References

• Deborah Navas (2001). Murdered by His Wife. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-334-4.

[edit] External links

• Review of Murdered by His Wife by Daniel A. Cohen, Florida International University.
• Table of Executions in Massachusetts
• Brookfield Woman Put to Death on massmoments.org, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities website.