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A Matter of Context: Elizabeth Wilson Revisited
| Elizabeth Wilson's story is one of the melodramas of the early American republic. Executed in Chester, Pennsylvania, for the murder of her illegitimate eight-week-old twins, Wilson went to her death protesting her innocence and naming the lover who deserted her as the killer of her children. For almost an entire year of imprisonment while she awaited trial, Wilson offered no explanation for her children's death, claiming that she had abandoned them along a public road where they might be found. After she was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, Wilson changed her story. On December 6, 1785, the day before she was to be hanged, Wilson accused her lover of the crime and described her children's murder in detail. With this information, her brother William raced to Philadelphia to obtain a stay of execution. The Supreme Executive Council postponed Elizabeth Wilson's hanging until January 3, 1786, giving William a chance to corroborate her story. While he was allegedly successful, William fell ill in the course of his quest and recovered with the execution imminent. He arrived back in Chester bearing a second stay, but twenty minutes too late to save his sister from the hangman. |
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Wilson's story had widespread and enduring appeal. It was tragic and romantic; it was an unsolved murder mystery; and it was pertinent to a variety of cultural currents of the time. The case was not only sensational, but controversial because it involved the execution of an arguably innocent woman. Philadelphia diarist Elizabeth Drinker noted "the sad tale" in her journal and commented that Wilson's story was "generally believed to be the truth."1 Charles Biddle, the vice president of the Supreme Executive Council who gave William Wilson the final stay of execution, expressed doubts about whether the death penalty was appropriate in a case such as Elizabeth Wilson's.2 She had been convicted under an old law that made concealment of the death of a bastard child a capital crime, even if the child had been stillborn. Because of the Wilson case, the law became coupled in the public mind with a seeming miscarriage of justice, reminiscent of abuses that fueled the Revolution. The comments of both Drinker and Biddle reflect the ongoing philosophical debate about the new nation's ability to manage crime and punishment in a more enlightened way than the British had.3 |
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The tale also had religious appeal. The pamphlet A Faithful Narrative of Elizabeth Wilson; Who was Executed at Chester, January 3d, 1786 appeared on the streets of Philadelphia just a few days after her execution.4 Although it was written anonymously "at the request of a friend unconnected with the deceased," its likely author was John Stancliffe, a Baptist minister who counseled Wilson while she was imprisoned. It was Stancliffe who took down the statement implicating Elizabeth's lover and it was he who accompanied her to her death and presided at her funeral.5 Stancliffe was a missionary whose active participation in the pamphlet trade served his evangelical vocation.6Faithful Narrative was no exception. It focused mainly on Wilson's confession and repentance, depicting her as a lapsed Christian who found religion anew and, at the last, faced death trusting in the redemptive mercy of Christ.7 The pamphlet was not only widely disseminated in Philadelphia, but was reprinted in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts.8 |
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