Rebecca Smith was a farmer's daughter from the Wiltshire village of Bratton who spent the last years of her life in nearby Westbury. In June 1849 her infant son Richard died at the age of four weeks. Neighbors who had known her only a short time raised their suspicions, a coroner's jury returned a verdict of wilful murder, and in August 1849 a jury at the Devizes assizes found her guilty. The jury asked for mercy. The judge sentenced her to death, the Home Secretary refused to commute the sentence, and she was executed at Devizes on August 23, 1849.
That one conviction is the only one in her case. Within a week of the trial she told the prison chaplain that she had killed seven other infants of hers. Those deaths were never tried, and a second inquest into two further children's deaths ended without a charge. She is nonetheless described in the historical record as one of the most fully documented killers of her own infants in England, and, according to the historian Katherine Watson, as the last woman executed there for killing her own child.
Rebecca Smith was christened at Bratton, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain, on May 17, 1807, the daughter of William Pryor and his wife Sarah. The name appears both as Pryor and as Prior in the parish and court records. Her father was a yeoman farmer who died in 1830. Her mother was a Baptist, and Watson, who has written the most detailed study of the case, describes the family as devout and respectable, attending the Baptist chapel at Bratton. A review of Sally Hendry's 2022 book on the case published by the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre says the same of Rebecca herself: a chapel-goer who was described as a devout woman.
She married Philip Smith, an agricultural laborer, at Bratton church on May 5, 1831. Wiltshire Council's community history pages record the marriage from the parish register. The review of Hendry's book says she married him against her family's wishes.
Their first child, a daughter named Jane, was born on February 8, 1832, and was the only one of the children to survive infancy. Watson counts ten more children after her. Wiltshire Council and the Devizes heritage pages both give eleven children in all. The second child died at the age of 14 weeks of what the records describe as natural causes, and the tenth died at a neighbor's home during a period when Rebecca was too ill to look after him. The other infant deaths, apart from Richard's, are the ones she later confessed to.
The marriage was hard. After the trial Rebecca described her husband as a drunkard who rarely brought home his wages and who was brutal to her. Her sister, giving evidence at the trial, agreed under cross-examination that he "was not always kind to his wife." A 2014 local history talk by Hendry repeats that account and adds that Rebecca said she feared her children would "come to want."
Money was short and Rebecca was often unwell. Her mother left her nearly 100 pounds by will, and Watson says that her husband was reputed to have squandered it. Some figures differ: Watson places the inheritance after Sarah Pryor's death in 1843 and says the family rented ten acres at Westbury, while Wiltshire Council gives 30 acres. About 1846 the family moved the three miles from Bratton to Westbury, where they lived among neighbors who did not know them well. Those neighbors would later give the most damaging evidence against her.
Richard was born on May 16, 1849. The midwife found him full grown and healthy. He developed boils in his first weeks but otherwise stayed well until the evening of June 7, when he became ill. He died on the morning of June 12.
Before he fell ill she asked several women whether he was wasting away, and all of them thought he was thriving. When he was ill she refused to call a doctor, saying that nothing could be done for so young a child. On June 5 her husband had consulted a surgeon from Bratton, who visited Westbury on June 8 and found the infant healthy, and advised that she should find better nourishment for him.
On June 13 Rebecca reported the death to the local registrar, who recorded the cause as unknown on the strength of the surgeon's earlier visit. Within a week, talk among the neighbors led the coroner to order an inquest.
The inquest examined Richard's death in the third week of June. Rebecca said nothing at the hearing. Medical evidence was given, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder, and the coroner committed her to stand trial at the August assizes.
The newspapers of the time took the case up quickly. Early reports described her as having a repulsive look and a stolid indifference. Later ones called her an unhappy woman whose face was by no means forbidding.
Because of the inquest, other deaths in the family came under scrutiny. On July 18, 1849, the coroner held a second inquest into the deaths of two earlier children, Sarah, who had died in 1841, and Edward, who had died in 1844. The jury found that the deaths had a cause other than natural illness but could not say who was responsible. The authorities did not pursue the matter further, although according to Watson there had been a fear that she might have killed as many as ten children. No charge arose from either death.
The trial took place at Devizes on Thursday, August 9, 1849, and lasted the whole day. Eighteen of the twenty witnesses who had given evidence at the inquest were called. Her sister agreed under cross-examination that Philip Smith was not always kind to her. The women of Westbury, among them a widow who had lodged with the family for three months, gave the strongest evidence. Her husband did not testify. English law at the time did not allow one spouse to give evidence for the defense or to be compelled to give it for the prosecution.
Rebecca was defended by counsel named in the report as Mr Haddow, whom Watson suspects may have been privately hired, assigned a brief at the bar, or may have volunteered. She offered almost no defense.
The jury took about thirty minutes. They found her guilty and recommended mercy, giving as their reason that she should "have time to repent." The judge did not accept the recommendation and sentenced her to death. This was the conviction for the murder of Richard. It was the only charge on which she was tried.
On August 15 the judge, Sir C. Cresswell, wrote to the Home Office. He said that he did not expect anyone to petition for her life, that he had no doubt about the verdict, and that he had taken her confession into account. In his view she had killed the child solely to avoid the trouble and expense of raising him.
Two petitions did reach the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey. One came from citizens of Devizes and was organized by a Quaker, who wanted to prevent a public execution in the town, which he regarded as demoralizing; it showed little concern for Rebecca herself. The other came from nine of her relatives, among them her daughter and her brother, and reached the Home Office on August 18. It attributed her conduct to ignorance, poverty and domestic misery. Her husband did not sign it.
Grey refused to commute the sentence. Watson notes that he told the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1866 that the deliberate nature of what had been done justified keeping infanticide within the law of wilful murder.
Within a week of the trial Rebecca told the prison chaplain that she had killed seven other infants. She said that she alone was responsible and that she had never tried to harm Jane. Her reason was her husband's drunkenness and brutality, and a fear that her children would come to want.
The newspapers reported the confession with sympathy. They also commented with disapproval on what they called the total absence of feeling Philip Smith showed when he visited her in prison. These seven deaths, together with Sarah's and Edward's, make up the other deaths in the case. A 2014 notice of a Westbury Heritage Society talk says she was found guilty of killing eight of her eleven children, but the court record, as Watson sets it out, shows a single conviction, for Richard; the others rest on her own confession.
Rebecca Smith was executed at Devizes on Thursday, August 23, 1849, according to Watson and Wiltshire Council, whose pages cite the Devizes Gazette and the Salisbury Journal of August 1849. The Devizes heritage pages place the execution outside the county prison there. Reports described her conduct as calm and penitent. Watson says that her attitude in her last days was taken by contemporaries as evidence that her crimes came from sorrow, bitterness and ignorance, not from wickedness.
Several sources describe her as the last woman executed in England, or in Britain, for the killing of her own child. Watson's study, the Devizes heritage pages, a Cambridge University literary reference entry citing Roger Smith's Trial by Medicine (1981), the review of Hendry's book and the publisher's listing for it all repeat the claim. Watson adds that all 39 women convicted of infanticide between 1849 and 1864 were spared the death penalty.
Watson argues that the case does not fit the usual picture of infanticide in the period, an unmarried woman hiding a birth. Smith was a married woman with a husband, a home, a chapel and a church record, and Watson links her conduct to a violent marriage, poverty and her Baptist faith, which taught that infants who died were saved by God's grace. The abstract of Watson's article says Smith was the most thoroughly recorded killer of infants in England, and Watson suggests that her crimes resemble what has since been called altruistic killing, in which a mother believes she is sparing a child from suffering. Watson adds that the court treated the case as one of deliberate planning, not of the mental disturbance that was sometimes pleaded after childbirth, and that this made it harder for anyone to see her as unwell. Her conclusion is that she was neither simply mad nor simply bad.
The fate of her daughter Jane is not on record. The 1851 census shows neither Jane nor her father in Bratton or Westbury. Philip Smith did not sign the family petition; the press noted his visits to her in prison.
The case has been kept alive by local historians. Sally Hendry, a journalist and historian, gave a talk titled "The Bratton Murder" for the Westbury Heritage Society in September 2014, after first hearing the story from a local historian when she lived in Bratton. Her book Mother and Murderer: The Sad True Tale of Rebecca Smith was published by Hobnob Press in May 2022. The publisher's description asks readers whether she was a victim or a villain, and says the book examines domestic violence and the suffering of the infants. Watson's 2008 article in Family & Community History placed the case before academic readers.
The number of infants she killed is unsettled. She was convicted of one death, that of Richard. She confessed to seven others to the chaplain, a confession never tested at trial. A second inquest into two other children's deaths ended without a finding as to who was responsible. Two local sources, a 2014 notice of Hendry's talk and Hendry's publisher, state that she killed eight infants, which counts Richard together with the seven in her confession; none of those deaths other than Richard's reached a verdict.
Some figures also differ: Wiltshire Council gives her age at execution as about 44, while the baptism date it cites makes her about 42; the acreage the family rented is given as ten and as 30; and the year of her mother's will is given as 1843 and as 1846.
May 17, 1807: Rebecca Pryor is christened at Bratton, Wiltshire.
1830: her father, a yeoman farmer, dies.
May 5, 1831: she marries Philip Smith, an agricultural laborer, at Bratton.
February 8, 1832: her daughter Jane, the only child to survive infancy, is born.
1832 to 1849: ten further children are born; the second dies in infancy at 14 weeks, recorded as natural.
1841: her daughter Sarah dies.
1843: her mother's will leaves her nearly 100 pounds (the date is given as 1846 elsewhere).
1844: her son Edward dies.
About 1846: the family moves to Westbury.
May 16, 1849: her son Richard is born.
June 7, 1849: Richard falls ill.
June 12, 1849: Richard dies.
June 13, 1849: she reports the death to the registrar; the cause is recorded as unknown.
Late June 1849: coroner's inquest; verdict of wilful murder; she is committed for trial.
July 18, 1849: second inquest into the deaths of Sarah and Edward; the jury cannot say who was responsible.
August 9, 1849: trial at Devizes; guilty, with a recommendation to mercy; sentenced to death.
August 15, 1849: the judge writes to the Home Office.
August 18, 1849: the family petition reaches the Home Office; the Home Secretary refuses to commute.
Within a week of the trial: she tells the prison chaplain she killed seven other infants.
August 23, 1849: executed at Devizes.
1866: the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, speaks to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment about the case.
November 2008: Katherine Watson's study is published in Family & Community History.
September 2014: Sally Hendry gives her talk "The Bratton Murder" for the Westbury Heritage Society.
May 2022: Hendry's book Mother and Murderer is published.