18th-century case still matters with Roe v. Wade in the balance
The name Sarah Bramble does not appear in many history books, yet her 1753 hanging was one of the last two legal executions of a woman in Connecticut.
The teenage girl was accused of taking the life of her illegitimate newborn — a child she delivered unassisted one cold March night — but there was no evidence to prove that the baby girl had been a live birth. Bramble had pleaded not guilty, maintaining her innocence until she was put to death.
More than 2 ½ centuries later, her story presents a case for a woman’s right to control her own body.
My historical novel, “Gallows Road” (Elm Grove Press), was inspired by Sarah’s plight. To acknowledge several unknowns — her exact age, the father of her illegitimate child or even where she was buried — I chose to create a fictional narrator named Mercy Bramble.
Some things in the historical record were clear, however, and I incorporated those details in the novel. While the father of her child remained free and blameless, Sarah was imprisoned for more than a year. Thousands attended her hanging in New London, a public spectacle, according to one report.
The title of her court case — Rex v. Sarah Bramble — brings to mind the image of a grossly unfair fight: the all-powerful King George II of England versus a young, illiterate, illegitimate servant girl in the colonies. Sarah had been arrested, imprisoned, put on trial and condemned to death by a jury of 12 men. Although this happened in the so-called “Age of Reason,” court records state that she was “moved by instigations of The Devil” to take her baby’s life at the hour of its birth.
As an indentured servant Sarah Bramble had always known a life of hardships. She could not read or write, and because she was unbaptized she’d been banned from attending church, making her a veritable outcast. Indentured servants were forbidden to marry during the seven years they were bonded to service.
Illegitimate births were common, and unwed mothers faced heavy fines and extended servitude.
In predominantly British colonies, it was considered dangerous, but not a crime, for a woman to terminate a pregnancy in its first few months. Although this was referred to by terms such as “restoring the menses,” women often resorted to taking poisonous herbs that were natural abortifacients.
A kind of risky “Plan B,” these methods were legal as long as they occurred before “the quickening,” when a mother felt the first fetal movements at about four to five months. We do not know whether Sarah had tried any of these common “remedies.”
Sarah was not the last female to be executed in Connecticut; it is almost unimaginable, but that infamous distinction goes to Hannah Occuish, a 12-yearold orphan with an intellectual disability.
Charged with murdering a 6-year-old girl, Hannah was hanged in 1786. She was the youngest person ever executed in the United States.
Their alleged crimes were very different, but I believe the two girls had something important in common: Both were illegitimate children, unwanted, unloved and abandoned by parents who could not afford to care for them. Both were young women who had few rights, under British common law and later American law.
Ultimately, both were marginalized and then martyred by society.
One could argue that “Gallows Road” relates an intensely personal struggle, not necessarily a political one. Yet even as I delved into circumstances from three centuries ago I saw why “the personal is political.”
Sarah Bramble faced a terrible punishment because she lived in a world without choices, presumably a harsher world than our own. Yet it is cold comfort that her case occurred in the 18th century when, in April, police arrested a 26-yearold San Antonio woman on a murder charge for allegedly self-inducing an abortion. The charges were dropped several days later, but that didn’t change the draconian Texas abortion law — a law that might become more common if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
If Sarah were alive today, I believe she would have a message for all women: Choices are hard, but not having one is even harder.