The horrible story of the last woman to be hanged in Wales
THE last woman to be hanged in Wales died at the gallows in 1907.
The story behind her descent into criminality is appalling, tragic and heartbreaking and saw two innocent babies die.
Leslie James, also known as Rhoda Willis, was 40 in the summer of 1907, drinking heavily and short of money.
The horrific crime which saw her sentenced to death came to light while she was lodging with a couple in Cardiff.
She placed an advert in a newspaper offering to adopt a baby in return for money.
Someone came forward and she looked after that baby for six weeks before leaving it with a note at the Salvation Army saying that she had not been able to cope.
The note read: “Dear Captain, Do take my baby in. I am one of your girls gone wrong. I will come back if you will forgive me, and will bring money.”
The baby was alive when left on the steps, but it was taken to a workhouse and died days later.
But it was the adoption of a second baby which led to her being hanged at Cardiff prison.
She had been contacted by Lydia English, whose sister Maud Treasure was pregnant. Maud was living in Fleur-de-Lis in the Rhymney Valley.
They arranged that as soon as the baby was born, James was to collect it and bring it up, for which she would be paid £6, according to newspaper reports.
On June 3, the baby was collected at a railway station and taken to Cardiff where she was lodging. Lydia was given a receipt and was told the baby would be leaving for a new life. But, within moments of boarding the train, she had smothered the baby.
The next day, she came home drunk and fell out of bed. Her landlady, a Mrs Wilson, went to help her and discovered in the bed the dead body of the child, wrapped in a “parcel”.
The police were called and within three weeks James was on trial. She denied murder, although it was proved the dead child had been smothered.
Then evidence came to light about the other baby and James was called a “baby farmer”.
In passing sentence, the judge said: “Don’t let anyone suppose that because you are convicted of murder that nobody pities you, nobody prays for you.
“I implore you to employ the short time that is left to you to preparing for death and for that mercy which you will undoubtedly find in heaven, but which you cannot expect here.”
She took the news of her sentence “unmoved” then spent weeks waiting to be taken to the gallows.
It said that very little milk, if any, had been given to the child by her aunt before she was handed over.
She was found to have consumed alcohol and “this probably made her less careful than she would otherwise have been”, saying: “In the absence of reasonable and satisfactory proof of an intent to murder, the crime of which she was guilty should have been reduced to manslaughter.”
Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone considered the change.
But on August 17, 1907, she was hanged at 8am after a restless night’s sleep.
Outside the prison on that morning there was a crowd of about 400 waiting to hear news, but this was in the days after people were allowed to witness hangings.
They stared at the gates and most started leaving, having seen nothing but having heard the clock at City Hall chime.
The Cardiff Times reads: “As 8 o’clock approached the expression on the faces of the thousand people betrayed their emotions. Now it was that the victims of hysteria discovered themselves in loud ejaculations and pointless comment.
“A goodly section of the crowd remained, determined to see all that was to be seen.”
The warden left the prison at about 8.25am to post the death notice outside.
The report continues: “As he was fixing it to the prison gates the police experienced a little difficulty in keeping back the people, whose curiosity had now been worked up to a high pitch.
“The warder did his work quickly, and then the police moved aside. With a great crush about three hundred people swept to the prison gates.”
On the morning she would die, she reportedly made a “sensational” confession to her solicitor, Harold Lloyd, in the early hours of the morning. The