On 27 January 1688, Mary Hobry, a French midwife living in London, strangled a man to death. The corpse lay in her bed for several days before she carved it up. Then, in the dead of night, she used her petticoat to drag the dismembered body through the neighbourhood – Castle Street, Drury Lane, Parker’s Lane – to be disposed of. The torso was dumped on a rubbish heap; the legs, arms and head were tossed in a cesspit. What did Mary think, I wonder, as she tiptoed home, finally rid of her husband?
The secret was not to last long. Within hours the evidence was uncovered, sending the West End into scandalised uproar. When the head was found, covered in excrement, it caused a ‘great noise’ to erupt in the streets. Piece by piece the body parts were reassembled and displayed at the Coach and Horses tavern, where they attracted ‘above thousands of spectators’. With the victim identified, Mary’s dastardly deed was exposed. On 3 March she was hanged at Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square) and her body was burned (‘consumed… to ashes’ within half an hour), the crackle of flames accompanied by the cries of the baying crowd.
But was Mary a villain or victim? Her heinous crime was the last resort in a desperate situation. She was trapped in a marriage in which her husband, Denis, inflicted every kind of cruelty – all (though considered shameful) within the law. This was a man who would crush his wife so ‘that blood started out of her mouth’, and bite chunks from her body.
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