Execution of Catherine Welch for the Murder

Execution broadside printed with an account of the trial and execution of Catherine Welch aged 24 who was convicted of murdering her 6 week old male child. Deserted by the Father of the child, whilst pregnant, Catherine married another man who, when on finding out about the pregnancy, refused to support her and the child 'while the child existed to publish his disgrace'. During her trial Welch denied giving birth to a child but a surgeon, called by the prosectuion, proved otherwise by expressing breast milk from her. Welch was described, by the reporter of the Evening Mail who witnessed her execution as a 'fine young woman of stout and particularly healthy appearance'. He noted she struggled at the end of the rope for some minutes. Welch's body was given to Charles Bell who ran a private school of anatomy in Windmill Street. A woman's body that had recently given birth and was still breast feeding would have been of particular interest to medical students.

Printed by James Catnach the broadside includes a generic woodcut engraving of the gallows and the crowd, witness statements heard at the trial and a poem. A similar broadside relating to this execution was also printed by Thomas Birt.

Until 1868 public hangings were a popular form of entertainment for the London crowd. Such occasions provided an opportunity for cheap printers and street vendors to 'turn a penny on the street' by selling accounts of the crimes, trial and 'dying speeches' of executed criminals as souvenirs to the paying spectators. As soon as the trap fell the street vendors began running amongst the crowd selling the broadsides. Execution broadsides were published by a small number of printers many of whom, such as Thomas Birt, James Catnach and James Pitts were based around the Seven Dials area of London. Spelling and grammar was often poor and the details not always accurate. Although usually printed between the end of the trial and the date of the execution (usually a gap of a few weeks) they could be quickly changed to accommodate last minute information and 'dying confessions'. The printers often used battered woodcuts, and, for the gallows scene used a stock block with a pierced central section to allow the sex and required number of hanging figures to be changed as required. Female criminals were depicted by using a block for a male figure, cut square at the knee to represent a skirt.