Catherine Hayes, assisting Wood & Billings, in cutting off the Head of her Husband John Hayes

Copper-engraved print depicting an imagined scene of the murder of John Hayes. The image shows Catherine Hayes holding a candle whilst Thomas Wood & Thomas Billings (Catherine's son) in cutting off the head of her husband John Hayes.
The print was originally published in: The new and complete Newgate calendar; or, villany displayed in all its branches. Containing new and authentic accounts of all the lives, adventures, exploits, trials, executions and last dying speeches, confessions, (as well as letters to their relatives never before published) of the most notorious malefactors and others of both sexes and all denominations, who have suffered death and other exemplary punishments for murders, burglaries, felonies, horse-stealing, bigamy, forgeries, highway robberies, footpad robberies, perjuries, piracies, rapes, riots, mobbing, sodomy, starving to death, sheep stealing, swindling, high-treason, petit-treason, sedition, and other misdemeanors. Interspersed with notes, reflections, and remarks, arising from the several subjects, moral, useful, and entertaining. Including the transactions of the most remarkable prisoners, tried for high treason at the Old Bailey, viz. Hardy, Horne Tooke, Thelwall, &c. Likewise the trials of Watt, Downe, Palmer, Fitzgerald, Margarott, &c. &c. at Edinburgh for High Treason, Sedition, Libels, &c. &c. Comprehending also, all the most material passages in the sessions papers for a long series of years; together with the ordinary of Newgate's Account of the capital convicts; and complete narratives of all the most remarkable trials Also a great variety of the most important lives and trials never before published in any former work of the kind. The whole containing the most faithful narratives ever yet published of the various executions, and other exemplary punishments, which have happened in England, Scotland, and Ireland, from the year 1700, to the end of the year 1795. Properly arranged from the records of court. By William Jackson, Esq. Of the Inner-Temple, barrister at law; assisted by others
John Hayes had been murdered with an axe by Wood & Billings in 1726. To make identification of John's body more difficult, they decided to cut off his head, wrap it in a cloth and place it in a bucket, which they later threw into the Thames at Millbank, from where it was soon recovered lying on a sandbank near the Horse-Ferry at Westminster. Wood, being a butcher, had the skill to dismember the rest of John's body, the pieces of which they threw into a pond in Marylebone Fields. The recovered head was examined and the scull found to be severely fractured in two places and the face lacerated.
Catherine Hayes was tried alongside Wood & Billings and, although she claimed to have only held a candle as Billings and Wood murdered her husband she was found guilty of Petty Treason was sentenced to be drawn to Tyburn on a hurdle and there to be burned alive at the stake. Wood & Billings were sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn and afterwards be hanged in chains. Wood died in prison of fever before the sentence was carried out.
At Tyburn Catherine was secured to a stake, set in the ground a few yards from the gallows, by an iron chain around her body. A cord was put round her neck and passed through a hole bored in the stake, for the purpose of strangling her to ease her death. Two cartloads of dry brushwood were piled around her and at the signal the fire was lit. She begged Arnet to strangle her before the fire reached her and he took the end of the cord and began to pull on it, but the flames blew in his direction burning his hands so he had to let go. She reportedly gave three dreadful shrieks before she was engulfed by the fierce fire and fell silent. She was seen trying to push away the burning faggots with her free hands but to no avail. Contemporary reports claimed that Arnet, seeing her plight, threw a large piece of wood at her head which "broke her skull, when her brains came plentifully out."