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Ann Crampton, who “swept the whole concern away”

29 November 2015Naomi Clifford

Perhaps not something to read over breakfast, so apologies if I upset your appetite. I came across this case while reading Twisting in the Wind by Judith Knelman1, which I recommend as a wide-ranging analysis of the newspaper media’s treatment of women who committed capital crimes in the Victorian era (she has included some early 19th century cases).

Ann Crampton of Barnardscastle, County Durham, was, according to the Tyne Mercury2, an “ill-looking woman” of about 40. She had five children, the youngest with her partner Robert Jordan, a weaver. On 8 March 1814, she committed a crime that shocked the public but also became the subject of amusement.

Ann appears to have been aware that Robert had another woman, because earlier in the evening of the crime, he had sworn that she was first in his affections but she had reminded him that “there was his Nelly.” At some point he appears to have made the mistake of telling her that he had arranged to marry someone else (we can surmise this was “Nelly”).

Later that evening, festering with resentment, as Robert lay stretched over the bed incapacitated by drink, Ann took a large bread knife and cut off his penis. It was done in a second.

In August Ann appeared at the Durham Assizes, in front of Sir John Bayley and Mr Serjeant Marshall and cried through the trial. She was found guilty of maliciously cutting off Jordan’s “private member” with intent to maim and disfigure him and sentenced to hang.

johnson-crampton

© John Johnson

Shortly after the trial a bawdy broadside – An Account of a Most Cruel and Bloody Transaction – appeared:

Mrs Cut cock’s come to gaol
Keep her Wolf, and do not fail;
Of the Jade make an example,
For it you have reason ample.
Keep her upon bread and water,
This audacious Mother’s Daughter;
When the world was first created,
And the living creatures mated,
They were order’d all to breed,
But thinks she, I’ll stop your speed;
So determined on her prey,
Swep’t the whole concern away…

A brief report in the Chester Courant of 6 September says that Crampton was reprieved. 3

  1. University of Toronto Press, 1998.
  2. Knelman, page 91.
  3. Knelman states that Crampton was executed on 25 August but this appears to be an error.

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