Maggie Dickson was, at least in part, responsible for additional wording being added to a death sentence. She was a fish hawker by trade who lived in Edinburgh.
In 1723 her husband deserted her and she had to leave the City, she found work with an Innkeeper in return for bed & board in a nearby town of Kelso.
The story goes that the Innkeepers son felt it was more like bed & bawd and took a keen interest in her. Soon Maggie became pregnant, however, to avoid the Innkeeper finding out and in order to keep her job she hid the pregnancy from everyone.
Sadly the baby died after being born early and although it was her intention to throw the body into the River when it came to it she found she could not. Left on the bank instead the dead baby was soon discovered and then somehow traced back to her and the truth was out.
Maggie was arrested, tried and convicted under the Concealment of Pregnancy Act 1690 which considered this as murder (since she did not ask for any help) and the punishment was for her to be "Hanged by the neck"
In September 1724 the sentence was carried out in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh.
After the public hanging, her body was returned to the town of her birth for burial.
However, on the route, the driver heard a loud banging was coming from the coffin and when opened it was discovered she was very much alive. As the official sentence had been correctly carried out it was deemed that it was God's will that she lived (although there were suggestions that she had seduced the hangman to make the rope looser).
Maggie, who survived for another 40 or so years. had several more children. It is thought that she lived out her days in her hometown of Musselburgh however some say it was actually Berwick.
Working as an Innkeeper herself now, her extraordinary tale would no doubt have intrigued people for miles around and she became famously known as "Half Hangit Maggie".
There is even an Edinburgh pub in the Grassmarket named after her, the Maggie Dickson.
As for the extra wording that Judges started to include? Well until I heard this story I always thought they were a bit superfluous, but now I understand why they are said.
"Hanged by the neck. Until you are dead." Just to make sure!
To read more on the story of Half Hangit Maggie, please read the great The Hanging of Margaret Dickson: New Edition With Photo Essay by Alison J Butler and if you find any discrepancies between her account and the one above, please accept her one as correct!
