Elizabeth Sugrue

Elizabeth "Liz" Sugrue ; ( – 1807), also known as Lady Betty, was an Irish executioner. A minor historical character, she remains a well-known figure in popular culture.

Life

Born around 1750, Sugrue was left destitute after the death of her farmer husband; evicted from her home, she set off with her two children on the long walk to the town of Roscommon. On the way, her younger child died of starvation and exposure, leaving only the elder, Pádraig.

According to William Wilde (1815–1876), who collected stories about her from locals, Elizabeth had a "violent temper" and Pádraig often threatened to leave home. Elizabeth begged him to stay, but in April 1775, following particularly harsh treatment, he departed; some sources claim he enlisted in the British Army, others he emigrated to British North America and joined the Continental Army. She became a recluse, taking in lodgers for a few pennies a night; but, hearing less and less from her son as time passed, she became increasingly bitter.

Supposedly, a man came to stay at her house in 1789 and she murdered him, before discovering he was in fact her long-lost son; arrested, convicted and sentenced to death, she was held in what is now known as the "Old Gaol". Twenty-five others were also due to be hanged, including sheep and cattle thieves and ‘Whiteboys’, young men who tore down fences and hedges surrounding what had once been common land. On the day of her hanging, the hangman was ill; Betty volunteered to take his place, allegedly after three others refused. She lived in the prison thereafter, carrying out executions and floggings, including a number of rebels executed during the 1798 Rebellion. She was known to draw portraits of the men and women she hanged on the wall of her lodgings with charcoal.

She was not the first hangwoman in Ireland, however; an unidentified woman hanged two men for murder on 13 November 1782 at Kilmainham. The men were also quartered. The sheriff received abuse for making a hangman of a woman.

In 1802, her own sentence was commuted, in recognition of her service to "the safety of the public" and when she died in 1807, she was buried in an unmarked grave inside the walls of Roscommon Jail. The account held in the National Folklore Collection claims she was murdered by a prisoner.

Legacy

In 1884, an article on her written by Charlotte O'Conor Eccles appeared in the ''Weekly Irish Times''. She is the centrepiece of a narrative poem by Áine Miller, titled "Betty Sugrue - Hangwoman; The Woman From Hell", and the main character in Declan Donnellan's 1989 play ''Lady Betty.''

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sugrue, Elizabeth
1807 deaths
18th-century births
18th-century Irish criminals
Filicides
Irish executioners
Irish female criminals
Irish female murderers
People from County Kerry