Portrait of an Evil Woman: Torture-Killer Elizabeth Brownrigg

Living in London, England in the mid-18th Century, Elizabeth Brownrigg was an eminently respectable wife, mother, and midwife. She had long been married to successful housepainter and plumber James Brownrigg, and had borne sixteen children.

Drawings of her show a dark-haired, middle-aged woman whose most striking feature was her large, hooked, irregular nose. She also possessed a pursed mouth, strong chin, and thin neck.

The Brownriggs had grown up in Greenwich where they met and married. In the seventh year of their marriage, they moved to London, probably for the greater employment opportunities there. James Brownrigg made enough at his dual occupations to rent a cottage for vacations.

However, as the family grew, its finances were squeezed. By the time Elizabeth gave birth to their sixteenth child, they had to give up the cottage.

Mrs. Brownrigg supplemented the family income by working as a midwife. She became known for her caring and competency and was considered the best midwife in the district. Her services were much sought after so she decided she needed some help in her work and applied for apprentices.

In 1765, authorities at St. Dunstan’s Parish placed impoverished 14-year-old Mary Mitchell in the Brownrigg home as an apprentice. Both the placement officers of St. Dunstan’s and the girl herself must have thought her lucky for a chance to learn under the esteemed midwife. Learning such an important skill – in an era when large families were the norm and good midwives were in great demand — was often the only way for a lower-class girl to escape poverty without ending up in the brothel.

The first month of Mary Mitchell’s apprenticeship passed without incident. Then the busy midwife decided she needed more assistance. Mary Jones, a teenager who had been living in a foundling hospital, joined Mary Mitchell.

Shortly after that, Mrs. Brownrigg’s attitude toward both her young wards changed. She was strangely enraged at them, especially Mary Jones. She often ordered Mary Jones to lay across two chairs, tied her down, and then flogged up and down the girl’s body with a whip, only stopping because her arm was too tired to raise it again. Then she splashed water across the beaten, bloodied girl. If Jones fainted, Mrs. Brownrigg shoved her head in a pail of water to revive her.

Mrs. Brownrigg beat both girls senseless for the slightest offense. She also forbade them to leave the home and locked them in their rooms at night. However, Jones’ room was near a hall leading to a door opening into the street. The door to the hall was locked each evening but on one night, the key was left in the lock and Jones saw her chance.

That morning, she crept softly to that door and stole out into the street. With one eye blinded and covered with wounds, she made her way over the narrow cobblestone streets and back to the foundling hospital. The appalled officials had the hospital’s lawyer, Mr. Plumbtree, draw up a letter demanding an explanation for the girl’s condition. It was sent to the Brownriggs who made no reply. Amazingly, the hospital’s hierarchy took no further action. Perhaps they did not want to antagonize a respected family for the sake of a poor orphan.

Their inaction left Mary Mitchell a prisoner and victim in the Brownrigg house and she would remain there, regularly tormented, beaten, and humiliated, for a year. As Leonard Gribble wrote in Queens of Crime, Mitchell was “dressed in filthy rags, forced to spend long hours in manual toil, and given food that was little better than kitchen scourings” while being “incessantly beaten and mocked.”

One day Mitchell escaped from the home but John Brownrigg, one of Elizabeth and James’ sons, caught her in the street and dragged her back. Mrs. Brownrigg doubled her torments as punishment.

Mrs. Brownrigg applied to another precinct for another apprentice and a third Mary, 14-year-old Mary Clifford, was put in the Brownrigg home. With Clifford’s appearance, the abuse of the apprentices took a particularly humiliating, semi-sexualized turn as both Marys were forced to work naked while Mrs. Brownrigg beat them bloody with brooms, canes and horsewhips. When she got too tired to keep beating them, Mr. Brownrigg or John would take over. Sometimes Mrs. Brownrigg wrapped chains around the girls’ necks and nailed one end to a door.

Banished to the Basement

One morning, Mrs. Brownrigg discovered that Mary Clifford had wet her bed. The infuriated midwife banished the girl to the basement each night from then on, forcing her to sleep in the cellar’s freezing coal bin. She allowed the victim a bare mattress but permitted no blankets. After awhile, Mrs. Brownrigg took away the mattress and replaced it with a sack and some straw. She gave the girl a diet of bread and water.

The starving Clifford broke open a locked cupboard in a search for food but found it empty. Later she broke through some boards searching for water. Mrs. Brownrigg punished these attempts by forcing the malnourished teenager to strip naked, then beating her over the course of the day with the butt-end of a whip.

Mrs. Brownrigg devised a torture in which a girl’s hands were tied together with a rope that was slung through a hook in the ceiling so the victim was hoisted off her feet. As the victim swung helplessly, the midwife beat her with a horsewhip. When she got tired, her son John would take up the whip. On other occasions, Mrs. Brownrigg would grab a girl’s face with her fingers and squeeze so violently that blood ran from the victim’s eyes.

Both victims were kept naked for days on end while Clifford was forced into the cellar at night, often with her hands still tied and the heavy chain around her neck.

One day an older Brownrigg son ordered Clifford to put up a canopy over a bedstead. The starved, sickly youngster could not do it. Enraged, he beat her viciously until he could no longer lift his arm.

Gribble pointed out the irony that while Mrs. Brownrigg was beating her apprentices, she was also tending to new mothers and babies. “The hand that had grasped the stock of a horsewhip,” he wrote, “and the arm that still ached from the blows delivered upon the bleeding back of a fainting girl, sought to bring comfort and ease to another body wracked with pain. . . . The cries of newly born children must have echoed in her ears alternatively with the groans of her lacerated victim[s].”

Odd as it seems, the Brownriggs’ home was large enough that they had a lodger during this period. The lodger was a Frenchwoman and Mary Clifford complained to her about the mistreatment she was suffering. The lodger asked Mrs. Brownrigg about Clifford’s story. An outraged Mrs. Brownrigg found Clifford and cut her tongue in two with a pair of scissors.

The torturer took to concentrating on Mary Clifford, sometimes beating her five times each day. She would not stop until blood streamed down the girl’s body, at which point she ordered the weeping teenager to wash herself in a tub of cold water. Mrs. Brownrigg forced Mary Mitchell to watch as she beat Clifford bloody.

Soon there were signs that gangrene was setting into Clifford’s wounds. At about this time, Mary Clifford’s stepmother came to the Brownrigg home to inquire after her. James Brownrigg answered the door and said there was no Mary Clifford apprenticed there. The stepmother pressed on, saying she was certain she had been told the young girl was at the Brownrigg home. Mr. Brownrigg brusquely ordered her off his property and threatened to take her before the lord-mayor unless she immediately left and never came back. Then he slammed the door in her face.

Her suspicions aroused, the stepmother went to the house next door and asked if they had heard of Mary Clifford. The family living there was named Deacon and the husband was a baker but he was not at home when Mrs. Clifford called. Mrs. Deacon said that her family had often been alarmed by the sounds of moans and groans from the Brownrigg home. She promised to try to get to the bottom of the matter. As the two women were talking, Mr. Deacon came home. He agreed that the Brownrigg home should be watched.

At this time, Mr. Brownrigg purchased a hog that he put in the covered yard. The yard had a skylight that he removed to allow the animal more air.

With the skylight out of the way, it was easier for others to see into the Brownrigg residence. Mr. Deacon asked his servants to observe the neighbors and try to spot the young apprentices. One day, a maid looking from her window spied a naked teenager lying in the pig’s bed. The girl was smeared with blood and pig excrement. The maid called Mrs. Deacon who alerted some men in the area. They dropped bits of dirt down to get the girl’s attention.

She looked up but did not say anything. It seemed she might be incapable of speech.

Mrs. Deacon sent for Mary Clifford’s stepmother and for the overseers of St. Dunstan’s who had placed the girl with Mrs. Brownrigg. The overseer who met up with Mrs. Deacon and Mrs. Clifford was named Mr. Grundy. Mrs. Deacon, Mrs. Clifford, Mr. Grundy, and the maid who had first spotted the pitiful-looking adolescent went to the Brownrigg home and demanded to see Mary Clifford. Again they were told that she was not there. However, Mary Mitchell was brought out to them.

The maid said Mary Mitchell was not the girl she had seen from the window. Grundy sent for a constable and the law officer demanded to look through the house. While James Brownrigg allowed his home to be searched, he also threatened legal action against all the members of the group. Grundy but could not find Mary Clifford.

The impromptu semi-posse left, taking Mary Mitchell with them. Mr. Grundy escorted her to a workhouse. There she was helped out of a leather bodice that stuck so tightly to fresh wounds that she shrieked as it was removed.

When the parish overseer asked what had happened to her, the frightened girl asked if she would be sent back to the Brownrigg home. He assured her that she would not be. Finally feeling safe, she spilled out the story of the horrors of the past year. She added that she knew Mary Clifford was still at the Brownrigg home because she had seen her on the stairs just before he and the others knocked on the door.

Grundy and other concerned people returned to the Brownrigg house, determined to make a more thorough search. James Brownrigg sent for a lawyer and threatened to drag them all into court. The overseer summoned a police officer who said he would take Brownrigg to jail unless the girl was produced.

Finally James Brownrigg reluctantly showed them where Mary Clifford was: squeezed into a cupboard in the dining room. She had bruises and cuts all over her tiny starved body.

Mr. Brownrigg was forced onto a coach that took him to jail.

Mrs. Brownrigg and son John returned home to find James Brownrigg and Mary Clifford both gone and realized that their crimes had been discovered. They grabbed their valuables and left the area.

Mary Clifford followed Mary Mitchell to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The doctors were unable to save Clifford who died a few days later.

The search was on for Elizabeth Brownrigg and her son. The two of them tried to disguise themselves, then headed for the town of Wandsworth, and finally lodged with a shopkeeper named Mr. Dunbar. A few days after they moved in, Mr. Dunbar read a newspaper in which he saw descriptions of a mother and son wanted for murder. The resemblance between the pair wanted by the law and his new lodgers was too exact to be coincidental, he decided. He reported his suspicions to police and a constable went to the shopkeeper’s house and arrested the fugitives. Mother and son were put on a carriage to London.

All three Brownriggs were tried at Old Bailey. The news media of the time had a field day with the sensational story of the middle-aged midwife who sadistically tortured young girls. Gentleman’s Magazine in particular gave the monstrous Brownriggs a lip-smacking treatment worthy of the trashiest of our modern tabloids.

Elizabeth Brownrigg was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Husband and son were acquitted of murder and remanded to stand trial on lesser charges. Astonishingly, they would each serve only six months in prison for their very willing, active participation in these heinous crimes.

Rev. Silas Told, a clergyman well known as a missionary to the imprisoned, counseled an apparently remorseful Mrs. Brownrigg after her conviction. She confessed her guilt to him and said she agreed with the judgment of the court.

On the morning of her execution, she was allowed a visit with her husband and son. Her son knelt before her and she bent to hug him. Then she and James Brownrigg fell to their knees and prayed. “Dear James,” she said, “I beg that God, for Christ’s sake, will be reconciled, and that he will not leave me, nor forsake me, in the hour of death and in the day of judgement.”

Onlookers shouted abuse at the murderess as she was carted to her death at Tyburn’s field. Rev. Told pleaded with the crowd to pray for the penitent doomed woman but they responded with infuriated curses. “The devil will fetch her!” some yelled. “I hope she burns in hell!” others screamed.

As she stood on the gallows, Elizabeth Brownrigg prayed aloud for the salvation of her soul and confessed her guilt.

Her body was taken to Surgeons’ Hall for dissecting by interns. Hopefully, she did some good in death by serving as a teaching tool for future physicians. Later, her skeleton was hung up in Surgeons’ Hall.

Today, a statue of Elizabeth Brownrigg graces the “Wicked Women” exhibit at the London Dungeon, a famous British horror museum.

The Baniszewski Echo

Elizabeth Brownrigg’s crimes inspired those of Sarah Metyard, a London woman who was executed for similar offenses within a year of Mrs. Brownrigg. A daughter assisted Metyard in beating and torturing female apprentices. Both women were executed at Tyburn and their skeletons exhibited at Surgeons’ Hall.

The Elizabeth Brownrigg incident has an even more bizarre 20th Century echo in the story of Gertrude Baniszewski, torture-slayer of Sylvia Likens. The latter case took place in 1965. Carnival workers Lester and Betty Likens left two of their daughters, 14-year-old disabled Jenny and pretty, lively 15-year-old Sylvia, to board with Gertrude Baniszewski (pronounced Ban-i-shef-ski).

There are a startling number of parallels between the Elizabeth Brownrigg case and that of Gertrude Baniszewski. Like Mrs. Brownrigg, Gertrude was the mother of a large family (seven children). She also started beating Sylvia soon after the girls began living with her. Just as Mrs. Brownrigg concentrated on Mary Clifford, Baniszewski concentrated on Sylvia. However, the Baniszewski case was more extreme in this regard with Jenny being beaten only a few times although she was threatened with the same tortures inflicted on Sylvia if she tried to get help for her sister. Like Mary Mitchell with Mary Clifford, Jenny was forced to watch while Sylvia was abused. Son John and husband James assisted Mrs. Brownrigg in abusing her charges. Gertrude’s children and neighborhood youngsters joined in the beating and torture of Sylvia. Mrs. Brownrigg ordered Mary Clifford to spend nights in the basement after wetting her bed and Gertrude consigned Sylvia to her basement after a bed-wetting incident. Like the midwife’s victims, Sylvia often had her arms tied together and was hung from a hook. The apprentices had their heads dunked into pails of water and a bound Sylvia was forced into scalding baths. Like the hapless Marys, Sylvia was starved and often forced to appear naked in front of her tormentors.

In both cases, neighbors who “didn’t want to get involved” ignored the evidence of abuse in their midst and authorities did too little too late when they did get reports of violence.

Finally, in both instances the adult woman behind the horror was punished severely while her accomplices got off relatively easily. Gertrude Baniszewski served twenty years in prison before being paroled over fierce public opposition. Her 17-year-old daughter Paula, who beat Sylvia unmercifully and rubbed salt into the girl’s wounds, served about seven years in prison. Three male accomplices, all minors, spent only eighteen months in detention.

None of this means that Baniszewski knew anything about the earlier case. Unlike Sarah Metyard, who is believed to have deliberately patterned her crimes after those of Brownrigg, it is unlikely Baniszewski ever heard of her torturous foremother. Rather, it indicates that the motives of the two murderers were probably similar. Both were middle-aged women who may have been jealous of girls in the bloom of youth who possessed the sexual attractiveness they themselves had lost. It is also likely that both viewed their young charges as sexually “immoral.” It is known that Baniszewski considered Sylvia incorrigibly promiscuous; a few days before the girl’s death, she prodded an accomplice into burning the words “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!” into her flesh with a hot sewing needle. Brownrigg may have thought her apprentices “fallen women” since that was so commonly the fate of impoverished young females of the era.

Why did bed-wetting provoke such wrath in both these killers? Kate Millett speculated in fictional passages of The Basement, her book about the Gertrude Baniszewski case, that Baniszewski may have associated bedwetting with that urinary incontinence that sometimes accompanies enthusiastic sex or perhaps the g-spot “squirting” that some women do. This speculation is not unreasonable and such a link may have been behind either or both women’s overheated reactions to bedwetting. Another possibility is that, as mothers of large families, they bitterly resented having to spend so much of their lives cleaning up bodily discharges by changing a seemingly endless cycle of diapers. Monstrous as both these women were, they probably loved their own children enough to suppress this rage with them. But they had no such emotional bond with other people’s children. Thus, they may have vented a lifetime of pent-up fury at having to do so much “dirty work” in their cruel punishment of their bedwetting charges.

Perhaps the most ominous parallel in the cases is the failure of others to intervene in time. Two centuries had not altered the reluctance of neighbors to report the evidence of abuse that they saw and heard. Nor had it ensured that authorities informed of possible child abuse would act strongly and swiftly enough to save the lives of cruelly mistreated young people.

Bibliography

http://www.hauntedattraction.com/29/coverstory29.html

http://www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/reviews/paper/pooleyj.html

http://www.exclassics.org/newgate/ng311.htm, The Newgate Calendar, vol. 2, 1825.

Dean, John, The Indiana Torture Slaying, Borf Books, Brownsville, KY, 1999.

Everitt, David, Human Monsters, Contemporary Books, Chicago, IL, 1993.

Gribble, Leonard R., Queens of Crime, Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London, England, 1932.

Millett, Kate, The Basement, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1979.

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