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mother named Margaret Adams: ‘… and rising early next morning went about her [the mother, Margaret]
occasions, leaving the Child dead in the bed with her Mistresses Daughter, it being conjectured that she had
smothered it with the Bed-cloaths, the which the Girl waking found, and called out, saying, there was a Child in
the bed.’ 40 Once again, the bed clothes and pillow appear instrumental in the deaths: objects which were
intended to protect and comfort became tools of murder in the hands of a mother. Furthermore, the bed was
used as a private, even secret, space to give birth in. In desperate and unforgiving circumstances, these women
may have then committed murder. I say ‘may’ have, as the courts were particularly unforgiving of mothers who
were found with new-born dead children: all of the women mentioned were sentenced to death. Perhaps the
mothers used the bed-clothes or pillows to suffocate their new-borns, or perhaps they simply left the infants
alone in the beds: their cries smothered by linens. The private dimensions of the bed, which were sealed with
wood and fabrics, allowed for murder, as well as comfort and love.
Infanticide was not the only form of murder to take place in beds. In 1686, Ann Hollis was brought before the
courts for killing a young apprentice girl in her care. 41 Elizabeth Preswick was just fourteen years old and
probably suffered from tuberculosis. After one particularly harsh whipping with a rod of birch, Elizabeth never
fully recovered and died, about a month later: ‘she [Ann Hollis] upon the day aforesaid, caused her [Elizabeth]
to go up Stairs, and two other Girls about the same Age, to hold her cross the Bed, while she Whipp'd her upon
the Back, Belly, Shoulders, and Legs, insomuch, that she languished till the 6th. of May and died.’ Elizabeth’s
punishment had been orchestrated in order to correct her inadequacies as an apprentice, and the court ruled
that Ann Hollis was not to blame for the girl’s death. The point of relevance for this article lies in Ann Hollis’s
decision to take the girl up stairs and into a chamber, to whip her upon a bed. The whipping would presumably
have been a messy affair, with blood flicking onto bed-clothes, curtains and other linen. Despite this, the
decision to perform it on the bed was a deliberate one. Perhaps this related to Elizabeth’s specific faults, which
were not alluded to in the record. 42 Or perhaps, the chamber provided Ann with a space to whip the girl, away
from any passing observers or lodgers. Ann needed a private space because her conduct was not acceptable:
Elizabeth was a sickly girl and not only did Ann whip her, she whipped her numerous times all over her body,
as the girl was held down by others. 43 Bed-clothes may have provided the ideal tool to silence the girl’s screams
and the bed space provided Ann with a means to punish her servants without anyone who may have reported
her seeing and hearing. The only witnesses were her servants, who evidently had cause to fear their mistress.
Surprisingly, the Old Bailey has few accounts of domestic abuse and/or murder between husbands and wives,
within beds. One published report (perhaps a little sensationalised) from Yorkshire, recounts a story of an
abused wife who used the marital bed as the setting for her revenge against her husband, John Stone. 44 John
Stone had murdered his niece and her husband as they lay in bed. The following day, his wife tried to discuss
the matter when Stone struck her several times (and at this point, she may have realised that her husband was
likely to have been the one who had murdered her niece and her husband). The following night, after her
husband had gone to sleep, she killed herself, beside him in the bed. In the morning; ‘when he awakening and
going to put his hands over his Wife, felt her all wet, and suddenly snatcht his hand back again; and seeing it to
be bloud, soon found that his Wife to be dead at his side; and then like one stricken with fear; he knew not at
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