Anne Greene

Anne Greene (c. 1628 – 1659 or c. 1665) was an English domestic servant who was accused of committing infanticide in 1650. She is known for surviving her attempted execution by hanging, being revived by physicians from the University of Oxford.

Greene was born around 1628 in Steeple Barton, Oxfordshire. In her early adulthood, she worked as a scullery maid in the house of Sir Thomas Read, a justice of the peace who lived in nearby Duns Tew. She later claimed that in 1650 when she was a 22-year-old servant, she was seduced by Sir Thomas's grandson, Geoffrey Read, who was 16 or 17 years old.^[1][2]

She became pregnant, though she later claimed that she was not aware of her pregnancy until she miscarried in the privy^[3] after seventeen weeks.^[4] She tried to conceal the remains of the fetus^[2] but was discovered and suspected of infanticide. Sir Thomas prosecuted Greene^[4] under the Concealment of Birth of Bastards Act 1624 (21 Jas. 1. c. 27), under which there was a legal presumption that a woman who concealed the death of her illegitimate child had murdered the child.^[5]

A midwife testified that the fetus was too underdeveloped to have ever been alive, and several servants who worked with Greene testified that she had experienced "issues" for approximately one month before her miscarriage, which began after she laboured turning malt.^[6][7] In spite of the testimony, Greene was found guilty of murder and was hanged at Oxford Castle on 14 December 1650. At her own request, several of her friends pulled her swinging body and a soldier struck her four or five times with the butt of his musket^[8] to expedite her death.^[9] After half an hour, everyone believed her dead, so she was cut down and given to University of Oxford physicians William Petty and Thomas Willis for dissection.^[10]

The physicians opened Greene's coffin the following day and discovered that she had a faint pulse and was weakly breathing. Petty and Willis sought the help of their Oxford colleagues Ralph Bathurst and Henry Clerke.^[9][10] The group of physicians tried many remedies to revive Greene, including pouring hot cordial down her throat, rubbing her limbs and extremities, bloodletting, applying a poultice to her breasts, and administering a tobacco smoke enema.^[11] The physicians then placed her in a warm bed with another woman, who rubbed her and kept her warm. Greene began to recover quickly, beginning to speak after twelve^[12] to fourteen hours^[13] of treatment and eating solid food after four days. Within one month she had fully recovered, aside from amnesia about the time surrounding her execution.^[12]

The authorities granted Greene a reprieve from execution while she recovered and ultimately pardoned her, believing that the hand of God had saved her, demonstrating her innocence.^[10] Furthermore, one pamphleteer notes that Sir Thomas Read died three days after Greene's hanging, so there was no prosecutor to object to the pardon.^[6] However, another pamphleteer writes that her recovery "moved some of her enemies to wrath and indignation, insomuch that a great man amongst the rest, moved to have her again carried to the place of execution, to be hanged up by the neck, contrary to all Law, reason and justice; but some honest Souldiers then present seemed to be very much discontent thereat" and intervened on Greene's behalf.^[14]

After her recovery, Greene went to stay with friends in the country, taking the coffin with her. She married and had three children. Robert Plot's 1677 The Natural History of Oxfordshire claims that she died in 1659,^[3][15] while Petty claimed that Greene lived fifteen years after her hanging, dying c. 1665, according to a 1675 entry in John Evelyn's Diary.^[12][16]

The event inspired two 17th-century pamphlets. The first, by W. Burdet, was entitled A Wonder of Wonders (Oxford, 1651) in its first edition and A Declaration from Oxford, of Anne Greene in its second edition. Burdet's pamphlets portray the event in miraculous, metaphysical terms. In 1651, Richard Watkins also published a pamphlet containing a sober, medically accurate prose account of the event and poems inspired by it, entitled Newes from the Dead (Oxford: Leonard Lichfield, 1651). The poems, of which there were 25 in various languages, included a set of English verses by Christopher Wren, who was at that time a gentleman-commoner (a student who paid all fees in advance) of Wadham College.^[17]

Greene's story was also mentioned in the 1659 English edition of Denis Pétau's The History of the World and in Robert Plot's 1677 The Natural History of Oxfordshire.^[15]

• Burdet, W. (1651). A Wonder of Wonders. Oxford.
• Evelyn, John (1901). Bray, William (ed.). The Diary of John Evelyn, Volume II. London and Washington, D.C.: M. Walter Dunne.
• Gowing, Laura (2003). Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-century England. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300207958.
• Gowing, Laura (2004). "Greene, Anne (c. 1628–1659)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11413. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 14 March 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Hughes, Trevor J. (1982), "Miraculous Deliverance Of Anne Green: An Oxford Case Of Resuscitation In The Seventeenth Century", British Medical Journal, 285 (6357): 1792–1793, doi:10.1136/bmj.285.6357.1792, JSTOR 29509089, PMC 1500297, PMID 6816370
• Loughnan, Arlie (2012), "The 'Strange' Case of the Infanticide Doctrine", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 32 (4): 685–711, doi:10.1093/ojls/gqs017, JSTOR 41811708
• Mandelbrote, Scott (2017). "William Petty and Anne Greene: Medical and Political Reform in Commonwealth Oxford". In Pelling, Margaret; Mandelbrote, Scott (eds.). The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1351883610.
• Shaw, Jane (2006). Miracles in Enlightenment England. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300197683.
• Watkins, Richard (1651). Newes from the Dead. Oxford: Leonard Lichfield.