Murder Husband by Broadside Execution Rutter Ellen (1 results)
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Seller: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., ABAA ILAB, Clark, NJ, U.S.A.The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., ABAA ILAB
Contact seller5-star sellerOnly Known Copy. An Unrecorded Victorian Murder Broadside: The Life and Execution of the "Queen of Dursley" [Broadside]. [Execution]. Rutter, Ellen [d.1859]. The Execution of Ellen Rutter for the Murder of Her Husband. [Gloucester?: S.n., 1859]. 14-1/2" x 9-3/4" (36.7 x 25 cm) broadside. Text in three columns below headline and…woodcut vignette of execution scene signed "Baker" and flanked by ornamental rules. Light soiling, fold lines and some creasing, a few small holes and tears to edges or along fold lines, no loss to legibility. A good copy of a rare item. $1,500. * A rare and evocative contemporary broadside documenting the life and death of Ellen Rutter, a woman whose descent from the "Queen of Dursley" to the gallows captivated the Victorian public. Rutter was executed for the brutal razor-slaying of her husband, Thomas, following years of "intoxicated. quarreling and fighting." The text provides a vivid account of Rutter's final moments before a crowd of 13,000, noting, with typical mid-Victorian interest, the presence of a "great number of respectable females" among the onlookers. This unrecorded regional printing leans heavily into the "fallen woman" trope, detailing her early life of "ill fame" and her local notoriety under her regal nickname. Rutter was executed in 1859, just nine years before the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, which moved executions behind prison walls. Her case represents one of the final decades where the state used public death as a large-scale theatrical deterrent. This broadside is a rare survivor of the Gloucester provincial press and appears to be unrecorded. Not at Harvard, the British Library or Oxford. Only Known Copy (illustrator).
