When history’s most brutal killings are explored, it is typically men who have carried out the violence.
So when women do get the knives out, their crimes inevitably attract the most attention.
Such female brutality is rare now, and in William Shakespeare’s era – the 16th and 17th centuries – it was even less common.
But, as policewoman turned historian Blessin Adams reveals in her latest book, members of the fairer sex in Early Modern Britain were more than capable of committing heinous deeds.
Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain documents cases of horrifying killings carried out by women.
From the murders of abusive husbands, to the slayings of brutal employers, the cases are detailed by contemporary witness accounts and court records.
And even though the women who carried out such crimes often did so after being subjected to male violence and abuse, their misdeeds were still punished with a death sentence.
Described as ‘yoong, tall, and well favoured of shape and counternance’, Alice Arden, of Faversham, Kent, was the wife of unpopular merchant Thomas Arden.
In 1551, Alice decided to murder her husband, who she was cheating on with her father’s servant, a tailor.
Determined to get rid of her other half, Alice had first tried to poison him.
When that ruse failed, she found a collaborator in her neighbour, John Greene, who had fallen out with Arden over a piece of land.
She, Greene and other conspirators ending up bungling several further attempts to kill Arden.
He finally met his end when he was ambushed by an assassin, who burst out of a cupboard and wrapped a cloth tightly around his face, before Alice’s lover beat him around the head with a fourteen-pound pressing iron.
When that did not kill him, the conspirators drew knives and hacked at Arden until he was dead.
Displaying her hatred for her husband, Alice then plunged her lover’s dagger into his corpse, which was carried outside and left in the snow.
Alice would go on to be burnt at the stake in front of a huge crowd, having beeng found guilty of ‘petty treason’ – the name for the killing of a spouse.
Ms Adams writes: ‘The sex of the person condemned decided their punishment: men were hanged, women were burned at the stake.
‘While petty treason was a law that encompassed both sexes, in practice it was used to subjugate and punish women with far greater force than was used against men.
‘This in part was because acts of female violence were deeply concerning within a society that placed the upmost importance on domestic stability.
‘Male violence was considered necessary to maintain social order; female violence was an aberration that had to be stamped out.’
Alice’s crime resonated in society for years afterwards. It filled the annals of true crime pamphlets and even inspired a play, the 1592 work Arden of Faversham.
In 1602, young woman Elizabeth Caldwell decided to kill her largely absent husband, Thomas.
So she baked some of his favourite ‘oaten cakes’ and laced them with arsenic.
But Thomas was so enamoured by the cakes, which he ate three or four of, that he invited other members of the household, including children, to have some too.
The group quickly became desperately ill. Whilst Thomas survived, the daughter of their neighbour died a painful death.
Caldwell was sentenced to death.
Five years later, Margaret Fernseed, the owner of a brothel near the Tower of London, was accused of her husband’s murder because she did not seem to be appropriately sad when he died.
She was alleged to have pushed a knife into her spouse’s throat, even though there was no evidence to support the claim.
Margaret was branded an ‘abhomination’ and adulteress and subsequently executed.
Elizabeth Husbands, of Ibstock, Leicestershire, was initially accused of poisoning her husband.
She was found guilty of murder at her trial in March 1684 and was sentenced to be burned at the stake.
But, before she was put to death, Husbands confessed to murdering, ‘her mother, her fellow servant, her rejected suitor and her husband.’
She insisted that he had carried out the crimes only after being visited by an evil spirit that tempted her to poison herself.
The serial killer was lucky that she was not living in the previous century, when Henry VIII was on the throne.
The 1530 ‘Act for Poisonyng’ mandated that the punishment for poisoning was to be ‘boiled to death’.
The following year, cook Richard Roose was subjected to that fate after being charged with trying to poison the porridge of the Bishop of Rochester.
Roose was boiled to death in Smithfield, London’s main execution hub. His body was placed in a gibbet and then lifted in and out of boiling water until he died.
Those watching were meant to get the message that other poisoners would meet the same fate.
Henry’s horrifying legislation was repealed by his son, King Edward VI.
Leticia Wigington, of Ratcliffe, London, was another desperate female killer.
Abandoned by her husband, she was trying to raise her three children on the meagre wages she got from being a seamstress.
To ease her money troubles, she took on young female apprentices and was paid by their parents to do so.
One such apprentice was 13-year-old Elizabeth Houlton, who was accused by Wigington’s male lodger, John Sadler, of stealing.
She may also have been accused of taking a small amount of money.
Elizabeth was stripped naked and had her hands tied above her head.
Acting on Wigington’s orders, Sadler then whipped her for – as witness accounts reveal – ‘four hours or more’ until the ‘blood flowed from her like rain’.
But this punishment was not enough for Wigington.
She also ‘sent for salt, and salted [Elizabeth’s] wounds, to render their tortures more grievous’.
The torture continued until Elizabeth fainted. She suffered for three days more before finally succumbing to her wounds.
Wigington was immediately arrested. She blamed the killing on Sadler and in court ‘pleaded little in her defence, onely saying she did not think to kill [Elizabeth]’.
But the seamstress was found guilty. She was executed at Tyburn in 1681.
Ms Adams explains that the majority of public blame for Elizabeth’s killing was placed on Wigington, even though she had not wielded the whip.
‘Leticia was viewed as the principal actor in this terrible murder, while John’s part was diminished to that of a mindless accessory.
‘Never mind that John had fashioned the whip and delivered the killing blows.
‘Leticia’s role in the torture and murder of her young apprentice was considered to be even more outrageous, frightening and disturbing because she was a woman.’
For centuries, female domestic abuse victims had no protection in the eyes of the law.
One such victim was French midwife Mary Hobry, who was regularly physically abused by her husband.
Bravely, Mary, who ‘burned with fury’ at her treatment, publicly branded her husband a ‘rogue, ‘dog’, ‘drunkard’ and ‘villain’.
Driven to her wits’ end, she throttled her husband when he lay drunk in 1688.
She then sawed off his head, legs and arms and then threw the body parts in public latrines and on dung heaps.
After being caught, Mary denied the charge of murder, saying: ‘I was afflicted in my mind, wounded in my conscience, and drowned in my tears.
Falling to her knees, she begged that God ‘pardon my offences’ for her ‘black crime’ and later confessed.
But she was nonetheless condemned for the crime of petty treason and burnt at the stake.
Thou Savage Woman, by Blessin Adams, is published by Harper Collins and is available from the Mail bookshop.