"Elizabeth Fry found that the chief thought of nearly every condemned woman in Newgate relates to her appearance on the scaffold - the dress in which she would be hanged.

Christian Bowman, when she was publicly hanged and burnt outside Newgate in 1789 wore a fine striped gown.

In 1815 Eliza Fenning wore the dress set aside for her future wedding.  She was said to look very pretty upon the scaffold." [ 45,000 people turned up to watch Eliza die, after she had been forced to walk to her execution with the halter around her waist and carrying the actual noose in her hand.  Her funeral was spectacular. Believed to have been wrongly hanged and the subject of a huge appeal, her funeral became a huge pageant.  Cut down from the scaffold she was publicly displayed for three days.]  Phoebe Harris was also dressed well when she was hanged and her body burned  outside Newgate prison in 1786.  People collected her ashes as souvenirs.

Mary Blandy was hanged in Oxford in 1752 from a beam placed across the branches of two trees.  Reached by a ladder which was removed once the noose was around her neck.  Death by slow hanging was particularly common for early executions and in cases such as these where jury-rigged gallows were created in public places to afford better spectator views.