Driven mad by her drunk and disorderly husband, Elizabeth van Valkenburgh was done for poisoning her spouse in New York.
Van Valkenburgh was so sick of her husband getting bladdered and ‘misusing the children’ that she decided to let alcohol be the death of him, by doctoring his rum and brandy with arsenic. She may even have killed her previous husband the same way.
After the deadly deed, she hid in a barn and broke her leg in a fall. And it was this break plus her obesity that ensured that she was hanged while sat in her rocking chair, aged 47.
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Execution of the day 