Editing Brookfield, Massachusetts (section)

===Bathsheba Spooner===
In March 1778, Joshua Spooner, a [[gentleman farmer|wealthy farmer]] in Brookfield, was beaten to death and his body stuffed down a well. Four people were hanged for the crime: two [[British people|British]] soldiers, a young [[Continental Army|Continental]] soldier, and Spooner's wife, [[Bathsheba Spooner|Bathsheba]], who was charged with instigating the [[murder]]. She was 32 years old and five months pregnant when executed. Newspapers described the case as "the most extraordinary crime ever perpetrated in New England."

Bathsheba was the mother of three young children, and in her own words felt "an utter aversion" for her husband, who was known to be an abusive drunk.

A year before the murder, she took in and nursed a sixteen-year-old Continental soldier who was returning from a year's enlistment under [[George Washington]]. The two became lovers and conceived a child.

[[Divorce]]s were all but impossible for women at that time, and [[adulteress]]es were stripped to the waist and publicly whipped. Bathsheba's pregnancy occasioned a series of desperate plots to murder her husband, finally brought to fruition with the aid of two British [[deserter]]s from [[John Burgoyne|General John Burgoyne]]'s defeated army.

As the daughter of the state's most prominent and despised [[Loyalist (American Revolution)|Loyalist]], Bathsheba bore the brunt of the political, cultural, and gender prejudices of her day. When she sought a stay of execution to deliver her baby, the Massachusetts Council rejected her petition, and she was promptly hanged before a crowd of 5,000 spectators.<ref>Deborah Navas, ''Murdered by His Wife'', [[University of Massachusetts Press]], 1999</ref>