<P> For as the decency due to sex forbids the exposing and public mangling of their bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sensation as the other) is to be drawn to the gallows and there be burned alive </P> <P> However, as described in Camille Naish's "Death Comes to the Maiden", in practice, the woman's shift would burn away at the beginning, and she would be left naked anyway . There were two types of treason, high treason for crimes against the sovereign, and petty treason for the murder of one's lawful superior, including that of a husband by his wife . Commenting on the 18th century execution practice, Frank McLynn says that most convicts condemned to burning were not burnt alive, and that the executioners made sure the women were dead before consigning them to the flames . </P> <P> The last to have been condemned to death for "petty treason" was Mary Bailey, whose body was burned in 1784 . The last woman to be convicted for "high treason", and have her body burnt, in this case for the crime of coin forgery, was Catherine Murphy in 1789 . The last case where a woman was actually burnt alive in England is that of Catherine Hayes in 1726, for the murder of her husband . In this case, one account says this happened because the executioner accidentally set fire to the pyre before he had hanged Hayes properly . The historian Rictor Norton has assembled a number of contemporary newspaper reports on the actual death of Mrs. Hayes, internally somewhat divergent . The following excerpt is one example: </P> <P> The fuel being placed round her, and lighted with a torch, she begg'd for the sake of Jesus, to be strangled first: whereupon the Executioner drew tight the halter, but the flame coming to his hand in the space of a second, he let it go, when she gave three dreadful shrieks; but the flames taking her on all sides, she was heard no more; and the Executioner throwing a piece of timber into the Fire, it broke her skull, when her brains came plentifully out; and in about an hour more she was entirely reduced to ashes . </P>

When was the last burning at the stake in england