Lizzie Halliday

Lizzie Halliday (c. 1859 – June 28, 1918, born Eliza Margaret McNally) was an Irish-American serial killer responsible for the deaths of four people in upstate New York during the 1890s. In 1894, she became the first woman to be sentenced to death by the electric chair.[1] Halliday's sentence was commuted and she spent the rest of her life in a mental institution. She killed a nurse while institutionalized and is speculated to have killed her first two husbands.

Lizzie Halliday
Newspaper portrait of Lizzie Halliday
Born
Eliza Margaret McNally

c. 1859
Antrim, Ireland
DiedJune 28, 1918 (aged 58–59)
Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Fishkill, New York
NationalityIrish American
Known forSerial killer, first woman sentenced to die in the electric chair

Biography

Halliday, originally Eliza Margaret McNally, was born around 1859[2] in County Antrim, Ireland. Her family moved to the US when she was young (given as aged three or eight).[2][3]

In 1879, Halliday married a Greenwich, New York, man known by the alias Charles Hopkins; his real name was Ketspool Brown.[3] They are said to have had one son who ended up institutionalized.[3] In 1881, after Hopkins' death, she married pensioner Artemus Brewer, but he also died less than a year later. Her third husband, Hiram Parkinson, left her within their first year of marriage. Halliday went on to marry George Smith, a war veteran who had served with Brewer. After a reported failed attempt to kill Smith by putting arsenic in his tea, Lizzie fled to Bellows Falls, Vermont. She married Vermont resident Charles Playstel, but she vanished two weeks later.[3]

In the winter of 1888, Halliday resurfaced in Philadelphia, at a saloon on 1218 North Front Street that was run by the McQuillans, friends she knew from Ireland. Going by the name "Maggie Hopkins",[4] Halliday set up a shop, but was later convicted of burning it down for the insurance money. She was sentenced to two years at Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary.

In 1889, now going by the name "Lizzie Brown", she became the housekeeper for Paul Halliday, a twice-widowed 70-year-old farmer living in Burlingham, New York, with his sons.[2] Their marriage was marred by what Halliday described as Lizzie's sporadic "spells of insanity". Within two years, the Halliday family's house and barn burned to the ground, and she was suspected of setting the fires. At some point, she stole a team of horses and had a neighbor help her drive them to Newburgh, New York, where she sold them. She was acquitted of the crime on the grounds of insanity (accounts vary on this happening in 1890 or 1893).

Murders

In May 1891, the Halliday house was burned to the ground, killing Halliday's mentally handicapped son John. She was again suspected of setting the fire since she was known to have disliked John. She claimed that he died trying to save her from the flames, but his locked bedroom door was discovered in the rubble, and Halliday was in possession of the key.[5] Soon after, she burned down the Halliday barn and mill as well. She attempted to run off with another man, but was arrested and sent to an asylum. She was transferred to another asylum, but was then declared cured and released, returning home to Halliday.

Paul Halliday disappeared that August. She claimed he had gone to a nearby town to do masonry work. Following the neighbors' suspicions that something was not right about her story, a search warrant was obtained, and on September 4 the bodies of two women were found buried in hay in a barn.[6] Both had been shot. The women were later identified as Margaret and Sarah McQuillan, New York residents who were part of the family Lizzie had stayed with in Philadelphia. Little could be ascertained from Halliday as, when questioned, she behaved in an erratic manner, tearing at her clothes and talking incoherently. She was kept in custody, and some thought she was merely faking insanity. A few days after the McQuillans were found, Paul Halliday's mutilated body was discovered under the floorboards of his house. He had also been shot. Lizzie was charged with the murders and held for trial at the Sullivan County jail in Monticello, New York. During her first few months there, she refused to eat, attacked the sheriff's wife, set fire to her own bed, tried to hang herself, and cut her own throat with broken glass, about which she said, "I thought I would cut myself to see if I would bleed."[4] Her jailers were forced to chain her to the floor during her remaining months there.

Press coverage

While she was in jail, Lizzie received national attention, with one sensational story after another appearing across the country in tabloid newspapers. The New York World portrayed Lizzie's case as "unprecedented and almost without parallel in the annals of crime".[3] She was also covered by the World's Nellie Bly, who eventually managed to get an interview with Lizzie in which she revealed her previous marriages, facts Bly was able to confirm. Another useful source for reporters was Robert Halliday, Paul Halliday's son. The Sullivan County Sheriff started a new round of speculation when he told the press that Lizzie was probably connected to the Jack the Ripper murders, although no connection was ever made.

The revelation that she had been married five times before she wed Paul Halliday, that two of her husbands had died less than a year after their weddings and that Lizzie had tried to poison a third led the press to speculate that she was responsible for at least six deaths. "Whether these men died natural deaths or were murdered is not known", The New York Times noted in June 1894.[3] Lizzie also made a claim (confided to Robert Halliday) that she had killed a husband in Belfast,[7] but had managed to conceal the crime.

Conviction

On June 21, 1894, Halliday was convicted at the Sullivan County Oyer and Terminer Court for the murder of Margaret McQuillan and Sarah Jane McQuillan. She became the first woman ever to be sentenced to death by electrocution, via New York State's new electric chair. Governor Roswell P. Flower commuted her sentence to life in a mental institution after a medical commission declared her insane.[7][8][9][10]

Halliday was sent to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where she spent the remainder of her life. She became a model patient and was trusted with sewing privileges, giving her access to tools, including scissors. She grew close to Nellie Wicks, one of the attendants at Matteawan, but she was deeply upset by Wicks's plans to leave the institution.[11] In 1906, she killed Wicks by stabbing her 200 times with a pair of scissors.[12]

Halliday died of Bright's disease on June 28, 1918, after spending nearly half her life in the asylum.[13][14][15][16][17]

See also

References
  1. Farrell, Elaine; McCormick, Leanne. "'Bad Bridgets': The criminal and deviant Irish women convicted in America". The Irish Times. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
  2. Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of, Random House Publishing Group – 2012, page 58 (born 1859) ISBN 978-0345524478
  3. Conway, John (August 11, 2014). "A Short History Of Serial Killer Lizzie Brown Halliday". newyorkhistoryblog.org.
  4. Serial Killer Lizzie Halliday, (excerpts from several contemporaneous newspapers and publications) Archived September 23, 2015, at the Wayback Machine unknownmisandry.blogspot.com
  5. Telfer, Tori (2017). Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 62. ISBN 978-0062433732.
  6. "Horrifying story of the serial killer called the "worst woman in the world"". IrishCentral.com. July 14, 2018. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  7. Robert Wilhelm. "The Worst Woman on Earth". Murder by Gaslight. Retrieved December 22, 2014.
  8. James D. Livingston, Arsenic and Clam Chowder: Murder in Gilded Age New York, SUNY Press – 2012, pg 64 ISBN 9781438431796
  9. The Library of Congress, Researchers, Topics in Chronicling America – Death by Electric Chair Archived October 21, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, www.loc.gov
  10. Shrady, George Frederick; Stedman, Thomas Lathrop (January 30, 1894). "Medical Record". W. Wood – via Google Books.
  11. Telfer, Tori (2017). Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 79.
  12. Murder By A Maniac – Lizzie Halliday, Ex-Gypsy, Adds a Seventh Victim to Her List – Stabs Nurse With Shears – Horrible Crime of Crazy Woman In Hospital For Insane Criminals at Matteawan, N. Y. Archived September 23, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, The Logansport Pharos (In.), Oct. 17, 1906, p. 7
  13. "The Washington Post from Washington, District of Columbia on June 30, 1918 · Page 8". Newspapers.com. June 30, 1918.
  14. "LIZZIE HALLIDAY DEAD.; Guilty of Five Murders and Described as 'Worst Woman on Earth.'". The New York Times. June 29, 1918.
  15. LIZZIE HALLIDAY, MURDERESS, DIES IN ASYLUM, Middletown Times-Press from Middletown, New York, Friday, June 28, 1918
  16. Telfer, Tori (2017). Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 83.
  17. Owen, Kevin - "Killing Time in the Catskills" (2019 - Moonlight Press) ISBN 9781071087497
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