The Dorothy Talbye Trial (1638) is an early American example of a trial of an insane woman at a time when the insane were treated no differently than ordinary criminals. Talbye was hanged in 1639 for killing her three year old daughter because, as she claimed, God told her to do so. Although Puritan Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony saw Talbye as possessed by Satan, the penalty for murder was necessarily death.
Read more about Dorothy Talbye Trial: Circumstances, Significance
Famous quotes containing the word trial:
“Between us two it’s not a star at all.
It’s a new patented electric light,
Put up on trial by that Jerseyite
So much is being now expected of....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)