The Mourning Necklace

Kate Foster

‘They said I would swing for the crime and I did.
I wear the rope-bruise like a necklace...’

ANY reader who has enjoyed a pint or two at Maggie Dickson’s pub in the middle of Edinburgh’s Grassmarket may not know the dark and mysterious story of the woman who was hanged only a stone’s throw away for murdering her newborn baby... but survived her own execution.

Inspired by this infamous real-life case, The Mourning Necklace is the new and unforgettable historical novel from the Women's Prize for Fiction-longlisted Kate Foster (pictured below), author of The Maiden and The King’s Witches which impressed critics and wowed readers with their powerful storytelling and feminist themes.

Foster’s mission is to give a voice to history’s forgotten women and their very real, lived experiences, and as she tells us in her author’s note, ‘sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.’ In fact, there can be few stranger stories than this true tale of the legendary ‘Half-Hangit Maggie,’ the unmarried Scottish fisherwoman who left her home in Fisherrow in 1724 and travelled to Kelso where she gave birth to a baby and allegedly abandoned it on the banks of the River Tweed.

Sentenced to hang for child murder, 22-year-old Maggie survived death on the gallows by some trick of fate... and it is her life before, during and after her hanging that Foster imagines in this coruscating novel which explores emotive issues like women’s reproductive rights, working conditions, and poverty which are as relevant today as they were three hundred years ago.

‘Human life is cheap. They die on street corners, in rags, an empty bottle rolling around beside them. They die of poxes and plagues and starvation and hangings. They die in childbirth. Or shortly thereafter. Whispers of the afterlife are sometimes the only hope we have.’

The working class world of Scotland’s 18th century fishing community is tough and unforgiving, and in a village tavern on the outskirts of Edinburgh, the family of Maggie Dickson gather to drown their sorrows on the day of her hanging. Her mother, father and sister Joan mourn her death but cannot help but feel relieved that she is gone. Shame haunts them and passers-by avert their eyes from the cheap-looking coffin on its rickety cart.

Despite protesting her innocence, Maggie was hanged for the murder of her newborn child. But as her family pray that her soul rests in peace, a figure appears at the door of the pub. It’s Maggie. Miraculously she is still ‘living and breathing.’ Bruised and dazed, she has ‘defied the Grim Reaper’ but Maggie has little time for her family’s questions with her future survival now in the balance.

Whether she bribed the hangman or has been touched by God matters little now. With her neck slashed and bearing a rope burn that she fears will be a scar that marks her out for life, all that matters to Maggie – who claims her baby was born prematurely – is proving her innocence before the city sheriffs order that she hang for a second time.

Written in the first person voice of Maggie to give the story extra emotional power, tension and authenticity, The Mourning Necklace is Foster’s best novel yet... a blistering and beautifully crafted portrait of an ordinary young woman from a working class background who is sentenced to death under rules made and enforced by men.

Employing an extraordinarily insightful and elegant prose which belies the viscerally cruel darkness of Maggie’s story, Foster transports readers to 18th century Scotland where we discover the pivotal events, family pressures and complex relationships that have led to the arrest and sentencing of the young mother.

By blending authentic social history with what is known about Maggie and her grinding life as a fisherwoman, Foster shows us how the close, and sometimes abrasive, companionship of the hardworking wives and mothers provided solace, determination and a shared resilience in a world in which women had few rights and were given little education.

Loss, hardship, bullying, poverty, and even smuggling, all have a part to play in Maggie’s life and we share her pain and fear, and feel her vulnerability, in an age when women were little more than the property of their husbands and had no say over their own bodies.

But by surviving a hanging against all the odds, Maggie also acts as a beacon of hope and strength, and a reminder that women from all corners of the past have a story to tell that speaks loudly to those who face intimidation and injustice today. A timely and terrific tale...
(Pan, paperback, £9.99)