#38: Surviving a Hanging
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, Margaret Dickson’s story is a remarkable and harrowing tale from the annals of history. In 1724, she found herself on the gallows, sentenced to death for the crime of concealing her pregnancy and giving birth to a stillborn child. After her execution by hanging in Edinburgh, Scotland, to the shock of all witnesses, Margaret was discovered to still be alive when her body was being prepared for burial.
This astonishing turn of events led to her immediate release, as it was believed that her survival was a divine intervention, sparing her from a second execution. As you can imagine, Margaret’s story remains one of the only and most famous cases of a person surviving their own hanging.