Catalogue description Prisoner name: Ann Semple or Annie Semple or Ann Drinnan alias Janet White. Prisoner...

Prisoner name: Ann Semple or Annie Semple or Ann Drinnan alias Janet White.

Prisoner age: 21 or 22.

Prisoner occupation: Wife of Frederick Drinnan, weaver in Paisley [Renfrewshire].

Court and date of trial: Glasgow Circuit Court [Lanarkshire], 27 September 1837.

Crime: Murder of infant daughter, Margaret Drinnan, by drowning in the canal at Paisley on 8 June 1837.

Initial sentence: Death. Day of execution 18 October 1837.

Annotated: Sentence commuted to five years imprisonment in Glasgow Bridewell, 19 October 1837.

Petitioner(s): The Reverend John Macnaughtan, minister of parish of Paisley. Seven overseers of the poor for the fifth ward of the Burgh of Paisley. Provost, baillies and town council of Paisley (eight signatories). Inhabitants of Paisley [signatures detached and missing]. Alexander Wood, Rutland Square, Edinburgh, the prisoner's junior counsel.

Grounds for clemency: The prisoner is of sober and industrious habits; her worthless husband being in gaol for poaching she was destitute and homeless; her baby was sick and she believed it dying of starvation; she is a person of weak understanding; the evidence at her trial was circumstantial and the medical evidence contradictory.

Other papers: Covering letters for petitions from the Reverend John Macnaughtan, the provost of Paisley, Robert Shaw, manufacturer of Paisley and Alexander Wood. Report on case, printed indictment, copy declaration of prisoner and medical report, notes of trial. Correspondence relating to sentences of death passed on Ann Semple and William Perrie and comments on leniency of commutation of sentence of the former and the severity of the execution of the latter.

Additional Information: The prisoner is a native of Paisley. She lived in Glasgow but fled to Mossend in parish of Lochwinnoch [Renfrewshire] under assumed name of Janet White.