Monstrous Females 2

Sarah Malcolm painted by W. Hogarth 1733

Ilustration as a Monster.  The etching is of a painting of Sarah Malcolm, a 22year old Laundress who worked in London in 1733.   Sarah Malcolm - and accomplices- returned to a house where she worked as a laundry maid and strangled the two elderly ladies who lived there, and slit the throat of their 19 yr old maid.  Sarah herself may not have been the strangler, but the way Hogarth has emphasised her beefy arms and hands somehow suggests she could have done so.

The gap between conviction and execution was always brief, and Hogarth hurridly sketched and painted Sarah.  The aim was to produce an affordable etching (6d, the price of a newpaper) as soon as possible after the execution.  This particular etching is a mirror image of the painting and was done so to complement another etching of an executed man, Jack Sheppard.  It was thought to increase the etching's commercial interest by turning the print into a matching pair.  Commercial art at it's most monstrous, commemorating death as a public spectacle.