On December 14, 1650, a 22-year-old woman named Anne Greene was led to the gallows at Oxford Castle in England.
She had been convicted of infanticide and sentenced to death by hanging. In the eyes of the law, her fate appeared certain.
Greene was hanged in front of a crowd. She remained suspended for around half an hour, and people at the scene believed she was dead. Her body was eventually cut down, placed in a coffin and taken away.
But Greene was not dead.
The people who received her body were preparing to dissect it for medical study. Instead, they discovered something astonishing: she was still breathing and had a pulse.
Her case would become one of the most remarkable stories of survival in seventeenth-century England.
Who Was Anne Greene?
Anne Greene was born around 1628 in Oxfordshire and worked as a domestic servant in the household of Sir Thomas Read, a local justice of the peace.
In 1650, Greene became pregnant after an encounter with Read’s grandson, Geoffrey Read. According to later accounts, Greene claimed that she had not realized she was pregnant until she miscarried.
The circumstances were tragic.
The pregnancy ended in the loss of the fetus, and Greene attempted to conceal the remains. The discovery eventually led to her arrest and prosecution for infanticide.
At the time, English law treated cases involving the concealed death of an illegitimate newborn particularly harshly. Under the law then in force, a woman who concealed the death of an illegitimate child could face a presumption of guilt unless she could establish that the child had been stillborn.
Greene maintained that the child had not been born alive.
Despite evidence supporting her claim, she was convicted and sentenced to death.
The Day of the Execution
On December 14, 1650, Anne Greene was taken to Oxford Castle to be executed.
Hanging was the standard method of execution in England at the time, but the procedure was very different from the later system of carefully calculated long-drop hangings.
Greene was placed in position and hanged.
According to contemporary accounts, she remained suspended for approximately half an hour.
But death did not come as expected.
People around her attempted to hasten the process, believing that she was suffering. Historical accounts describe people pulling on her body and, in one account, a soldier striking her with the butt of a musket.
Eventually, however, the authorities concluded that she was dead.
Her body was removed from the gallows.
And that should have been the end of her story.
Instead, it was only the beginning.
The Coffin Was Taken to the Anatomists
After the execution, Greene’s body was placed in a coffin and delivered to physicians associated with the University of Oxford.
This was not unusual for the period.
Bodies of executed criminals could be made available for anatomical study, allowing physicians and medical students to examine human anatomy.
The physicians expecting a corpse included William Petty and Thomas Willis, who were preparing to examine Greene’s body.
But when they examined her, they noticed something extraordinary.
She was not completely lifeless.
There were signs that she was still alive.
Modern medical research into the case says Greene was found to have signs of life, including breathing and a pulse. The physicians then began efforts to revive her.
Imagine the scene: a woman who had been legally executed was lying before physicians who expected to dissect her—and they suddenly realized that their “dead” subject was alive.
The Fight to Bring Her Back
The physicians did not give up.
They worked to restore Greene’s body temperature and stimulate her circulation.
Historical accounts describe various attempts to revive her, including warming her body and using physical stimulation.
Modern historians of medicine have suggested that the cold December conditions may have contributed to Greene’s survival by slowing her body’s processes. The 2009 Journal of Medical Biography study of the case proposed that a combination of low body temperature and external cardiac stimulation may have helped keep her alive until medical assistance arrived.
Eventually, Greene regained consciousness.
She had survived the execution.
The woman who had been officially condemned to death was now alive on the very table where doctors had expected to perform an anatomical examination.
A Second Execution?
Greene’s survival created a new legal and moral problem.
She had already been sentenced and executed. Yet she was now alive.
According to historical accounts, some people regarded her survival as a sign of divine intervention. Others apparently wanted the original punishment carried out again.
A contemporary account records that some of her opponents wanted her returned to the execution site, while others resisted the idea.
Ultimately, Greene was not executed again.
She was granted a pardon.
Her extraordinary survival had effectively changed the course of her life.
Anne Greene Became Famous
News of Greene’s survival spread rapidly.
In the seventeenth century, extraordinary events were often circulated through pamphlets, poems and eyewitness accounts. Greene’s story was no exception.
In 1651, a publication titled Newes from the Dead described what had happened to her. The pamphlet presented her case as a remarkable deliverance and included accounts and poems inspired by the event. A surviving copy is held by the Wellcome Collection.
Her story even attracted the attention of Oxford scholars.
The event became famous enough to inspire numerous poems and written accounts, helping preserve Greene’s story for later generations.
What Happened to Her Afterward?
The strangest part of the story is that Anne Greene did not simply survive and disappear.
She went on to live an ordinary life.
According to the medical-history research published in 2009, Greene was pardoned after her survival, married and had three children. She eventually died years later, meaning that she lived long after the execution that was supposed to end her life.
Her survival became so famous that accounts say she even took the coffin associated with her failed execution with her when she left Oxford.
The coffin had effectively become a physical reminder of the day she was supposed to die.
Was It Really a “Resurrection”?
Stories about Greene were sometimes described in religious language, particularly in seventeenth-century accounts.
But modern historians and medical researchers approach the incident differently.
There is no need to assume that Greene literally died and was miraculously resurrected in the modern medical sense.
Instead, the evidence suggests that the execution failed to cause irreversible death.
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