Overview

The true story of a woman hanged in colonial Portsmouth for burying her stillborn out-of-wedlock baby. On a cold December morning in 1768, thirty-one-year-old Ruth Blay approached the gallows for her execution. Standing on the high ground in the northwest corner of what is now Portsmouth's old South Cemetery, she would have had a clear view across the pasture to the harbor and open sea. The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her listeners come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

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Carolyn Marvin is a professor and author that specializes in communication, culture and media, political communication, and technology and society. Marvin is currently the Frances Yates Emeritus Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. Marvin is the author of two major publications, When Old Technologies Were New and Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag. With an MFA in acting from Tisch/NYU Graduate Acting Program, Hannah Cabell has performed in dozens of productions on- and off-Broadway, including the premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview and opposite Frank Langella in both A Man for All Seasons and The Father. She has also appeared on numerous television shows, including The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, The Leftovers, Mr. Robot, and as Judge Lena Gittens in the recently revived Law & Order. With an MFA in acting from Tisch/NYU Graduate Acting Program, Hannah Cabell has performed in dozens of productions on- and off-Broadway, including the premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview and opposite Frank Langella in both A Man for All Seasons and The Father. She has also appeared on numerous television shows, including The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, The Leftovers, Mr. Robot, and as Judge Lena Gittens in the recently revived Law & Order.

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