Mary Morgan Stone

DIFFERENT CATEGORY - this stone memorialises a convicted killer, not a victim. Mary Morgan was a 17-year-old servant in Presteigne who concealed her pregnancy and killed her newborn; she was tried, convicted, and hanged within days under the fast assize-town procedure of the time. The judge who sentenced her, George Hardinge, was reportedly devastated and paid for her memorial himself. A SECOND GRAVESTONE EXISTS: the Powys Digital History Project (an existing source above, now read in full) makes clear there are two separate memorial stones in Presteigne churchyard, not one. The inscription captured above is the first, more elaborate stone. A second, plainer stone stands nearby, reading: 'In Memory of MARY MORGAN who Suffer'd April 13th, 1805. Aged 17 years. He that is without sin among you Let him first cast a stone at her. The 8th Chapr. of John, part of ye 7th vr.' Powys Digital History Project's own description is worth keeping: 'The tone of the above was clearly too much for whoever it was that erected a second stone nearby' - i.e. the second stone reads as a deliberate, biblically-pointed rebuke of the first one's moralising tone. Worth deciding whether to record this as a second inscription on this entry or as a linked companion record. ALSO WORTH FOLLOWING UP: Wikipedia notes it was long claimed (unconfirmed) that the child's father was Walter Wilkins the Younger, son of Morgan's employer and the local MP - a controversy not mentioned above. And Judge Hardinge's own account of the case appears in his own posthumously published writings - George Hardinge, 'The Miscellaneous Works, in Prose and Verse, of George Hardinge' (ed. J. Nichols, 1818), p.58 - freely digitised on archive.org but not yet read here (see sources_needing_access).