Maggie Dickson was a Fisherrow fishwife who fell foul of this law. After her husband was press-ganged, she left her home and travelled to Kelso. There, she gave birth to a child, telling no one that she had been expecting, and abandoned it on the banks of the River Tweed. It is unclear whether her baby was stillborn or died after birth, but Maggie always maintained her innocence and said it had been born prematurely and that she didn’t know what had caused its death.

Although she was hanged aged twenty-two, by some trick of fate she survived her execution and was allowed to go free. She went on to live a long life and died of natural causes, some forty years later. Various versions of her life story have become folklore and she became known as ‘Half-Hangit Maggie’ or ‘Half-Hanged Maggie’.

Whilst I have taken liberties with some of the elements and have added family members and smugglers and new characters to the story, The Mourning Necklace is my reimagining of Maggie Dickson’s life – before, during and after her hanging.

The smuggling of the increasingly popular drink tea to avoid paying expensive import duties was prevalent up and down the East Coast of Scotland and England during the eighteenth century, although there is no suggestion the real-life Maggie Dickson or her family were involved and this is my own invention.

Although Maggie is renowned for escaping death, as I wrote her story I was more moved by the other themes it brought up, such as women’s reproductive rights, working conditions, poverty, heartache and grief, which – despite the passing of hundreds of years – are still so very prevalent today.

Maggie’s story is well known in Edinburgh and there is a pub in the Grassmarket named after her, near the spot of the old Grassmarket Gallows.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not exist without my literary agent, Viola Hayden, who heard me talking about ‘Half-Hanged Maggie’, one of Edinburgh’s notorious historical characters, and said I must write her story. Thank you, Viola, for helping me bring Maggie to life. The more I got to know Maggie, the more I felt compelled to bring her extraordinary story into the world.

I am also greatly indebted to my team at Curtis Brown Books, Ciara Finan, Atlanta Hatch and Nadia Farah Mokdad, for your tireless work and support.

Thank you, Mantle Books and Pan Macmillan, for continuing to publish my stories and helping me to shine a new light on the overlooked or infamous women of the past. To Maria Rejt and Madeleine O’Shea, for being the most incredible editors I could hope for; and to Chloe Davies: you are a brilliant publicist and make everything so much easier! Thank you too, Natasha Tulett, Rebecca Needes and Mandy Greenfield for your amazing work.