Margaret (Maggie) Dickson was an ordinary young woman who lived a simple life in a fishing village and sold fish and salt in Edinburgh. If not for a remarkable event, Maggie would have lived her life and been buried in the local cemetery at Musselburgh in the parish of Inveresk, never to be heard of again.

Her story has been told in a recently-released novel from Brisbane author Carmel McMurdo Audsley.

“It is 300 years since Maggie died on the gallows, but people still talk about her today, for one astonishing reason,” Ms Audsley said.  “On the journey from Edinburgh back to her village at Fisherrow, sounds could be heard coming from her coffin.  Maggie had survived the hanging.”

Maggie was an attractive young woman who longed for excitement. When her husband went missing, she left her two young daughters with a friend and set out to find him. Just a few days into her journey she fell ill and was given refuge, and a job, at an inn in a market town.  She enjoyed the life of a single woman, free from the responsibilities of raising a family and being a fishwife. She had a relationship with a young man, and when she became pregnant, she tried to hide her condition for fear of the shame and punishment meted out to women who bore children out of wedlock. When the child died, she was accused of the heinous crime of infanticide, convicted and sentenced to a public hanging.

When Maggie emerged from her coffin, some people ran away in fright, thinking she was a ghost. Others flocked to her, believing that she had a special power that connected her directly to the afterlife.

Read about her life, death and life in Suspended which is available for kindle and as a paperback from Amazon stores worldwide. 

• Carmel Audsley is a Brisbane author who writes historical fiction set in Scotland and Australia. Suspended is her eleventh novel.