Hannah

The Condemned Child

By: Alana Sanchez

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In December 1786, a small Connecticut town gathered behind its meeting house to witness a hanging. The condemned was Hannah Ocuish, twelve years old.

Told through the surviving record—especially the execution sermon printed on the day she died— Hannah: The Condemned Child traces the case from a summer morning on the road outside New London to the courtroom, the gaol, the pulpit, and the scaffold. It asks how fear hardens into certainty, how a child’s words are filtered through adult authority, and how print can turn a girl into an “example” for generations to come.

Written in a restrained, documentary style, this book explores:

• what the sources claim—and what they leave out

• childhood, culpability, and punishment in early America

• poverty, placement, and the “management” of unwanted children

• the making of moral theatre through sermons, courts, and crowds

Content note: this book discusses the killing of a child and the execution of a child.