The Mourning Necklace by Kate Foster

The Mourning Necklace by Kate Foster was published in hardback in 2025. I read a review of it at the time and knew I would have to read it when it came out in paperback. I bought it from Waterstones at the same time as I picked up It Could Have Been Her and The Correspondent.

Set in 1724, The Mourning Necklace is the story of Maggie Dickson, the daughter of a fishing family in Scotland. I didn’t realise until I’d finished reading it, that it is based on a real life historical case.

Maggie wakes up in a coffin in a pub near Edinburgh. She was sentenced to death by hanging, but miraculously she is still alive. Can she avoid the hangman’s noose a second time and get another chance at life?

The story then goes back in time about a year. Maggie is 21 and lives with her parents and younger sister, Joan. Her dad, a fisherman, is violent and aggressive towards his family. The women work in the fishing industry too – cleaning, mending and selling. Although Joan doesn’t work as hard as Maggie, because she is the favourite. Maggie is jealous of her sister and wants a new life away from fish. She dreams of going to London.

Then she meets Spencer…

Spencer is handsome and seems interested in Maggie, rather than Joan. Will he give her a way out of her life in the fishing village?

Maggie has never wanted children. She’s seen the pain of losing babies and the hardships of raising them. But then she finds herself pregnant. When the baby is born, Maggie realises how much she wants her. But she lives for only a short time. Maggie has done nothing to harm her, but the law states she must hang for the death of her baby…

The Mourning Necklace is an enjoyable historical read which shines a light on how little control and choice women had over their own lives and bodies in the 18th century. If you enjoy either historical fact or fiction, I would definitely recommend it.