headswoman

English edit

From head +‎ -s- +‎ -woman.

headswoman (plural headswomen)

A female headsman; a female executioner that carries out executions by decapitation.
- 1910, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, chapter 3 part 9:
  No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a hangman but not a hangwoman.
(East Anglia) (obsolete) A midwife.
- 1830, Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia‎^[1], volume II, London: J. B. Nichols and Son, page 154:
  HEADSWOMAN, s. a midwife. It would be presumptuous to pry into obstetric mysteries, to discover the origin or propriety of this denomination.