Pierrepoint (10 page)

Arriving at the gaol with his brother, Harry saw that a fair-sized crowd had assembled and later claimed that he was instantly recognised by a group of men who had served on the coroner’s jury after a previous execution there. He may have been mistaken on this point, however, as this was to be his first appearance at Durham Gaol.

Settling into their quarters, the hangmen found they were directly opposite the two condemned cells, which were situated side by side. This afforded them several opportunities throughout the afternoon and evening to check on the condition of the men to see how there were coping with the strain of their impending doom. Both at that time were showing no signs of distress.

Receiving the details from the medical officials, Harry found that Noble weighed in at 178 pounds, and only once before in his career had he executed a man that heavy. He was to be given a drop of just 6 feet, his companion on the drop – again a big strapping fellow but weighing slightly less – was given a drop of 10 inches longer.

Lawman was the first to be pinioned. He showed no fear as he was led into the corridor, but as his shirt was opened to bare his neck for the rope he spoke gruffly – ‘Don’t hurt my neck’, a reference to the freshly healed scar from his failed suicide bid.

Noble joined him in the corridor and the two men covered the 35 yards to the scaffold without any sign of fear. A group of pressmen took notes as the condemned men took their places on the trapdoor and within seconds
Amelia Wood had been avenged and the Windy Nook burglaries finished forever.

Harry was paired up again with John Ellis for the first time in almost a year when they travelled to Manchester to hang John Ramsbottom, who had shot dead his brother-in-law in a public house. Although the two hangmen had got on well on previous occasions, a little bit of tension began to appear now, probably a combination of jealousy on the part of Pierrepoint that Ellis was now being offered roles as an executioner and taking fees that he, as the country’s number one, should be receiving, and possibly from Ellis’s side that his brother seemed to be being paired with Harry on a more regular basis, thus depriving him of potential income. It was an undercurrent that was about to build into something much bigger.

On 19 May, Harry travelled north of the border for what turned out to one of the strangest experiences of his career. The execution was to be at Ayr Gaol and the condemned man was Thomas Bone, who had pleaded guilty to the murder of his wife in April.

Harry made his way via Kilmarnock to Ayr railway station, where he was met by the town clerk and escorted to the gaol. There had been petitions in Bone’s home village of Glenbuck, but as the prisoner had pleaded guilty there was no chance that the verdict would be overturned. The clerk, however, told Harry that as he had set out to meet the hangman’s train a King’s Messenger had arrived at the gaol carrying a telegram.

Sure enough on reaching the prison it was found that a reprieve had indeed been granted and Harry’s duties were therefore no longer required. Bone had not yet learned of his fate and the official party, which included the governor and provost, were preparing to tell the man he had been spared the ignominious death on the hangman’s rope. They asked Harry
if he would like to accompany them; thinking he would be bringing the prisoner good news, he willingly agreed.

Harry happened to be at the head of the party as the provost read out the letter stating the purpose of their visit and telling Bone his life had been spared. Bone was sitting reading the New Testament as they spoke, and as he took in what was being said he rose to his feet, threw the book to the floor and ran to the corner of the cell with tears streaming down his face. ‘I want to die, I want to be with my wife,’ he cried. Leaving the chaplin to console the prisoner, Harry left the cell after this harrowing and totally unexpected experience.

After refreshments and a hot meal, Harry was shown around the prison and was asked for his thoughts on the scaffold they had constructed for the execution. He examined the wooden structure, raised some six feet off the ground and accessed via a set of steep steps, and told the officials it was a very poor arrangement. He explained to them the virtues of the English scaffold, where the drop and condemned cell were all on one level. Harry departed for home that night having received his fee in full – a practice the English authorities didn’t adopt from their Scottish counterparts. (In England, no execution meant no fee for the hangman.)

Thomas Bone’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he was transferred to Perth Gaol to serve out his sentence. Four years later, after smashing all his personal property in his cell, he hanged himself with a bed sheet, achieving the outcome the authorities had denied him at Ayr.

Harry and William Willis were on duty on a sunny July morning when they executed Fred Ballington at Manchester’s Strangeways Prison. Ballington was a Glossop butcher who had cut his wife’s throat in a carriage at Manchester’s London Road railway station after she refused to give him some money to buy more drink.

Like Lawman, whom Harry had hanged at Durham earlier that year, Ballington had also tried to cut his own throat after committing the murder. He was given a drop of 7 feet and died instantly.

A week later Harry carried out two executions in two days. On Tuesday, 4 August, he was at Hull Prison for the execution of Thomas Siddle, who had killed his wife by cutting her throat after she took out a commitment order against him. After hanging Siddle, he travelled north to Durham, where he met up with his brother.

Matthew Dodds was a miner from Hamsterley, near Bishop Auckland who had been convicted of murdering his wife. Mary Dodds had inherited a substantial amount of property and made a will, leaving it all to her husband. Following a series of quarrels she made a new will, this time leaving Dodds just a small allowance, but in January 1908 she was persuaded to make a third will reverting her inheritance back to her husband. A few weeks later Dodds hurried round to a neighbour and said that he had found his wife lying dead in the fireplace. The coroner recorded an open verdict – that death was due to the burns she had received during the fall – and she was buried without a police investigation. Following information received from an anonymous tip-off, however, the body was exhumed, whereupon a pathologist found that cause of death had been strangulation.

At his subsequent trial, Dodds was convicted and sentenced to death. However, the Criminal Appeal Act had recently come into being, and this gave him some hope. Prior to this Act, those condemned did not automatically have the right to appeal and often had to hope that a reprieve or commutation of sentence came from some other means. Matthew Dodds became the first man allowed an appeal under the new Act. His defence claimed that the judge at the original trial had omitted
evidence in his summing-up. The appeal was dismissed, however, and the death sentence confirmed. Dodds had been due to be executed on 21 July, but this date was changed when he made the historic appeal. Harry was notified of the new date but wrote back explaining that he was unable to attend on 4 August as he had accepted an engagement at Hull for that day, though he would be free to officiate on the following day.

Unaware that the hangman had extended his life by one extra day, Dodds was reading when Harry peeped into his cell. The first thing Harry noticed, and which he had up until then had no notification of, was that the condemned man had a wooden leg. This required some thought and Harry and Tom retired to their quarters across the corridor, barely six paces from the man waiting to hang, where Harry put on his ‘study cap’ as he pondered the problem. Consulting the officials he had been told that they believed Dodds was unable to walk without a stick, but when the question was put to the prisoner later that afternoon, he said he would be able to walk if he had his wooden leg. It was decided that in order to avoid the flight of stairs that led down to the gallows room, on the following morning he’d be taken to a holding cell that was on the same level.

Dodds was regularly observed the rest of that evening and seemed in good spirits, chatting to his warders and with the chaplain who made frequent visits. On the morning of his execution, he had a resigned air about him as his wrists were secured and he was led out into the corridor. Moments later the distinctive clump of the wooden leg echoed eerily through the hushed gaol. Entering into the yard, Dodds passed three reporters who had been given permission to witness events. He cast them a cursory glance and limped on without a word. Reaching the drop, Tom strapped the wooden leg to the other as Harry had explained to him,
while the prisoner murmured repeatedly: ‘Lord have mercy on me.’ Seconds later, Dodds was dead.

On 20 August, Harry crossed the Irish Sea to hang John Berryman at Londonderry. Berryman had been convicted of the murder of his brother and sister-in-law after a business dispute. The brothers were joint owners of a farm and after a series of disagreements over a variety of things he had battered them to death with a hammer.

Harry was assisted by his brother Tom, and they were issued with the necessary warrants and a strict timetable to adhere to. Having accepted the role, Harry then had to turn down an offer from the governor of Perth Gaol to carry out an execution there on the day before the Ireland execution, as it would be impossible to travel from Scotland to be at Londonderry in time. It was then offered to John Ellis, who carried out the execution with Willis as his assistant. The brothers travelled to Londonderry via the midnight sailing from Heysham. Harry described the journey to Belfast as a glorious one, the beautiful calm night sky making many of his travelling companions disinclined to go below deck. Despite being awake most of the night, he met up with the officials from the sheriff’s office feeling refreshed and alert.

After a brief rest in his quarters at the gaol, Harry was escorted to the execution chamber, which, he noted, was a long, low-roofed building adjacent to the condemned cell. Having made his calculations for a drop he tested the apparatus and filled a sandbag to stretch the rope. Pulling the lever the drop crashed open and gave the hangman a surprise. Instead of the usual nine- or ten-foot pit below the drop, the gallows had been rigged in a building that overhung the prison yard, and the man was to drop into a chasm with the floor some twenty feet below.

When he entered the cell on the following morning he found Berryman lying on his bed in a distressed state. Two priests knelt at his side trying to offer him comfort while praying intently. Harry crossed the room and bent down to help the prisoner to his feet. Berryman seemed puzzled at the stranger who had entered, his state of mind being so confused that he didn’t realise it was time for him to leave the cell.

The prisoner refused a stimulant and walked falteringly and painfully slowly as he made his last journey supported by a warder on either side. A large group of dignitaries gathered around the drop, but they kept well back and Berryman was dead moments after stepping onto the trapdoors. With the aid of a warder the body was hauled up, removed from the rope, and placed in a rough, plain coffin that lay across the open trapdoors. Removing the cap, Harry could see that although Berryman’s features were much swollen, the expression was one of composure, indicating a painless and instant death.

While Harry was removing the prisoner and tidying away the tackle, the coroner and a jury arrived at the prison to carry out an inquest. Harry had asked the governor if he would refrain from giving his name, so that his anonymity could be maintained. This he agreed to and when questioned by the coroner he kept his word. The jury, however, disagreed with this finding and demanded to know the name of the hangman. A row broke out at the inquest with the jury repeating their demands to be told who the hangman was.

‘So help me God, I don’t know who he is!’ shouted the coroner after their persistent questioning caused him to lose his temper. Another juryman then gave voice to the inquest stating that the rumour was that the hangman was a local man.

‘We refuse to deliver a verdict until we know the name of the hangman,’ the foreman then announced. However, eventually, and reluctantly, the jury recorded a verdict that
the cause of death had been dislocation of the neck caused by judicial hanging.

In November, again assisted by his brother, Harry carried out the execution of James Phipps at Knutsford. Phipps had lost an eye and wore a scarf across his face to hide the disfigurement. On 12 October he had asked a young girl to run an errand for him and when she had returned he had asked her to show him where the local lamplighter lived. They had set off together, but a short time later she was found dead. She had been sexually assaulted and had died from drowning after her face was held down in a pool of muddy water.

The 21-year-old Phipps was identified as the man seen with her prior to her death and he was arrested on suspicion of murder. He pleaded insanity at his trial, which took place just a week after he had committed the murder. The jury took only seven minutes to find him guilty and he was hanged one month to the day from carrying out the dreadful crime.

December was to be another busy month for Harry Pierrepoint, with five executions in all parts of the country. On 2 December he travelled to Norwich, where he hanged James Nicholls, a Norfolk labourer who had murdered an old woman at her home in Fertwell. He was assisted by his brother. They then travelled back to Yorkshire, where they were engaged to execute a disgruntled former Bradford clerk who had battered to death a cashier with a poker.

A passer-by had seen a red-faced man standing in the doorway of a Bradford office building. Asked what the matter was, the man replied he was ‘having a bit of bother’ in the office. He then went back inside, returning minutes later with blood on his hands. When he later heard of the terrible murder that had taken place, the passer-by was able to give police an excellent description of the man he had seen. John William Ellwood was a former employee at the office but had
left after a disagreement with a director. Knowing the routine of the offices, he was aware that the cashier paid a visit to the bank each Friday, often with large quantities of cash.