Pierrepoint (11 page)

Following Ellwood’s conviction, local interest in the case became huge. Harry had to run the gauntlet of curious townsfolk asking if he was to be the hangman who ‘topped’ Ellwood. He kept tight-lipped about his appointments, and rumour spread that he had refused the job because it meant hanging someone from his hometown. Large crowds milled around the entrance to Armley Gaol, many from Bradford, and Harry saw several people in the crowd he recognised as his inquisitors in the previous weeks. Besides the curious crowds who recognised the hangman, Ellwood had also boasted to his guards that he knew Harry Pierrepoint well, and that he was going to cause him as much trouble as possible in the morning.

Harry spied him in the cell, but had no recollection of ever having set eyes on the condemned man before. A new permanent scaffold had been constructed in the garage where the prison van was stored. After calculating the drop the hangmen made their way back to their quarters in the prison hospital, where they passed two prison officers busy digging a grave in the small plot of land used to bury hanged murderers.

Back in their cell Harry and Tom pondered the threat made by Ellwood. Although many had boasted to their guards that they would kick up a fuss on the morning of their executions, when the time came, more often than not fear took over and they usually submitted placidly. Trouble on the drop was a rarity, but was always planned for. Harry talked through a drill whereby he got two of the escort guards to stand on wooden planks flanking the trapdoors ready to hold the condemned man’s arms if he made a struggle.

When the executioners made their way down the corridor
they noticed the usual crowd of witnesses were complemented by several extra uniformed guards. As the party waited for the under-sheriff to arrive outside the cell, Harry took a last opportunity to size up the prisoner. Peeping through the spyhole, he saw him dressed in his own clothes, standing talking to the warders close to the cell door. On the stroke of nine, the door slid open and the hangmen quickly moved to secure his wrists. Ellwood was pinioned before he had chance to register their presence, thus rendering any of his threats to cause mayhem worthless.

As Harry was baring his neck, Ellwood glared viciously at him. ‘Harry, you’re hanging an innocent man,’ he said. The brothers had debated this point while travelling to the gaol, but fully believed he was guilty as charged; nothing they had witnessed since their arrival had caused them to change their mind. The walk to the scaffold was just 20 yards, and Ellwood glared at the officials, turning his head round as he was escorted along.

‘I am innocent!’ he shouted at the officials before he was led onto the trap. As Tom swooped down to secure his ankles, Harry adjusted the rope around his neck. Looking the hangman straight in the eye, Ellwood repeated his protestations. ‘You are killing an innocent man,’ he barked. Harry was becoming angry that a man on the very edge of death was prepared to meet his maker with a lie on his lips. As he tightened the noose and went to place the white cap over the prisoner’s head, Ellwood spoke for the last time. ‘It’s too tight,’ he complained. An audible sigh went round as Ellwood dropped into the pit and hung silently at the end of the rope.

The final three executions that year all passed by without incident. With Willis as his assistant, Harry went to Maidstone to execute William Bouldrey, who had killed his wife by cutting her throat. Bouldrey had protested his
innocence throughout but confessed his crime to his aged mother in the condemned cell on the afternoon before he was hanged. A week later Harry hanged Henry Parker, a Coventry labourer who had battered to death an old bakery owner with whom he had been having a long-running feud. Parker had used a vicious wooden club studded with several large nails to inflict a fearful beating. Ellis assisted at the execution that took place at Warwick Gaol.

Ellis was also the assistant when Harry made another trip to Cardiff to hang Noah Collins, who had killed his fiancée after she jilted him. Collins had stabbed her many times with a large knife. Mr Justice Bucknill described it as one the most cruel and atrocious murders ever heard in a court of law.

The first execution of what was to be Harry’s busiest year as a hangman took place at Pentonville a week into the new year of 1909. On 7 November 1908, at the Shaftesbury Avenue offices of Cartnell and Schlitte, bankers and foreign money changers, Frederick Schlitte had looked up to see a man standing before him with a gun levelled at his chest. Without speaking a single word, he fired once. Despite being wounded, Schlitte threw himself at the attacker, knocking the gun from his hand. A scuffle broke out and ended when the man drew a knife and stabbed Schlitte repeatedly. The wounded man managed to throw something through the window, attracting the attention of passers-by who were able to apprehend the fleeing attacker.

Identified as 21-year-old John Esmond Murphy, alias James McDonald, the attacker was finally to be charged with murder when Schlitte died from his injuries. The attempted robbery had been so disastrous Murphy had fled empty handed. His failed defence was insanity.

Harry and William Willis carried out another execution at Durham in February when they hanged miner Jeremiah O’Connor, who had committed an horrific child murder. The young victim, Mary Donnelly, had only recently lost her father in a mining disaster at West Stanley, which had claimed 160 lives.

With his brother again as assistant, Harry hanged Ernest Hutchinson, a Halifax butcher, who had stabbed to death his new girlfriend after a row on Christmas Eve. Hutchinson became the third man to be hanged at Wakefield. Thomas Meade became another date in Harry’s diary after being convicted of the murder of Clara Howell, whom he battered to death in Leeds. Meade had lost an appeal at the Court of Criminal Appeal – his council had claimed the trial judge had misdirected on a number of points relating to his client’s defence of insanity.

Harry travelled to Liverpool for his next engagement, the execution of a Chinese sailor. See Lee had shot dead a friend, Yung Yap, during a quarrel, but claimed it was an accident. Another killer who used a gun became the next to hang when the brothers travelled to Stafford, where Joseph Jones paid the ultimate penalty for the murder of his wife.

When Harry travelled to South Wales in early May, it was to make a rare appearance at Swansea. William Foy was a vagrant who had murdered his girlfriend and thrown her body down a deep shaft at a deserted furnace near Merthyr. He had later led the police to the site and described how he had killed her after she had told him she was going to inform the authorities that he had been living off her earnings as a prostitute.

Harry chose to travel to the Glamorgan prison via Conwy and the Menai Strait, making an anticlockwise circuit of the Welsh coastline; Ellis travelled with him as his assistant. Reaching the gaol they were shown the scaffold erected in a
converted weaving shed. Work had stopped in the shed a few days before the scheduled execution; the pit, which had been bricked over, was reopened and a large beam fixed above it.

After watching the prisoner at exercise, the hangmen spent the rest of the afternoon playing bowls with Governor Gibson and his daughter on the immaculate lawn in front of his residence on the outskirts of the prison. When darkness fell the hangmen retired inside where they had supper with the wardens, who had just come out of the condemned cell, and told of the pitiful last meeting between the prisoner and his sister and father. The sister had cried continuously throughout the meeting while her father fought to compose himself.

As the hangman and his assistant completed their final preparations a crowd began to assemble outside the gaol. As 8 o’clock neared and the party assembled outside the condemned cell, the gathering had swelled and their singing of hymns could be clearly heard from inside the thick prison walls. As Harry and Tom entered, Foy showed no trace of emotion but turned to his guards and made one last request. He asked if he could have another cigarette. The guards looked around for guidance; it was an unusual request, as most condemned men at this point were usually overcome with fear. Given the go-ahead, a lighted cigarette was placed between his lips and he made repeated draws on it as he walked across the prison yard onto the drop. Without wishing to deny him his last request, Harry placed the hood over his head with the cigarette still between Foy’s lips, and pulled the lever. The butt was still in place an hour later when the body was taken down. As they departed the prison, Harry noticed that several of the crowd had cameras, which they pointed at both Ellis and Harry as they made their way back to catch the train home.

A rare double execution came Harry’s way in May when two Jewish brothers were condemned for the brutal murder
of William Sproull, a sailor on shore leave. Twenty-three-year old Morris Reubens and his younger brother Marks had concocted a simple plan. They persuaded two girlfriends to go out looking for a man who might appear to have a few shillings on him. After letting him buy them a few drinks they would then invite him back to their rooms at Whitechapel, where the brothers would steal cash and anything else of value he had about him.

Along with his shipmate, Sproull had met the two women and in due course, after several drinks the four returned to the house. The Reubens brothers appeared, a fight broke out and spilled into the street, where Sproull received a fatal knife wound.

Bloodstains led the police to the house and both men were soon arrested. They each blamed each other for the murder throughout the trial and began to cry for mercy when sentence of death was passed on them.

Having read the newspaper accounts of the brothers’ pitiful cries after being sentenced, Harry expected them to be in a distressed state when he went to observe them. He found them both to be calm and composed, however – a manner they kept up to the very end.

‘Goodbye Marks, I am sorry!’ Morris cried out as Tom strapped his ankles. May was turning out to be a busy month. A week after returning from London, Harry picked up his tweed travelling rug and boarded the express from Leeds to Glasgow, where he had an appointment to hang Oscar Slater. Slater had been convicted of the murder of an old woman in her Glasgow apartment, though many people believed he may have been innocent. Arriving at Duke Street Prison, Harry had already heard a rumour, as his train headed north, that a reprieve had been granted and this was confirmed when he entered the governor’s office.

‘I should very much like to see the prisoner before I go, if I may?’ Harry asked, and the governor allowed him to look upon the man who had escaped his clutches. Harry was told Slater had collapsed when he heard he had been reprieved. After a wash and brush-up, and payment in full, Harry caught a cab to the station and the long trip home.

Harry and Ellis were back in Wales to carry out the execution of John Edmunds at Usk. Edmunds had raped and shot an elderly widow at her isolated farmhouse; he walked to the gallows with a broad smile on his face.

Walter Davis became the fourth person hanged at Wakefield when he was convicted of battering to death a woman he had been having an affair with in Middlesbrough. As on all the previous executions here, Harry carried out the sentence assisted by his brother. The brothers then hanged William Hampton at Bodmin towards the end of July and Manchester strangler Mark Shawcross at Strangeways in August. Coincidentally, Davis, Hampton and Shawcross were all given a drop of 7 feet, despite having a wide age and weight range. And 7 feet was the same drop Harry gave to his next client, Julius Wammer, a Norwegian sailor whom he hanged at Wandsworth for the murder of a prostitute Wammer had shot dead after she stole money from him.

Madar Dal Dhingra was hanged at Pentonville on 17 August. He came to England from the Punjab in November 1906, studying engineering at University College, London. On 1 July 1909, he attended a concert at the Imperial Institute and as the audience departed he shot dead Sir William Curzon-Wylie, the Aide-de-Camp to the Secretary of State for India. Dr Cowas Lalcaca, moved to apprehend the young killer, and the Indian fired two shots into him. He turned the gun on himself too, but when he pulled the trigger it misfired. He was overpowered and taken into custody.
Dhingra refused to be represented at his trial, stating he did not recognise the court. He said the shooting of the doctor was an accident but that Sir William had been assassinated as he was an enemy of his people. Sentenced to death, he said he was proud to lay down his life for his country. A slightly built man, he was given the longest drop Harry had ever administered, and although he had been calm and composed in the cell, he began to shake uncontrollably as Ellis strapped his ankles on the drop.

After leaving Pentonville Harry headed straight to Belfast, where he was engaged to hang Richard Justin who had battered to death his stepdaughter earlier in the year. As with previous trips to Ireland, Harry was assisted by John Ellis and they gave the man a drop of 7 feet 3 inches.

The year ended with a hectic week in which Harry carried out three executions within seven days. On 7 December, assisted by Ellis, he travelled to Hull to hang John Freeman. Freeman lodged with his brother, Robert, and Robert’s wife, Florence. Following a drunken argument, during which Robert accused him of having an affair with his wife, a fight broke out that ended with Freeman cutting his sister-in-law’s throat. As he was led to the gallows he told a waiting reporter: ‘Let this be a warning of the evils of drink.’

Harry travelled up to Durham after leaving Hull to meet up with assistant William Willis. They were engaged to hang the man convicted of what was known in the press as the Chopwell Tragedy. Abel Atherton was a miner, a native of Wigan, who was in lodgings at Chopwell, a pit village a few miles from Newcastle with a Mr and Mrs Patrick. They had a daughter, Frances, and although she was barely 15 years old, half the age of Atherton, he had fallen in love with her. Unable to understand Atherton’s advances, she neither encouraged nor repelled them, but her parents saw the
danger and warned her to keep Atherton at a distance. She dutifully obeyed.