Pierrepoint (12 page)

Atherton was also warned that his attentions were unwelcome, but instead of taking heed of the warning he began to nurse it as a grievance. This grew until he was finally asked to leave the lodgings, although he still made frequent calls to the Patricks’ house. One August afternoon, heated words arose between Atherton and Mrs Patrick, ending in his threat to kill her. He was thrown out of the house, returned to his new lodging where he loaded a gun in front of his landlady and said he was going for a bit of sport. Five minutes later he was in Mrs Patrick’s kitchen. A terrible struggle ensued, during which a shot rang out. A second shot was heard and Mrs Patrick fell out of the doorway into the street. She died instantly. Seeing what he had done, Atherton tried to cut his own throat, but only managed to make superficial wounds.

A date of 30 November was set for the execution, but after a failed appeal Wednesday, 8 December was set as the new date. Harry got to Durham at 3 p.m. on the Tuesday afternoon and made his way to the hotel opposite the prison. Willis was already waiting in the bar and as they enjoyed a quiet drink, they could overhear scraps of conversation from Atherton’s father and sister-in-law who had just made their farewell visit. ‘Abel told me he never did it,’ they heard his father exclaim, as he produced some letters from his son in which he declared his innocence.

As Harry and Willis left the pub to make their way to the prison, they noticed that Atherton’s father and his sister-in-law were standing in the road watching them, having guessed Harry’s business. Having reported to the governor, they had received the necessary details about Atherton – height 5 feet 1
¹
?2 inches, aged 30 and weighing 135 pounds – they were taken to their rooms.

Atherton retired at about 10.30 p.m. and slept well. He was woken at 5.30 a.m., washed and dressed in his own clothing, before the chaplain visited and gave him Holy Communion. After eating a fair breakfast, he was taken to a room close to the scaffold known as the doctor’s room, where he was joined by the chaplain again, who offered comfort and prayer as the clock ticked slowly towards the appointed hour.

As the nearby factory hooters rang out the hour and broke the silence in the prison, Harry entered the cell. Atherton looked up and the awesomeness of the moment was reflected in his face. He was clearly terrified; Harry reassured him by gently tapping him on the shoulder, whispering quietly: ‘Keep your pluck up, lad. I’ll get it over as quick as possible.’

The condemned man appeared to take new heart at this and allowed the executioners to fasten his wrists and bare his neck. Atherton walked to the scaffold with no assistance, and even at the sight of the rope waiting for him, he never faltered. As Harry slipped the noose over his head, Atherton spoke in a feeble voice: ‘Yer hangin’ an innocent man!’ Harry continued his task and put the white cap over his head, then, reaching to his left, he pulled the lever that launched Atherton into eternity.

There was one final execution in the diary, on 14 December, when Harry was assisted by his brother to help hang a former soldier who had murdered four people at their home in Nottingham. Samuel Atherley and Matilda Lambert had lived together for seven years and had three children. There had been frequent quarrels between them, however, and she had left home on several occasions. Atherley was a jealous man, believing that his brother-in-law had had an affair with his wife and was the father of the middle child. This led to further rows, which culminated in neighbours
finding Atherley trying to stanch a throat wound and gesturing upstairs. There they found the bodies of his wife and three children; all had their throats cut, with the two youngest children, having first been battered with a hammer. The night before his execution, Atherley wrote to his brother that he was innocent of murder and had not known what he was doing at the time he committed the crime.

Signs that 1910 wasn’t going to be a good year for Harry Pierrepoint may have been foreshadowed when he travelled to Dublin to hang Richard Hefferman on 4 January. The 27year-old Hefferman had been convicted of the murder of Mary Walker at Mullingar. The two had been friends for a time and she had even helped him to find a job at the post office where she worked, but seemed unwilling to take their friendship further. She had failed to return home from work one night, however, and was found stabbed to death on a canal bank. Hefferman had aroused suspicion by telling his landlady he had seen a woman murdered. He was subsequently found to be in possession of a bloodstained knife.

Harry and Tom travelled by train to Holyhead to catch the boat across to Kingstown. Reaching Anglesey, the sole topic of conversation at the terminus was the dreadful murder at Holyhead on Christmas Day. Catching the night boat across, Harry was horrified to find that some bureaucratic error had resulted in his name being released to the crew as one of the passengers, and word spread like wildfire across the boat. While some stared at him as if he was some kind of desperate character, others tried to engage him in conversation. Finally, some of the crew on the steamer ushered him into a quiet part of the boat where he was able to enjoy the rest of the voyage undisturbed. His
brother Tom’s identity had not been revealed, so he was able to enjoy the crossing without any incident.

The two men entered the precincts of Kilmainham Prison without being challenged. The governor proudly showed the brothers around the prison and Harry noted that of the 38 prisons he had visited to date this was by far the cleanest and best kept. The scaffold was also immaculate.

Spying the prisoner taking exercise up and down a corridor close to his cell, Harry found him a distressed and nervous man, clearly scared of the fate that awaited him. Talking to warders, Harry learned that Hefferman had tried to rip out his throat with his hands, and also to fracture his skull by diving head first into a cell wall. He spent some of his time awaiting execution sedated in the prison hospital, and on two occasions had to be restrained when he attacked guards.

As they retired for the night, Harry spoke to his brother: ‘We shall have to be very careful with him tomorrow, Tom, the man has a bad history inside, and I have a presentiment that something unusual is going to happen.’ The foreboding was correct and something did happen which turned the execution into one of the most dramatic that Harry was ever involved with.

The brothers were visited by two priests before settling down for the night, shortly after they had administered the last rites to the prisoner in his cell. They chatted briefly before parting for the night. The scaffold at the gaol was constructed in a room built at the end of a narrow corridor leading from the condemned cell. Although it was only a few strides for the prisoner to take once he was in the corridor, and on the same level, the actual room itself was claustrophobically small, with barely 18 inches of floor around the large trapdoors for the hangmen, priests and official witnesses to occupy.

On the stroke of eight, Harry led Tom into the cell.
Hefferman was crying hysterically and repeatedly kissing a large cross held aloft by one of the priests, while another was reciting prayers over and over. Reluctant to interrupt the man at prayer, Harry held back a moment, but seeing that no efforts were being made to end the solemn gathering, he moved forward and quietly but expeditiously got his man strapped and into the corridor. The priests followed and kept up their exhortations, clinging to the prisoner and offering the cross for him to kiss as he struggled to walk the last few yards.

They managed to get Hefferman on the drop with his feet in the correct position. Both went to work, but when Tom stepped back Harry was unable to pull the lever as the priests were standing on the trapdoors, hugging the condemned man. They ignored Harry’s call to stand clear and Hefferman started to sway in a faint. Signalling for Tom to steady the prisoner Harry used force to push the priests from the trap and, spying the drop was clear, he pushed the lever. The holy men stood looking down at the stilled rope for ten minutes more, reciting prayers for the departed man’s soul.

Afterwards, Harry noted that a feeling of intense relief had come over him as he walked away, and later when recording his thoughts, he wondered how close he himself came to breaking down that morning. It is alleged that the brothers never received full payment for the execution.

When Harry next put on his bowler hat and best suit to travel to an execution, it was to hang the man convicted of the horrible murder at Holyhead that had been the main source of conversation when he had sailed to Dublin in January.

William Murphy was a former soldier from Leigh, near Bolton, who had moved to Holyhead when he left the army. He lived with Gwen Ellen Jones, who was separated from her husband, and their two children. Unable to find work in
Wales, Murphy moved to Yorkshire, and while he was away she moved back with her former husband. When she refused to come to live with him he cut her throat and threw her into a ditch. He made a full confession to the crime, and his defence at his trial for murder would be that of insanity.

It failed and he was hanged at Caernarfon, becoming the last man to be executed in North Wales. He showed a rare courage on the morning of his execution. As Harry and Willis entered the cell, he stepped up onto a chair and then jumped back down.

‘I suppose it will be like that?’ he said to his executioners.

‘Yes, as easy as that,’ Harry replied, and with that Murphy walked cheerfully to the drop.

In the events leading to Harry’s next engagement, Joseph Wren had walked into a police station in Burnley and confessed that he had just murdered a child. A police officer went to the spot Wren had indicated and found a boy’s body – an attempt had been made to strangle him before his throat had been savagely cut. Wren’s defence was insanity, but it proved useless. Harry and Ellis hanged him in Manchester on 22 February.

Although Harry still worked with Ellis on a regular basis, it seems that their relationship, which had been friendly to start with, had now cooled. Harry had always taken a drink, but as the money rolled in from his executions he began to spend more time away from home drinking with friends, or strangers, until the money or time had run out.

In March Harry carried out his 100th execution when he hanged former soldier George Henry Perry at Pentonville. Perry had stabbed to death his girlfriend after she had attended a wedding reception and not invited him.

Harry made his final appearance at Usk Gaol at the end of March, when he and Ellis hanged William Butler, a 62-year-old habitual criminal who had battered to death an old
couple in their remote farmhouse during the course of a robbery. As the executioners left the gaol and walked back to the railway station they were approached by a small boy, one of a gang trailing behind a man on the other side of the road carrying a small bag.

‘Do you know who that is?’ the young boy asked as he walked alongside them.

‘No,’ replied Harry.

‘Well,’ the boy said with bated breath, as though imparting a dreadful secret, ‘that is the executioner!’

The two men thanked him for that information, and walked on to catch their train, wondering if the crowd had dared to question their ‘executioner’ as he innocently went about his business.

Harry and Willis carried out another job at Wandsworth in May when they hanged Thomas William Jesshope, a former employee at the Camberwell Empire Music Hall. Jesshope had been sacked from his job as fireman at the music hall at the end of March for being drunk once too often, and a new man was employed instead. As his replacement was being shown how to lock up after his first night on duty, Jesshope appeared from his hiding place under some seats and stabbed to death John Healey, the carpenter and stage hand, who was showing him around the theatre. Jesshope had blamed Healey for his dismissal.

In June, Tom assisted at the execution of James Henry Hancock, a native of Sheffield, at Cambridge. Hancock had stabbed a friend after a drunken quarrel as they walked home from a public house.

The next month, Harry carried out two executions in three days. On 12 July, he travelled to Durham to hang Thomas Craig, who had killed the husband of his former sweetheart. She had left him while he was serving a prison sentence and
moved away to live with her new husband. When Craig was released he tracked them down and shot them both with a revolver. She was hit twice but not seriously injured; her husband, hit three times, was killed instantly. Harry noted that Craig showed no fear at the prospect of his death and as he was noosed on the drop he didn’t flinch or turn a hair.

On the following day Harry travelled down to Essex to execute Frederick Foreman, who was to be hanged at Chelmsford for the murder of his girlfriend at Wennington, near Grays. Foreman and Elizabeth Ely both worked in the fields on the farms around Grays, in Essex. They lived together in an old, disused railway carriage in a field at Wennington, from where, on the evening of 16 May, screams were heard. On the following morning, Foreman claimed he had found the body of his girlfriend by the side of a footpath that ran through the field. He told police they had argued on Monday night and that she had left him. Although receiving a fearful beating she had died from exposure. Evidence soon linked Foreman with the crime and he was charged with murder.

Harry turned up at the prison in good time on the afternoon before the execution, but it was clear he had had a drink. He met up with Ellis in the gatehouse of the prison, where it was reported that his conduct was very bad. The old rivalry between them, which had simmered for a time, finally reached boiling point. They came to blows and a warder was forced to come in, to try to break up the fight. Harry calmed down and was able to go about his business in a correct manner, working out a drop of 6 feet 8 inches from the prisoner’s details. On the following morning, on the stroke of eight, Foreman was hanged (expeditiously, as the newspaper reporter recorded), and the hangmen left the prison later that morning.

No sooner had Ellis returned home than he penned a letter to the Home Office: