Pierrepoint (17 page)

Albert was delighted when he received the letter and quickly penned a reply:

The summer and autumn of 1932 were lean months for the hangman; Tom had just one engagement in his diary during that time, to go to Winchester prison to hang a sailor who had murdered his girlfriend, but a week before the scheduled execution a reprieve was granted. The last execution of 1932 in England took place at Oxford, when Ernest Hutchinson was hanged for the murder by suffocation of his live-in lover.
Surprisingly, neither Tom Pierrepoint nor his main rival Baxter received the offer to carry out the execution. Neither did long-serving assistants Robert Wilson, Tom Phillips or Henry Pollard, with over thirty years’ service between them. Instead, surprisingly, the man appointed to carry out the task was Fred Allen of Wolverhampton, the newest recruit to the list and whose record to date consisted of just a handful of assists. He even had the ignominious experience of falling through the trapdoors at his first execution in 1928, when Baxter pulled the lever before he was fully clear of the trapdoors. Quite why Allen was appointed in preference to the senior assistants is something of a mystery; maybe he had impressed observers with his conduct on a previous visit in December 1931 when he assisted Tom in the execution of travelling salesman Henry Seymour. Nevertheless, there was now a new rival as chief executioner for both Tom Pierrepoint and Robert Baxter.

Three offers landed on Albert Pierrepoint’s doormat in December. He had been informed that although he was now qualified to assist at an execution, he would first be required to witness an execution as an observer, to see if his nerve would hold and ensure he would not become ill or faint at the sight of someone being executed. First was the offer to witness the execution of Leeds domestic servant Kate Collins, who had drowned her illegitimate newborn child, but she was reprieved just a week after sentence was passed. Engagements at Durham and Birmingham also came to nothing and just when it appeared the year would end without the chance to put his skills into practice, he received a hand-written offer from Uncle Tom to assist at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison. Tom was to officiate on Thursday, 29 December, and the trip was to mean three days away from home.

Having got this far with his ambition, Albert now had to make some serious decisions about his future. On Christmas
Eve, he finished his deliveries and then told boss Percy Sellers he was handing in his notice in order to begin a career he had wanted to be kept secret, but of which the employer had learned about through a workmate’s gossip. Sellers admired Albert’s conscientious attitude to work and an agreement was quickly reached that allowed him to take time off work when necessary.

The first sign that the life of an executioner might carry a hint of danger revealed itself to Albert when Uncle Tom arrived at his Manchester terrace house and pulled out a revolver and leather washbag full of .45 bullets. There had been a considerable amount of protestations and campaigning about the innocence of the man they were crossing the water to execute.

Patrick McDermott was a 26-year-old farmer convicted of the murder of his brother. In the early hours of Monday, 4 September, John McDermott was found shot in the gateway to his home, seven miles from Roscommon. Hearing two gunshots, his brother and sister, with whom he lived, rushed from the house and found John dead from wounds seemingly inflicted with a double-barrel shotgun. John was eldest of the children and all three had separate rooms in the house. Their father had died two years earlier and John had taken charge of the farm, worth £700. The other two children were left £100 each. On the night of the murder John had left the house and gone to visit a friend. He was shot as he returned home. Detectives investigating the crime asked Patrick if he had seen a flash of fire when he heard the shots, and he said that he could not see the spot where his brother died from his window. This was found to be untrue. He denied having a gun but a friend told police that he had recently borrowed a gun from him, allegedly to shoot crows that were attacking crops. Three days after the murder of his brother, police
charged the younger brother. At his four-day Dublin trial it was alleged the motive was so that Patrick could inherit the farm, which he intended to sell, using the money to emigrate to America.

On Tuesday 27 December Albert and his uncle took the last tram from Newton Heath into Manchester City Centre and headed for Victoria Station and the midnight boat train to Holyhead. They transferred to the overnight mail boat, on which Tom had reserved a cabin. It was a journey he had made over a dozen times in the last decade and he was a familiar sight to a number of the stewards and other members of the crew. Once the journey was underway Tom suggested they go to the bar, where they soon fell in with a crowd of priests who were providing a vocal entertainment to the rest of the travellers while enjoying a glass of Guinness.

Albert – the very image of the assistant hangman in the 1962 film
The Quare Fellow
– joined in with the singing, putting his light baritone voice to work on a number of sentimental Irish songs: ‘Mother Machree’, ‘The Rose of Tralee’ and ‘The Mountains of Mourne’. The whole experience, from the singing and the travel, to the adventure and the danger, built up the self-esteem of the young Albert as he embarked on the first step to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Albert recalled an escapade on the trip during which they had been taken into the bosom of a burly sea lawyer who seemingly was unaware of the identity of his new friends, for when a group of rowdy, drunken troublemakers waited at the terminal for the embarkation of the hangman, he unwittingly gave them a safe ride to Dublin city centre by informing anyone interested to know that he knew Pierrepoint and could confirm he wasn’t on this train. With Tom secretly nursing his revolver, he and Albert travelled the last few miles into Dublin in silence.

Presenting his young nephew to the prison governor, Tom was given the details of the prisoner, and after breakfast they were taken to the scaffold to make the necessary preparations. After checking all was in order they retired to their quarters, where Tom was soon asleep on his bunk. Later that afternoon they were allowed to see the prisoner at exercise and after calculating a drop of 7 feet 5 inches, they filled a sandbag with an equal weight and tested the drop in the presence of the governor and chief engineer. With the rope stretching, they retired to their room and waited.

Although Tom had told him everything about the job, there was no attempt to build up any importance in Albert’s role in the execution: he was to help secure the wrists if needed, but primarily to strap the ankles when the condemned man was on the drop, before stepping back as fast as he could.

At a few minutes before eight, with all the preparations having been carried out in the condemned cell, Albert stood beside his uncle and waited. He never saw his uncle any different outside the condemned cell: arm strap in his hand, a flat sweet in his mouth and the white cap folded in his breast pocket, like a handkerchief, waiting for the signal to go into action.

As the minute hand rolled over to the hour, the signal was given and they went to work. They moved at a pace – Albert noticed a priest and a warder but was too preoccupied watching his uncle to take in much else. After a few short paces they reached the scaffold. Albert dropped to his knees and secured the man’s ankles, as he had practised scores of times. With barely time to regain his balance after stepping off the drop, there was a bang then silence. The rope hung straight and true and Patrick McDermott was dead. Tom walked across to a staircase at the side of the drop and descended into the pit to open the man’s shirt for the doctor
to place the stethoscope. As death was confirmed and the acknowledgement that the hangmen had done their job, a bottle of whisky appeared and glasses were offered to all who had been present. While others eagerly accepted their tot, Tom spoke for Albert in refusing alcohol while engaged on official business.

Once they had taken the body down and stowed away the equipment, Tom and Albert reported to the governor, where the drop and other measurements were officially recorded. As they prepared to leave, the governor, after congratulating them on their efficiency, warned that there was a hostile crowd waiting, some holding banners that bore statements such as: ‘British hangman destroys Irishman’. They slipped out of the gaol into the crowded street, but no one challenged them as they made their way through the crowd and away from the prison. After a tour of a local Guinness brewery they retired to the quiet of Phoenix Park, where they rested before making their way to the docks to catch the night boat home. Tom was pleased with his nephew’s work, and told him so. He said he was glad he had refused a tot after the execution, adding that if he couldn’t do the job without whisky he shouldn’t do it all.

The boat, and then train, got them into Manchester before the morning trams had started to run, so they commenced the walk back to Failsworth, where Albert’s relieved mother was waiting for their return. As Tom ate a breakfast of pobs (bread soaked in warm milk), Albert washed, changed, then went out to do a full day’s work.

In January 1933, Albert wrote to the Home Office advising them that although he had yet to formally witness an execution in England he had acted as assistant in Ireland. By
return the Home Office wrote that he would still be required to act as an official witness at an execution in Great Britain before he could be offered the chance to formally assist. Within the week another letter landed on his mat, offering Albert the chance to witness an execution at Birmingham.

One afternoon in October 1932, Jeremiah Hanbury, a widower and unemployed foundry puddler, entered the house of Mrs Jessie Payne, the mother of four young children, at Newtown Brockmoor, and struck her two blows with a hammer, knocking her unconscious. He then cut her throat so severely she was almost decapitated, before giving himself up to a policeman. At his trial it was alleged that Hanbury and Mrs Payne had been having an affair, but that in July she had ended the relationship and refused to see him. As a result he became depressed and his counsel, offering a defence of insanity, suggested it was during this depression he had committed murder.

On the afternoon of Monday, 1 February 1933, Albert travelled to Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, in the company of his uncle. There, they met up with Robert Wilson, who had been engaged as the assistant. As they sat in the gatehouse waiting to be admitted into the main body of the prison, a group of visitors arrived. It was Hanbury’s sister and some other relations. At the end of the farewell meeting Hanbury tried to put his family’s minds to rest by showing his bravery. He told them not to put the house into mourning, but at 8 o’clock he asked them to pull down the blind cord and let it flick back and then say, ‘Poor Jerry, he’s gone.’ On the following morning, Hanbury ate the large breakfast he had requested, and while the hangmen completed their preparations in the adjacent gallows room, he sang loudly in the remaining minutes that he had left. On the stroke of eight they went for him, and as he took his place on the drop he
spoke in a firm clear voice: ‘Be good everybody, thank you for your trouble.’ Wilson stepped back off the drop and in an instant Tom pulled the lever. Albert had observed the execution without disgracing himself.

In August 1932, schoolchildren in Armagh stumbled across the body of a woman hidden in some bushes. She was identified as 23-year-old Minnie Reid, a domestic servant from County Armagh; her throat had been cut, and police found a bloodstained razor nearby. Investigations led police to Harry Courtney, a lorry driver. He admitted that he had known the victim for four years, though he denied that they had been lovers. Courtney could offer no alibi for the time detectives believed Reid was murdered and traces of her blood were found on some of his clothing. At his trial it was suggested that Reid had become pregnant, naming him as the father, but as he was already engaged to another girl, he had committed the murder hoping the trail would not lead to him. In the face of overwhelming evidence, Courtney finally admitted that he had had a relationship with Reid. His defence was that while he had agreed to meeting with the girl he told her he did not want any further contact with either her or the baby, whereupon she committed suicide by cutting her own throat. The jury dismissed his defence and, finding him guilty, the judge sentenced him to death. Albert assisted his uncle at the execution and Courtney was given a drop of 6 feet 5 inches. He died instantly.

In June 1933, Albert was engaged by the governor of Walton Prison, Liverpool, to act as assistant at the execution of Richard Hetherington. It was the fourth execution to take place that year, and the third to feature both Tom and Albert Pierrepoint. Hetherington was a Westmorland farmer who had been involved in a long-running dispute with his neighbours, Joseph and Mary Dixon. The quarrel was over
money owed for work done by Hetherington on the Dixons’ farm for which the old man was refusing to pay. The bodies of Mr and Mrs Dixon were discovered in the burnt-out shell of their bungalow and when Hetherington was arrested he had in his possession money and papers belonging to the dead couple. He made a full confession.

Tom carried out three executions in December, at Durham, Manchester and Birmingham. On the last execution he was again assisted by his nephew. In the early hours of 27 August, Charles Fox was stabbed to death after disturbing someone burgling his house at West Bromwich. The killer fled leaving footprints outside the house, and spots of blood from a cut sustained while gaining entry to the house. At another burglary committed a few days later at nearby Newton, the thief left fingerprints which were eventually traced to Stanley Hobday, an electrician already known to the police as a petty thief. A stolen car was recovered in Cheshire, which had Hobday’s fingerprints on the steering wheel. Detectives used the BBC to appeal for information on the whereabouts of the wanted man and he was arrested at Gretna Green. The most damning evidence against Hobday were the footprints left at the murder scene. Plaster casts made of these found they were from a size-four shoe, an unusually small size for an adult. Hobday wore size-four shoes. And he weighed just 128 pounds; Tom worked out a drop of 8 feet 7 inches, one of the longest drops permitted by the Home Office.