Pierrepoint (20 page)

O
ne night in April 1941 two men called at The Palm Beach Bottle Party club in London’s Soho. There was a scuffle at the door and Antonio ‘Babe’ Mancini, the 39-year-old club manager, promptly barred them. On 1 May, the same men and an accomplice returned to the club and another fracas erupted during which Harry Distleman received a fatal knife wound. He died in hospital after claiming Mancini had stabbed him. Mancini, an Italian-born gangster, was one of three men charged with involvement in the murder. Two others were convicted of attempted murder; Mancini alone was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on 4 July. His first appeal was heard in September and dismissed, as was an appeal before the House of Lords on 16 October. Finally, almost four months after conviction, Mancini was told that no reprieve was forthcoming and he was to be executed on 31 October.

Albert later told how he had received a letter at the end of 1940 stating that the Home Office thought it may be necessary to appoint an assistant executioner to act in
future as executioner: ‘I have been asked by the Commissioners to enquire whether in that event you would wish your name to be considered.’ If this was indeed the case, it seemed a bit of a pointless exercise. It was clear that with the termination of Tom Phillips’s brief stint as a chief executioner, and with official documents stating that Cross was not deemed to be a competent candidate to officiate, Albert Pierrepoint was the only suitable person on the list who could have been promoted.

Albert received the original request to carry out the execution of Mancini in early August, but following the appeals, the date was rescheduled on three occasions before it was finally settled. It was coincidence that the first two men he was engaged to execute as number one had their appeals go all the way to the House of Lords. In 1935, Reginald Woolmington had been successful, Mancini was not so fortunate and on the afternoon of Thursday, 30 October, Albert passed through the gates of Pentonville Prison to carry out the execution. In the gatehouse he met assistant Steve Wade and after reporting to the governor they went to their quarters, where they were given the condemned man’s details. The engineer asked Albert what he thought the drop would be, and replied that, as he hadn’t seen the prisoner yet, he was planning a drop of around six foot. ‘Six foot three will be good enough for overnight,’ he told the engineer.

‘Yes, I guessed it would be very near that myself,’ he replied.

They were escorted to the execution chamber, where the long wooden box containing all the equipment was opened. Albert was already experienced enough to see at a glance that all was in order, and taking out the two ropes he examined each one meticulously, from the top where the rope is shackled to the chain, inch by inch along the whole of the ten-foot length, paying particular attention to the noose part, where
the leather-clad rope passes through the brass eyelet woven into the hemp. Two ropes were always supplied: a brand-new, pristine clean one from John Edginton & Sons, the official Home Office suppliers, based on the Old Kent Road, and another, which was dirtier in colour and which had been put into use on a number of occasions. By habit most hangmen chose the used one, as there was less stretch in it and it was, therefore, much easier to achieve an accurate drop. Having rigged the estimated drop they fastened the sandbag onto the noose and when the prison engineer returned with the governor Albert carried out a test drop, knowing that unless there was an eleventh-hour reprieve, the next time he pulled the lever it would be to send a man to his death.

Mancini was observed through the spy hole and Albert noted he was handsome and seemed composed as he chatted to the warders who had watched him night and day since he entered the condemned cell. Retiring to their quarters, Albert worked out a drop based on the observations he had made of the prisoner. He now decided to extend the drop to 6 feet 9 inches. Steve Wade was a new assistant with just a handful of jobs to his name, and so Albert made him repeat his role on the following morning over and over before they retired for the night. Albert went to bed early and slept well. At 6.30 a.m. the hangmen were roused by the warder, who shared their quarters. They made their way to the gallows and drew up the sandbag, detaching it from the noose, and disposing of it in a corner in the pit. Albert noted that a stretcher had appeared from somewhere and was in position to one side on the floor. Wade detached the trapdoors from the rubber-clad springs, and standing on a stool, pushed them up flat. Albert slid the bolt into the lever that secured them in place, then located the cotter pin that acted as a security device to prevent the lever being pushed accidentally.

Wade came up by the narrow staircase at the side of the drop that linked the scaffold to the pit and fetched a ladder that was placed against the beam. He took hold of a tape measure as Albert climbed the ladder and adjusted the drop to his new calculation. The rope lay on the closed trapdoors and Albert picked it up, coiled it so the noose hung at head height for the prisoner, and as he held it in place Wade secured it with a piece of thread. They re-chalked the ‘T’ mark on the trapdoors to which Mancini’s toes would be aligned, with the arches of his feet over the gap between the trapdoors. Albert then bent down and gently inched out the cotter pin so that it was just in place but would fall out easily with a gentle push. This would save only a fraction of a second, but it all helped in making the job faster. With everything in order they made an official record of the drop. Then, taking a last look around the green-painted execution chamber, they went for breakfast. After bacon and eggs they returned to their quarters to wait.

At five minutes to nine they received a signal that the official witnesses had assembled and in the company of the prison escort they walked across the prison yard and entered the cellblock that housed the execution chamber. Keeping his nerves in check, Albert realised, as the party assembled outside the cell door, that he was the youngest person present. It was now 25 years since he committed to paper the ambition to follow in his father’s footsteps. The governor stood with a stopwatch in hand and as the minute hand reached the hour he raised a finger as the signal to begin.

The chief warder silently opened the cell door and Albert entered with the wrist strap in his right hand. Wade followed a pace behind. Mancini was standing facing the door, and, dressed in his smart suit, he smiled as Albert approached him. After strapping his wrists Albert told the prisoner to ‘follow
me’, stepping through the side door in the cell wall that had silently slid opened after the hangmen had entered. Seven paces took them onto the drop. Albert turned to face the prisoner and stopped him on the chalk mark, and as Wade strapped his ankles, he pulled the white hood from his breast pocket and placed it over Mancini’s head.

‘Cheerio,’ the prisoner said as the noose was placed around his neck. Albert darted to his left, pulled the pin and pushed the lever. The trapdoors crashed opened and held firm in the rubber springs. Mancini dropped into the pit and hung lifeless. Albert Pierrepoint had finally achieved his ambition and was about to embark on a hectic period, travelling the length and breadth of the country putting his new skills into use.

Twelve days later Lionel Watson followed Mancini into the felon’s graveyard at Pentonville, paying the penalty for fatally poisoning his girlfriend and her 18-month-old daughter. Tom Pierrepoint officiated. There were four executions in December 1941, with Albert present at them all, officiating at the first two and assisting Uncle Tom at the remainder. Both of Albert’s jobs as chief took place at Wandsworth: in the first he hanged John Smith, who had stabbed to death his girlfriend in a lovers’ quarrel. Recorded as being carried out ‘very expeditiously’, it passed off without incident – unlike the next engagement, which was to give Albert what he later described as the toughest job on the scaffold.

Karel Richard Richter was a 29-year-old Sudeten-born German. Dropped by parachute near London Colney, Hertfordshire, on 13 May, he was equipped with £500, $1,000 and a map of East Anglia. His task was twofold: to attempt to assassinate the exiled Czechoslovakian premier, and also to pass on money and information to other enemy agents already in the country. He became a spy the moment he discarded his flying suit and changed into civilian
clothes, and after burying the parachute and money he laid low until the following evening while he got his bearings and thought out his plan. At 10.15 p.m. he set out on his mission, but it was compromised almost immediately. Stopped and asked directions by a lorry driver, Richter – who knew the immediate locale but not too much beyond – gave a surly reply, enough for the driver to report him to a policeman a little up the road. PC Scott cycled after the man and asked to see his papers. Richter was carrying an alien’s visa card with an address in London. One condition of such a card was that the holder had to be at that address by an 11 p.m. curfew. Scott asked him where he had come from and was told he had walked from Dover and that it had taken him two hours. In fact, the journey, by foot, would probably take around 24 hours. The man spoke with an accent and, suspecting he was a spy, Scott took him into custody. After interrogation at the intelligence centre at Ham Common, it was deemed that Richter was not suitable to be ‘turned’ into a double agent, and subsequently he found himself before Mr Justice Tucker at the Old Bailey. On 24 October, after a four-day trial held ‘in camera’, he was sentenced to death.

Observing him in the condemned cell, Albert and assistant Steve Wade could see Richter was a tall, powerfully-built man. Standing a fraction under 6 feet tall and weighing 172 pounds he had a ‘bull’ neck and a constant scowl on his face. On the morning of 10 December, the official witnesses gathered outside the cell, and at 8.58 a.m. they were given the signal to go to work. They entered swiftly, but as Albert strode over with pinion strap in hand Richter made a bolt for the door. Wade warded him off and the prisoner then charged at the wall, diving headfirst with terrific force. This stunned him for a moment but only made him even more violent. The
hangmen seized him, strapping his arms behind his back, and the guards closed in. It appears that a new strap was used – possibly one Albert had acquired himself, and if so presumably against government rules. (Wade later said the strap was faulty, with not enough eyelet holes.) The condemned man twisted his wrists as he struggled and managed to break the strap, the metal tongue on the strap splitting one eyehole and breaking free. Wade shouted to Albert, ‘He is loose!’ and they turned back as the prisoner clawed and fought for his life. Warders finally held him until the hangmen made him secure, Albert digging his knee into the man’s back to draw the strap onto the next free eyelet. Richter fought, charging the wall again repeatedly screaming, ‘Help me!’

The struggle progressed from the condemned cell floor across to the scaffold. Reaching the drop, Richter kicked and screamed for his life, managing to get across the trap to the opposite wall with legs splayed. As Albert placed the noose over his neck Wade drew his ankles together. Still the condemned man struggled, and now Wade could see Albert had completed the noosing and was moving across to push the lever. Wade was still vainly trying to get the strap on the legs and shouted, ‘Wait! Strap on legs and down he goes!’ A warder took hold of one of the legs and forced it against the other, allowing Wade to draw the strap around the ankles before dashing off the trapdoor. With his last act on earth, Richter shook his neck violently from side to side, managing to loosen the safety washer that held the noose in place. At that moment, as the rope slackened, the drop fell. Aghast, they could only watch as the noose unwound, only for the eyelet to catch underneath his nose. The rope swung violently in the pit but the prisoner was hanging limp and lifeless: his neck was broken and he had died
instantly. It had taken 17 minutes from entering the cell to the condemned spy hanging beneath the trapdoors. The postmortem later that morning found that cause of death was fracture of the cervical vertebrae in the correct place, and that death had been instant. Steve Wade retired to his quarters and, filling in his diary while Albert made his report to the governor, wrote: ‘Execution good in the circumstances. I would not miss this for £50 – well worth it!’

Following his promotion, work came thick and fast for Albert. In 1942 there was a score of executions split equally between uncle and nephew. On top of his work as a chief, Albert’s income was supplemented by three jobs assisting his uncle.

Tom’s most notable customer that year was probably Harold Hill, hanged for the horrific murder of two young schoolgirls. Doreen Hearne and Kathleen Trendle had vanished while walking home from school at Penn in Buckinghamshire in November 1941, having last been seen asking a soldier for a ride in his army truck. Three days later they were found stabbed to death in a copse. Several clues were found at the scene, the most important being a khaki handkerchief with a laundry number that led police to Hill, a driver in the 86th Regiment. He was hanged at Oxford on 1 May, Albert assisting his uncle in the first execution at the prison for a decade.

In contrast to his uncle’s low-key engagements, the first dates in Albert’s diary were two notorious wartime murder cases that had filled the thin newspapers and managed briefly to push the war out of the headlines. In March, he travelled to Wandsworth to hang Harold Dorian Trevor, a 62-year-old habitual criminal who had been sentenced to
death at the Old Bailey for the murder of 65-year-old Mrs Theodora Jessie Gledhill.

On 14 October 1941, Trevor, who had recently been released from prison, responded to an advert placed by the elderly widow for a room to rent at her West Kensington tower-block home. He agreed to take the room, but as Mrs Gledhill was writing out a receipt, Trevor began to beat her over the head with a beer bottle before strangling her as she lay on the carpet. He then ransacked the house and fled, taking a small amount of cash. When the body was discovered, detectives found a receipt made out to Dr H. D. Trevor lying on the table. Fingerprints had also been left on the broken bottle and a quick check found that the man they were looking for was indeed Harold Trevor. Arrested at Rhyl, Trevor, a Yorkshireman, had spent almost all the previous 40 years in prison on a variety of charges from larceny to fraud. He had no previous record of violence and following conviction doctors assessed whether his sanity was in doubt, but found no grounds for a reprieve on medical grounds. Trevor spent his last days in the condemned cell in a very distressed state, unable to eat or make coherent conversation and on the morning of his execution he shuffled, terrified, the last few paces to the drop.