Pierrepoint (5 page)

Edwards was arrested for assault. The police searched the house and, finding pawn tickets in the name of Darby, soon directed their attention to Camberwell, where the bodies of the Darby family were uncovered. After being found guilty, Edwards burst into laughter; asked if he had anything to say, he replied, ‘No, get on with it, as quick as you like!’

When Harry and William Billington went to observe Edwards on the night before his execution they found a big strapping fellow who had borne his fate bravely, asking his brother who had visited him earlier that afternoon to keep news of his execution secret from his aged mother.

Entering the cell at nine o’clock Harry recorded that Edwards stood between two warders with staring eyes that saw nothing. The grim procession made its way along the corridor then out of a side door and down a flight of steps into the prison yard, where the scaffold was awaiting him. Edwards began to recite the hymn ‘Jesus, Lover of my Soul’ as he neared the scaffold. His self-possession began to desert him a little as he reached the drop, but the executioners went to work quickly and seconds later he had paid the price for his triple crime.

There was still a healthy crowd milling around the prison gates when the hangmen departed the prison. Harry recalled that there was one woman dressed in deepest black, seemingly waiting for them to pass her. As they walked by, she asked Billington if Edwards had really been hanged all right. Exchanging glances, Harry spoke for him, replying, ‘yes he was.’ Without waiting for a response they walked on to catch their train. Afterwards, Harry often thought about the woman, claiming that he was never quite able to get the sight of her pale, tearstained face out of his mind.

Instead of returning home that morning, the two decided to spend the day at the Crystal Palace Exhibition Hall. Harry later told a story to his son about an incident that happened as they made their way home later that evening. Apparently, they decided to call into a public house before catching their train home from Euston. Leaning leisurely against the saloon bar on the Euston Road, they were enjoying a quiet drink when a group of young men – ‘hooligans’ as they were named in the press of the day – entered the bar and approached. One placed a clay pipe on the bar close to the arm of Billington, who had his back to the door. Harry noticed what had happened and whispered for Billington to take care. Turning to see what was afoot, he sent the clay pipe crashing to the floor. An altercation then took place, during which the young gang pulled out knives and picked up chairs as weapons. The hangmen were made of stern stuff, however, and in the ensuing struggle they were able to drive the men out of the bar. Harry told his son they were escorted to their train by a group of elderly local men who said it was the best sport they had seen in a long while. He also said that they were left without a scratch but this doesn’t seem to be the case, as Billington arrived home sporting a badly bruised face and a damaged arm. He explained his injuries by saying he had been attacked in his train carriage and had fallen onto the track!

On 13 May, shortly before the birth of his daughter, Ivy, Harry made the short trip across Manchester to assist in the execution of William Hudson, a 26-year-old Birmingham soldier who had shot dead a fellow soldier at Fulwood Barracks in Preston.

The next letter engaging Harry’s services was again from Wandsworth, and for only the fourth time in his short career he was to carry out the execution as the chief hangman; it also marked the first time that he was entrusted with a double
execution. He was to hang a young London motor mechanic named William Tuffen, along with his lover and former housemaid, Mary Stone. They had been living in a house in south London, where the battered body of Tuffen’s wife had been concealed. Acting on a tip-off from concerned relatives, police called at a house in Thames Ditton, where the body of one Caroline Tuffen was discovered; she had been battered to death. Tuffen and Mary Stone had vanished, but were soon located at Norbiton railway station and arrested. Mary claimed to know nothing about the death of Caroline Tuffen, William having told her that his wife had simply gone away. Both were charged with murder. Tuffen was found guilty of the crime, and Stone guilty of being an accessory before the fact. Sentence of death was then passed on both prisoners. Mary Stone was reprieved on 6 August and Tuffen alone went to the gallows a few days later.

A rare execution took place at Devizes on 17 November, when William Billington and Harry carried out the execution of Edward Palmer, who had shot dead his former girlfriend at Swindon. Palmer and Esther Swinford had been engaged, and she had given him money to buy furniture for their home, which he spent on drink. As a result, the wedding was cancelled. He became sullen and later moved away from Swindon. Several months later he heard that Esther was working as a barmaid in Swindon; Palmer found work on the Great Western Railway and moved. Carrying a gun, he called at the pub and, after a quarrel, shot her dead. In his pocket was a photograph of Esther, and on the back Palmer had written, ‘The curse of my life.’ He claimed that the gun had gone off accidentally, but the jury gave this short thrift. Harry noted in his diary Palmer was 25 years old, weighed 152 pounds and stood a little under 5 feet 8 inches. He was given a drop of 6 feet 6 inches; death was instantaneous.

December 1903 was a busy month for the executioners, with ten persons hanged and three others reprieved at the eleventh hour. On 15 December, Harry carried out the last execution at Hereford Gaol when, with assistant John Ellis, he was engaged to execute a 61-year-old quarry labourer named William Haywood, who had been convicted of the murder of his wife at Lucton. He had battered her to death while drunk and was then seen moving her body in a wheelbarrow. At his trial his defence council claimed Heywood was ‘… an imbecile of the higher grade’. Summing up, Mr Justice Bigham told the jury that lunatics should not escape punishment simply because they were lunatics.

On 29 December Harry accepted an execution at Liverpool as the assistant to William Billington and was then unavailable when the governor at Leeds Prison received two convicts under sentence of death. The double execution, that of John Gallagher and Emily Swann, was then offered to John Billington, who accepted the offer and carried out the execution and claimed the hefty fee Pierrepoint must have rued. It was only John Billington’s second senior engagement, his first being at Manchester earlier that month.

Henry Bertram Starr had married in the spring of 1903 and the newlyweds had moved in with his wife’s mother. He soon took to drinking, however, and left his wife, only to return when she gave birth in August of the same year. The couple moved into their own home but she soon left and moved back to her mother’s. A separation and custody order for the child were obtained. Then, on 24 November, Starr called at his mother-in-law’s house and stabbed his estranged wife to death. It was Starr’s second murder trial: in 1896 he had been acquitted, but this time the jury returned a verdict of guilty without even leaving the courtroom to ponder the outcome.

1904 got off to a slow start for the hangman. Harry Pierrepoint’s first job came on Tuesday, 29 March, when he travelled to Leeds to assist John Billington in the execution of a young tailor from Guisborough who had savagely murdered a 12-year-old girl. Elizabeth Mary Lynas had been to a Christmas service at her local church with some friends. They parted at the end of her street, but when she failed to arrive home her parents contacted the police. A search soon located her body in nearby woods: she had been brutally murdered, her hands and feet were tied and her throat had been cut.

Bloodstains were found in a neighbour’s backyard and when the house was searched a bloodstained razor was found on a kitchen shelf. James Henry Clarkson lived at the house with his sister and his father, and while they both had alibis for the night of the murder James was unable to account for his movements. When bloodstains were found on his clothes too, he was formally charged with murder.

Throughout his trial he maintained his innocence, but the jury took just half an hour to find him guilty. On the night prior to his execution he repeatedly cried out: ‘What made me do it?’ He was hanged two days before his twentieth birthday. He weighed just 126 pounds and was given a long drop of 8 feet.

Harry’s next job was to assist in the execution of two men at Liverpool’s Walton Gaol on 31 May. William Kirwan, a 39-year-old sailor, had shot his sister-in-law dead during a quarrel; he believed she and his wife were using his house for immoral purposes and sleeping with other men while he was at sea. Kirwan had been under arrest and was taken outside the house after he had shot at, and slightly injured, his wife. When his sister-in-law came outside to berate him as he was being led away, he struggled from the policeman’s grip, pulled
out his gun and fatally wounded her. Sharing the gallows was Pong Lun, a 43-year-old Chinaman, who had shot dead his friend John Go Hing, following a quarrel over a bet on a game of dominoes. Harry and William Billington travelled to Liverpool together and as they made the short walk to the prison from Preston Road station they were recognised by the small crowd milling around outside the prison gates. Harry felt that in the glorious sunshine the prison looked like an old castle, and though he had been there before he still marvelled at the beautifully tended flowerbeds that flanked the path from the gatehouse to the governor’s office.

They were billeted in the old hospital wing – no longer used, but conveniently close to the scaffold. After rigging the drops – 6 feet 3 inches for Kirwan, 6 feet 2 inches for the Chinaman – they took the opportunity to view the condemned men at exercise. Kirwan was sullen and morose, trundling around the exercise yard with his head bowed, while Lun was the opposite, smiling and content as he spent his last hour in the sunshine.

The two hangmen retired to bed that night, but Harry was soon woken by a noise and, striking a match, he saw the room was overrun with mice. Looking across at Billington he saw eight or nine of the rodents scurrying across the bedclothes and climbing up the bed frame. ‘Get up Billy, you’re being worried by mice,’ he called out, startling the sleeping hangman. Despite the lack of sleep the hangman were up and ready for the duties on the following morning. It was decided to bring the two prisoners to holding cells in the old hospital wing directly below where the hangmen had slept. Kirwan was the first to be pinioned; he seemed resigned to his fate and more cheerful than he had been on the previous afternoon. Pong Lun was then taken from his cell and strapped in the corridor behind where Kirwan waited. ‘Come on Ping Pong,’
Billington called as the procession to the scaffold began. The prisoner bristled at this and replied tersely: ‘My name not Ping Pong, my name Pong Lun.’ As they took their place on the scaffold, the Chinaman looked up at the noose hanging down and began to laugh. Moments later the white cap was placed on his head and as the chaplain recited the litany the floor opened and both men dropped to an instant death.

Around this time Harry left the job with his sister at her Manchester furniture store and moved back to Bradford, settling at 14 Cowgill, Clayton, where he set up a carrier’s business. Working for himself, transporting goods from the local railway station, gave him the freedom to be his own boss and the liberty to go away on official business when required.

William Billington and Harry carried out two executions in two days in July. On Tuesday, 12 July, they were at Pentonville Gaol, where they executed John Sullivan, a Durham seaman who had battered a young deck hand to death with an axe on the merchant ship
Waiwera
while at sea. After completing the execution without any incident they travelled together to Northampton, where they prepared the drop for Samuel Rowledge, a carpenter who had shot dead his fiancée on the day of their engagement, following a domestic argument.

Whether Harry resented the fact that he hadn’t received the offer to carry out an execution as the chief hangman since the turn of the year isn’t recorded, but he must have been dismayed to find that any work that William Billington was unable to carry out was seemingly now being offered to the younger Billington instead of to him. The lack of work would also have had financial implications: Harry’s wife was pregnant again with their third child; he was now self-employed, and the difference between a chief executioner’s pay and that of his assistant was considerable.

In August, Harry helped John Billington to dispatch John Thomas Kay, a 52-year-old Rotherham labourer who had killed the woman he lived with, then stopped a policeman in the street and confessed abruptly: ‘I did it with a hatchet.’ Kay’s defence had been that he was under the influence of drink at the time of the attack, and therefore, as he was not aware of what he was doing, he was only guilty of manslaughter. The jury had disagreed.

On 13 December, Harry assisted William Billington in another double execution, this time at Pentonville Gaol. A paperboy had arrived at a newsagent’s shop in Stepney, but was surprised to find the shop open and no sign of his employer, 65-year-old spinster Miss Matilda Farmer. The police were later contacted and, searching the shop, found the deceased old lady lying face-down on her bed, her hands tied behind her back and a towel fastened around her mouth. It was clear that the motive for the crime had been robbery: the bedroom had been ransacked and jewellery was missing. A witness told the police he had seen two men standing near to the shop: one he had never seen before, but the other he recognised as Charles Wade. Another witness described two men he had seen coming out of the shop on the morning of the murder. The descriptions fitted Charles Wade and his half-brother, Conrad Donovan (aka Joseph Potter). Both men had long criminal records for robbery and were picked out from identity parades by the two witnesses.

At their trial the defence discredited one of the witness’s testimonies by proving he had been shown pictures of the suspects prior to picking them out from the identity parade. Other witnesses who had claimed to see the two men on the morning of the murder had failed to pick them out when they attended the same line-up. Police had also failed to locate any of the missing jewellery, despite thoroughly searching both men’s houses.