Pierrepoint (7 page)

Alfred Stratton occupied a cell directly above his brother. The hangmen climbed the cast-iron staircase and peered into his cell; Alfred didn’t awaken any of the same emotions they had felt for the younger brother. With their calculations they went down to the scaffold and prepared the ropes. Albert, a stocky 172 pounds, was given a drop of 7 feet 6 inches; Alfred, some 25 pounds lighter, was given a drop of 1 foot less. With the sandbags loaded ready for the practice drop, Harry knelt down on the large oak doors and in chalk scribbled ‘Albert’ and ‘Alfred’ under the appropriate nooses.

On the following morning the prison was silent; even the warders walked across the landings as if on tiptoes. On a signal from the governor they entered Albert’s cell and led him into the corridor. Harry noted he was placid and tractable and in seconds they led him into the corridor, leaving him for a moment in the care of the prison escort. Alfred, who had been removed to an adjacent cell after breakfast, had a surly look on his face but put up no resistance. Not a word had been spoken as the procession was formed and headed for the scaffold, only the quiet voice of the priest reciting the burial service breaking the heavy silence.

The hangmen followed a pace behind the brothers, both with necks bared for the rope, with an officer either side, as they walked steadily down the staircase and along the path
that headed to the execution shed. As the procession came into view the doors were flung open. Albert was escorted across to the rope nearest the lever, while Albert stood to his right. As the hangmen busied themselves, Albert broke the silence: ‘Alfred,’ he said in a loud voice, his pale face half-turning to where his white-capped brother stood. ‘Have you given your heart to God?’

For a moment there was no response, then in a muffled whisper his brother replied: ‘Yes.’

As the drop fell Harry thought of how, at the very jaws of death, the younger brother’s thoughts were more for his brother than for himself.

Harry paid his first visit to Maidstone Gaol on 1 August, when he was engaged as number one for the execution of an Algerian who had killed a fellow countryman in a Kent field. It was to be his first engagement as a chief on the mainland for 20 months.

In the spring of 1905, five Algerians had taken lodgings at a house in a village in Kent. They had earned a living as travellers, selling various goods and items. Some of the group had moved on to the village of Robertsbridge; the rest had travelled on to Tenterden, where on the morning of 17 June, the body of Hadjou Idder was discovered. He had been beaten about the head with a large stick and his throat had been cut. Nineteen-year-old Ferat Mohamed Benali was arrested and confessed to the crime. He said they had travelled from Ashford and had looked for somewhere to sleep. Idder had suggested the field and though Benali preferred to make other arrangements, money was tight and he went along with the plan. In the early hours he awoke to find Idder was sexually molesting him. In a rage, he drew his knife and lashed out. He then picked up a branch and battered Idder until he lay dead. As on all his previous jobs as
chief in England, Harry had John Ellis as his assistant. They worked as an efficient team and Benali was dispatched without incident in a brisk and professional manner.

On 9 August 1905, Harry worked as an assistant for the last time when he helped John Billington at the execution of William Hancocks at Knutsford. Hancocks lived with his wife and young children in Birkenhead. The eldest daughter, 15-year-old Mary, was in service elsewhere in Birkenhead and, although she no longer lived at home she often returned to spend some time with her family. On one such visit she was attacked by her father and stabbed several times in the head. She died a few days later. No motive was ever clearly established for the killing and at his trial Hancocks’ defence was manslaughter – that the wounds had been caused accidentally, during a struggle with his daughter. The jury disagreed, finding him guilty of murder, but adding a recommendation for mercy on account of him being drunk at the time of the attack.

William Hancocks had lost an arm many years previously in an accident on the railways and this caused a problem for the executioners when it came to pinioning his arms behind his back. In the days of James Berry, the condemned men’s arms were often secured to a body belt. Nowadays, with speed an important part of the executioner’s duties, clumsy body belts were no longer used, but the resourceful Harry modelled a strap on the principle of the body belt and was able to secure the man’s arm on the following morning. Hancocks spent his final hours writing and left two letters in cell. He was a bigamist, and left a letter for each of his wives.

When two executions were scheduled for the same day in August 1905, prison officials found they had a shortage of assistants, as William Billington was serving a short prison sentence for failing to pay maintenance monies to his wife and
family after a separation. Of the seven names on the official list of hangmen and assistants when Harry had joined the list in 1901, there now remained just three. Both James Billington and his son Thomas had passed away; Robert Wade hadn’t assisted at an execution since the previous century; William Warbrick had only assisted at one execution in 1900 before his career had come to an end; and Thomas Scott hadn’t carried out any work since March 1901 and was deemed unsuitable to be retained on the official list.

This presented a problem when the governor at Leeds prison needed an assistant to help John Billington execute Thomas Tattersall. Both Harry Pierrepoint and John Ellis, the only active assistants on the list, were engaged elsewhere and so a letter was sent to Warbrick asking him to come out of retirement to assist.

On the afternoon before the execution, as the rope was being prepared on the scaffold, John Billington stepped back and tumbled down the open trapdoor that led to the pit below. He suffered cracked ribs and mild concussion in the fall, but was able to carry out his duties satisfactorily. After his return home, however, he was taken ill. He died a short time later at his home in Coppull, from pleurisy – attributable, the doctors believed, to his fall.

Unaware of the drama taking place at Leeds, Harry and Ellis were preparing the gallows for one of the most sensational murderers of the early part of the century. Arthur Deveraux was a 45-year-old chemist who had been convicted of the murder of his wife and twin sons in what the papers dubbed the Kensal Rise Trunk Mystery. In January 1905, Deveraux had been made redundant from the chemist shop he managed in Kilburn. With a wife and three young sons to support, he was desperate to open his own pharmacy but the only person he knew with the means
to help was his mother-in-law, who refused his request for a loan.

Early in spring, Deveraux found work in Coventry and moved to the new job with his eldest son. He vacated the house and put the property into storage at a warehouse in Kensal Rise. After a time, his mother-in-law became concerned as to the whereabouts of her daughter and the young twin boys, but Deveraux was vague in revealing their whereabouts – thereby arousing suspicion. Enquiries among the neighbours gave his mother-in-law the name of the removal firm and she was able to convince the police to act. A tin trunk they found in storage aroused their interest, as it was extremely well secured – padlocked, strapped and sealed with wax. Forcing open the lock, and lifting the lid, the police discovered a layer of wooden planks, tightly butted together and screwed into place. They had also been sealed with glue and Boric acid, making the trunk totally airtight. Finally, the contents of the trunk were exposed: the bodies of Mrs Deveraux and two boys.

Deveraux was traced and arrested. He confessed that he had concealed the bodies, but denied killing the victims, claiming he had come home one day in January after spending the day trying to find work when he found the bodies of his wife and young sons. They had died of an overdose of morphine, apparently in desperation at their struggle to find work. He said he had put Stanley, the older son, to bed telling him his mother was asleep, and then put the bodies into the trunk.

At his trial, it was shown that when he had applied for the Coventry job he had written in his application form that he was a widower with one young son. Penned on 13 January, it was dated two weeks before his wife and son had disappeared. This was a damning piece of evidence and was
held to show that the killings were premeditated. The jury ook just ten minutes to decide his fate.

When Harry received the request to hang George William Butler at Pentonville on 7 November, he was the undisputed number one hangman. (For a time, just he and assistant John Ellis were on the list of the country’s executioners.) Fifty-year-old Butler was convicted of the murder of Mary Allen, whom he lived with at Marylebone. Trouble had come to a head when a son from Mary’s first marriage came to stay with them. The two men did not get on and following one fight Butler needed hospital treatment for a broken jaw. On 24 September, Butler was visited by his own son. They drank a great quantity of beer, but as Butler’s jaw was still causing discomfort he was forced to drink through a straw. He told his son what had happened and threatened to kill both Mary and her son, saying he was going to buy a revolver and blow out their brains. Five days later Mary was heard calling for help. When her son entered the bedroom he saw that Butler had stabbed her four times. Placed under arrest, Butler claimed he had committed the crime because her son had broken his jaw. Mary Allen died two days later.

At his trial, Butler’s defence was that he was unaware of his actions due to the effects of the large amount of alcohol he had consumed. Standing just 5 feet 2 inches and weighing 171 pounds, the hangmen gave him a drop of just 6 feet. Death was instantaneous.A week after Butler’s execution, Harry made his first trip to Scotland when he was engaged to hang a young Basuto boxer named Pasha Liffey who had committed a murder on a road near Larkhall, Lanarkshire.

Liffey was well known in the Glasgow area, where he was a frequent visitor as part of a travelling circus. One night in August he savagely attacked an old woman as she walked
home, cutting her throat with a razor. Her screams alerted passers-by, who recognised the fleeing Liffey. Police arrested him on the following day while an angry lynch mob combed the area looking for revenge.

Although he gave his age as 24, Harry thought Liffey looked no more than a boy as he observed him in exercise at Glasgow’s Duke Street Gaol on the afternoon of Monday, 13 November. He was carrying out the execution alone, as his request for an assistant had been refused.

Harry admitted he had been apprehensive as he set out from Clayton on the Sunday evening. He knew from his conversations with William Billington that executions were a rarity in Scotland – as a result, a scaffold was usually borrowed from the English authorities and assembled prior to the day before. In this instance it was borrowed from London’s Holloway Gaol and Harry accepted the governor’s invitation to travel up on the Sunday so he could supervise the construction of the scaffold and check that it met with his satisfaction.

It was a bitterly cold night as he arrived at St Enoch’s station, where after some hot refreshments he made his way to Duke Street Prison. The scaffold was erected in the engineer’s workshop. Harry didn’t much care for it – it had too many mechanical contrivances about it – but there was no real alternative. The chief concern was that the scaffold floor stood a good 8 inches above the concrete ground so that the trapdoor mechanism could fit underneath. The doors opened into a pit that had been dug below to receive the body. There was always the worry that a terrified condemned man would struggle and there was a chance he would fall or trip on the raised platform. Despite this, after a careful inspection, Harry decided it would suit the purposes.

Standing in the exercise yard as Liffey walked around in the chilly afternoon air, Harry donned a warden’s tunic and
cap so that the condemned man would be unaware his executioner was observing him at close quarters.

Liffey was only 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 9 stone 9 pounds. Harry worked out a drop of 7 feet 1 inch and completed a test drop with a sandbag filled to the same weight. Satisfied all was in order, he retired to his quarters, where he spent much of the evening in the company of warders, playing cards and talking.

At a few minutes to eight that Tuesday morning, Harry stood in the corridor waiting for the governor, with watch in hand, to give him the signal. When it came he went unaccompanied to the condemned cell. A surprise awaited him on arrival in the cell. The door was slightly open and as he entered the cell Liffey stood erect behind the door. Not a flicker of emotion showed on his face as Harry approached. Once he realised who the visitor to the cell was, Liffey gave him a broad smile.

‘Come on lad,’ Harry said in as kindly and considerate tone as possible, ‘it is time to go.’

Liffey stood like a statue as his arms were secured.

‘Buck up my boy,’ Harry said, even though the condemned man showed no sign of failing courage.

‘I will that,’ Liffey responded, as they left the cell and walked towards to the scaffold. As they entered the workshop Harry noticed a large table had been set up facing the drop. Behind it sat a row of dignitaries.

They halted at the table and one of them spoke to the prisoner.

‘Are you Pasha Liffey?’

Liffey murmured a reply, and at a signal from the City Chamberlain, who headed the table, Harry turned and led the prisoner across to the drop. He placed the noose and white cap over his head, and as Liffey had offered no resistance he did not strap his feet before reaching across and pulling the lever.

The execution had caused great excitement in Glasgow and as a result thousands of people crowded outside the gates of the prison as the black flag fluttered in the breeze to show that Mrs Welsh had been avenged.

Later that morning, Harry left the prison without attracting any attention and with a little time to wait for his train back south he stopped off into a hotel close to the station. He ordered a drink and stood at the bar. A short time later a man entered and spoke loudly to some friends sat in the corner.