Pierrepoint (9 page)

He had travelled to the Essex gaol to execute Richard Buckham a 20-year-old farm hand, who, along with his younger brother, had been charged with the murder of Albert and Emma Watson, the owners of a small farm near Basildon.

There had been a quarrel over access to a well and when the brothers felt hard done by, after losing the argument, they called at the Watson’s farm, where they shot them both dead and stole money and jewellery. The younger brother was acquitted at the trial and Richard Buckman alone faced the hangman.

The final execution of the year took Harry and John Ellis back to Derby Gaol, almost a year to the day since they were
last there. The culprit this time was a distinguished former soldier and Harry later commented that the execution was one of the most affecting of the hundred or so that he had carried out.

Walter Marsh had served 17 years in the army and had fought in several notable battles in the Boer War, before leaving the army in 1903. Along with his wife, he took over the running of a public house in Sheffield, but when this failed they moved to another in Chesterfield. When this too failed Marsh began work as a rent collector. By this time his marriage was in trouble and in June his wife attempted to take out a summons against him for cruelty. After a series of quarrels and separations he snapped, and savagely cut her throat as she slept.

Found guilty after a deliberation of just 20 minutes, Marsh refused to allow a petition for his reprieve, claiming he feared imprisonment more than he feared death. The scaffold had been erected in the coach house at the gaol and in the past this had necessitated a long walk across the prison yard to reach it. It was decided this time to move the prisoner on the morning of the execution to a cell next door to the scaffold so the last walk along the snow-covered ground would not be a long one.

Harry noted a very penitent and restless prisoner when he observed him shortly after his arrival at the gaol. Next morning he was brought down from his cell in the hospital wing and placed in the newly prepared cell. As the hangmen made their way from their quarters to the scaffold, Harry peered out of the small gatekeeper’s window they passed en route. He noticed a crowd of people stretching back from the prison gates as far as he could see.

Marsh was crying softly as they entered the cell and he got to his feet slowly and feebly as they secured his wrists behind his back. His crying, which had gone on all through the night,
continued as he stepped onto the drop. Harry believed it was shame at his position and not fear that caused the tears to fall.

Christmas festivities in the Pierrepoint household had, as in previous years, been put on hold when work called, but having left Derby promptly, Harry arrived home shortly after lunchtime. The experience of hanging the distressed and shamed soldier had played heavily on his mind and he was looking forward to a cup of tea and a relaxing hour by the warmth of the fire and the company of his young children. No sooner had he entered the house, however, than he heard shouts coming from outside. His wife, who was standing by the window, shouted, ‘Harry, come look at this’ as a partially naked man went tearing down the street. Harry went out into the street and found a gang of nine or ten young men laughing and pointing as the man, naked except for a shirt, ran past again.

‘Why the Dickens don’t you stop him?’ Harry asked, only to be met with howls of laughter and pointing fingers as the man made his way back down the other side of the street. Harry set off after him and got within thirty yards when the man doubled back and headed straight for him. Preparing himself, Harry stood in his path and, seeing his route blocked, the man turned and jumped a wall. Harry was able to grab him and save him a long fall over the other side to an almost certain death or severe injury.

Moments later attendants from a nearby asylum came into view and gathered up the escapee whom Harry had brought under control. He was annoyed when the attendants simply collected the man and, without a word of thanks, set off back to the asylum.

On New Year’s Day 1907, Harry’s long-time assistant John Ellis finally got to act as a chief executioner when he
performed an execution at Warwick. It had been a long time coming for Ellis, whose only previous offer as a number one, when Harry was engaged elsewhere, had come to nothing after the condemned man was reprieved.

One warm summer’s afternoon in July 1906, three holiday-makers walking at St Saviour’s on the island of Jersey had stumbled across the body of a partly dressed man in a field. He was identified as a young married man who lived close by and investigations led police to arrest his wife and her brother, 29-year-old Thomas Connan, for the crime. At Connan’s trial it was alleged that his sister had persuaded him to murder her bullying husband, from whom he then stole items of jewellery. She was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment while her brother was sentenced to death.

It was to be the first execution in Jersey for over thirty years, and the first to be held in private. Harry received the offer to hang the condemned man, with the execution date being set for Tuesday, 19 February, one month to the day from sentence being passed. Over five thousand people signed the petition for a reprieve, which, although Harry had received a wire to say the execution was to go ahead as scheduled, was still being considered when he boarded a boat from Southampton and set sail for Jersey.

A large crowd had gathered on the quayside as the boat docked, but any hopes they had of seeing the executioner were dashed when the chief warder from the gaol pulled up at the foot of the disembarkation ramp and herded Harry into a closed carriage and away to the prison. Several more daring men raced alongside on bicycles trying to peep through the windows, but the execution party reached the safety of the prison without an incident.

Following a breakfast and a chance to relax, Harry was shown the newly constructed gallows, and at once expressed
concern at the flight of steps the condemned man was expected to climb to reach the drop. The chief engineer, who had constructed the gallows, had also made an exact replica model, a foot high, which Harry throughout his stay at the gaol tried in vain to get him to part with.

Connan spent his last night on earth praying and singing hymns, and met his fate bravely on the following morning. Harry had been surprised when he went in to pinion the prisoner to find that over half a dozen other dignitaries entered the cell at the same time, one of whom read out the death warrant to the stunned prisoner. It was less than fifty paces to the scaffold and in no time Connan was on the drop, noosed and hooded. He muttered, ‘Lord have mercy on my soul,’ as Harry pulled the lever.

Later that night Harry was entertained at a civic reception where his health was toasted, and after spending a further night in the prison he caught the 8 a.m. boat to sail back to Southampton. The ship was tossed around on gale-force seas, and Harry found himself reflecting that this was the kind of travel and adventure he had longed for when he left home as a teenager.

On 26 March, with Willis as his assistant, Harry executed Joseph Jones at Stafford for the murder of his son-in-law. He had three offers of work in London that spring, all of which came to nothing, and it wasn’t until mid-July that he travelled down to Derby where he met up with Ellis. Together they rigged a drop of 7 foot 6 inches for William Slack, a Chesterfield painter who had attacked a barmaid with an axe as she pushed a pram down the street. (He was thought to have been the father of the child she was pushing and was wheeling the pram away when arrested.) He was abusive to the judge when sentence of death was passed, but showed no fear on the morning of his execution and almost ran to the drop.

Harry was engaged on three executions in seven days in August. The first was at Liverpool’s Walton Gaol on 7 August, when Harry and Tom hanged Charles Patterson, a half-caste sailor from Moss Side, Manchester, who had pleaded guilty to the murder of his landlady. Patterson cut her throat after she had served notice evicting him.

Six days later, assisted by Ellis he hanged Richard Brinkley a Fulham carpenter who had mistakenly murdered two people in Croydon. After swindling an old lady out of her savings and forging her signatures on a will, Brinkley found his scheme thwarted when the granddaughter of his victim contested the will following the old lady’s death. Fearful that his forgery would be exposed, Brinkley made up a poisonous mixture that he added to a bottle of stout that his intended victim, the granddaughter, would drink. Unfortunately for Brinkley, his landlord found the bottle in a cupboard and poured out the contents, which he then shared with his wife and daughter. The landlord and his wife died almost at once. The bottle was examined and found to contain prussic acid.

Harry travelled across to Cardiff later that day to execute Sunderland-born Mrs Leslie James, who preferred to use the name Rhoda Willis. Willis was a baby farmer who lived in lodgings in the Welsh capital. Short of money, and unable to find work, she placed an advertisement offering her services in finding places for unwanted babies. One of the replies came from a lady whose unmarried sister was expecting a child in May. They agreed a fee of £6 with a further £2 to follow. She had also arranged to take in another child but, finding herself unable to cope, suffocated one of them while travelling home on a train. Her landlady discovered the dead child in her room and called the police.

Harry had arranged to meet up with Tom at the railway
station, where a large crowd had gathered in the hope of seeing the hangman. They hailed a cab to the gaol where they found another large gathering. A policeman on duty helped them to get inside safely. A telegram had recently arrived stating there would be no reprieve, and the woman had collapsed and was still in a state of nervous prostration when they looked into the cell. Both were concerned she would give them trouble in the morning, such was her apparent terror. They were given her age as 39; she stood 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 145 pounds. The hangmen worked out a drop of 5 feet 9 inches.

At her request she was visited by her solicitor at 6 a.m. on the morning of her execution and, crying bitterly, she thanked him for coming, before making a full confession. At a few minutes to eight Harry was given his orders and, with his brother following close behind, entered the cell, where they found an attractive, smartly built, well-dressed woman with glorious auburn hair. She didn’t rise to her feet as they entered, so Harry gently tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up with a pitiful smile.

‘It is time,’ he said gently as they helped her to her feet, ‘be brave.’ They swiftly fastened her arms and she was able to walk unaided as the procession made its way to the scaffold. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead but as they entered the small prison yard where the shed was situated, she looked up to the glorious blue sky and muttered something inaudible. As the sun glistened in her hair, Harry reflected that he had rarely seen a more beautiful woman. Seconds later she was stone dead.

The Pierrepoint brothers were to be in action on all subsequent executions that year. On 5 November they travelled together to Reading, where they executed William Austin who had murdered the daughter of the family he
lodged with at Windsor. Three weeks later they were at Lincoln Gaol, where 47-year-old agricultural labourer William Duddles paid the ultimate penalty for murdering his wife with a hammer at their home in Lutton Marsh.

The final execution of 1907 involved a trip back to Cardiff, but instead of the flaming-haired beauty he had escorted on her final walk the last time he was in the principality, this time Harry was to hang George Stills – a Glamorgan colliery worker who had battered his aged mother to death while drunk.

After a barren two months with no work, on 5 March 1908 Harry carried out an execution on his own when he dispatched 25-year-old Joseph Hume, a deserter from the Highland Light Infantry, who had robbed and battered to death a kindly old man who had given him food and shelter.

Harry described the journey from his home in Bradford to Inverness’s Porterfield Prison as one of the most memorable he had made in his career. He had been asked to report to the gaol on the evening of Tuesday, 3 March, as the weather was making travelling hazardous, and the authorities were anxious there should be no hiccup in arrangements, this being the first execution in the town since 1835. As it turned out, heavy snow north of Perth delayed his journey and it was well into the early hours of Wednesday before he reached his destination. Hume protested his innocence to his mother in a touching farewell interview and although he bore up well when Harry went for him on the following morning, he began to falter as they reached the drop. His final words were ‘Don’t blindfold me’, but Harry did everything by the book, and after placing the noose he put on the white cap; in a move he often carried out when working alone, he chose not to secure the legs with the ankle
strap. Sensing that Hume was about to faint he darted to his left and pulled the lever.

Arriving home from Inverness, Harry found a telegram from the Under-Sheriff of Durham asking him if he was free to officiate at a double execution scheduled for 24 March. Two Gateshead men had been convicted of separate offences, but as they were tried within days of each other before Mr Justice Channell at Durham Assizes, it was decided they would hang together.

Robert William Lawman had been the first to be convicted. A miner, he had cut the throat of his paramour at Gateshead before making a botched attempt to cut his own throat. When interviewed by the police, Lawman stated: ‘I have killed her; I loved her, and I will swing for her,’ claiming he had committed the crime after his lover had suggested they split up. The judge had tears in his eyes as he passed the death sentence. But there were no tears for the second man sentenced to hang beside Lawman.

There had been a number of burglaries at the Windy Nook Co-Operative Society, Gateshead, and staff took turns to keep a watch in case the thieves returned. On the night of 31 October, four employees concealed themselves in the butchery department; at around 4 a.m. a noise was heard, the door opened and a man entered. A violent scuffle ensued before two shots rang out, leaving one man dead and another with leg wounds. Although he had received a severe beating from the staff the killer escaped, but left vital clues at the scene. With police on the alert for a man who may have been showing the effects of his injuries, railway blacksmith Joseph William Noble was arrested on the following day. He was covered in bruises, which he claimed were the result of a fall at work. His footprints matched those found at the scene and a search of his home turned up
jemmies and other burglar’s tools. No gun was found, but cartridges in the house matched those recovered from the body of dead man. Asked if he had anything to say before being condemned, Noble replied, ‘You can break my neck but you cannot break my heart.’