Tales From the Tower of London (32 page)

The problem was, that to be hanged, the condemned had to stand on the scaffold long enough for the trap to be opened – but because of his shattered ankle, Josef Jakobs could not stand at all. Reluctantly, the military court decided Jakobs would face a firing squad; unfortunately, because Brixton prison did not have an active military contingent on duty, there was no way to assemble a firing squad on site. Jakobs would have to be moved elsewhere; and the only place where there were both unused, secure cells and an active military presence was the Tower of London, a contingent of the Scots Guards having been assigned there to guard Rudolf Hess and carry out routine military duties for the duration of the war. Josef Jakobs was duly loaded on to a stretcher, placed in the back of an army lorry and driven from Brixton prison to the Waterloo Block of the Tower. Two days later, on 15 August 1941, he was bundled back on to a stretcher and lifted into the back of an open lorry with two guards. But this time the journey would be much shorter. In his hand was the small Bible which Jakobs had requested from the warden when he first arrived at the Tower.

As the dark green truck wound its way through the early morning maze of alleyways and lanes inside the Tower complex, one of the guards pinned a small patch of black cloth to the front of Jakobs shirt, just beneath his left breast; it had been cut roughly into the shape of a heart. In front of a long, low building of corrugated metal the truck rolled to a stop. Carefully helping Jakobs off the stretcher and resting him on the tailgate of the lorry, the guards could hear men at the far end of the shed grunting and shuffling something heavy.

The long, low shed was the rifle range used by the Scots Guards for routine target practice and the men inside were moving bales of hay into position against the rear wall. It was hard work in the August heat, and it was all the more difficult because the ceiling was barely 5 feet high at the end of the shed where the target normally stood. But the target had been removed. In its place was a simple wooden chair. It was towards this chair that the two guards slowly moved the crippled Corporal Josef Jakobs. The nearer they got to the low end of the building, the slower their progress became. Finally they managed to help Jakobs bend forward and turn round so he could sit in the chair facing the open end of the shed.

Once seated, the officer in charge approached Jakobs and asked him to remove his spectacles. Fumbling with the Bible, his hands shaking, Jakobs complied, handing over his glasses. As the officer gently placed a black hood over Jakobs’ head, eight members of the Scots Guards filed across the open end of the shed. One of the Springfield rifles they carried held a blank cartridge, so there was always the chance that any given man had not fired a fatal shot.

When the officer of the day walked out of the shed, the eight men threw the bolts in their rifles, loading a shell into the chamber, and took aim at the small black patch on Jakobs’ shirt. At 7.12 a.m. on 15 August 1941, Josef Jakobs became the last man to be executed at the Tower of London in a bloody history stretching back more than nine centuries.

After his execution, Jakobs was quietly buried at Kensal Rise Cemetery in north-west London. The bullet-riddled chair on which he had sat during his last moments was placed in storage where it remained, almost forgotten – at least it remained nearly forgotten until the summer of 1991.

As General Chris Tyler led Josef Jakobs’ daughter across the car park near Tower Green, he explained that the old rifle range had been pulled down during the 1960s but he knew approximately where it had been. Leading his charge to the spot, Tyler returned to his office, leaving her to contemplate the fate of a father she had never known. He may have wondered whether he should have told her about the chair.

In 1997 the Royal Armouries collection was preparing to move from its long-time home in the Tower to a new, modern building in Leeds. In the final special exhibit before the move, a glass case appeared among the objects on display. Inside the case was a simple wooden chair, riddled with small, round holes, each surrounded by a dark brown stain. When questioned if it was appropriate to have put Josef Jakobs’ death chair on display, especially since Jakobs still had living relatives, the Tower’s assistant registrar Robert Chester answered: ‘It was a difficult decision, but in the end we decided to go ahead. It is, after all, part of the Tower’s history.’

G
ENERAL
R
EFERENCE

Abbott, G.,
Great Escapes from the Tower of London
, Heinemann, London, 1982

——,
The Tower of London As It Was
, Hendon Publishing, 1988

Arnold, T. (ed.),
The History of the English by Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon
, Rolls Series, 1879

The Book of Prisoners
, <
http://www.tower-of-london.com/exec/book.html
>

Butler, Sir Thomas,
Her Majesty’s Tower of London
, Pitkin Pictorials, London, 1972

Carey, John (ed.),
Eyewitness to History
, Avon Books, New York, 1987

Carkeet-James, Colonel E.H.,
Her Majesty’s Tower of London
, Staples Press, London, 1953

Catholic Encyclopedia
, <
http://www.newadvent.org
>

Chamberlin, Russell,
The Tower of London: An Illustrated History
, Webb & Bower, London, 1989

Davey, R.,
The Tower of London
, no publisher given, 1919

Foxe, John,
The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe
, Vol. VIII, Seeley, Burnside & Seeley, London, 1843–9

Handbook of British Chronology
, 3rd edn, 1986

Harper, Charles G.,
The Tower of London
, Chapman & Hall, London, 1909

Hassall, W.O. (ed.),
They Saw It Happen 55 BC–1485
, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1963

Headley, Olwen,
Prisoners in the Tower
, York Minster Library, York, 1979

Hibbert, Christopher,
Tower of London
, Reader’s Digest, London, 1971

Hudson, M.E. and Clark, Mary,
Crown of a Thousand Years
, Crown Publishers, New York, 1978

Impey, Edward, and Parnell, Geoffrey,
The Tower of London: The Official Illustrated History
, Merrill Publishers, London, 2000

Lewis, Jon E. (ed.),
The Mammoth Book of How It Happened
, Robinson Publishing, London, 2001

Macaulay, T.B.,
History of England
, <
http//www.mindspring.com/~strecorsoc/macaulay/m05a.html
>

Mears, Kenneth J.,
The Tower of London, 900 Years of English History
, Phaidon, Oxford, 1988

Minney, R.J.,
The Tower of London
, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1970

Parnell, Geoffrey,
English Heritage Book of the Tower of London
, Batsford, London, 1993

Rowse, A.L.,
The Tower of London in the History of the Nation
, Book Club Associates, London, 1972

Shuttleworth, Dorothy,
The Tower of London
, Bailey Bros and Swinfen, Folkestone, 1972

Treasures of the Tower: Inscriptions
, no author listed, HMSO, London, 1976

Wilson, Derek,
The Tower – 1078–1978
, Book Club Associates, London, 1978

Wilson, Mary,
Stories of the Tower
, Cassell, London, 1896

C
HAPTER
S
OURCES

The Axe, the Arrow and the Wailing Monk: William the Conqueror

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, Everyman Press, London, 1912

Douglas, David C.,
William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England
, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964

Heworth, David,
1066: The Year of the Conquest
, Penguin, New York, 1981

McLynn, Frank,
1066: The Year of Three Battle
s, Random House, London, 1999

Dangerous Liaisons: Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt

Dean, James M. (ed.),
Literature of Richard II’s Reign and the Peasants’ Revolt
, <
http://128.151.244.128/camelot/teams/richint.html
>

Froissart, Jean,
The Chronicles
, Viking, New York, 1978

Oman, C. (tr.),
The Great Revolt of 1381
, Stackpole, Harrisburg, PA, 1989

Account of the Insurrection of Walter Tyler and of his death at the hands of William Walworth, the Mayor, Geoffrey Chaucer, <
http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/varia/life_of_Ch/wattyler.html
>

Conflagration: The Peasants’ Revolt (parts 1, 2, 3 & 4), <
http://historymedren.about.com/education/historymedren/library/weekly/aa072498.html
>

Medieval Source book; Anonimalle Chronicle: English Peasants’ Revolt 1381, <
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/anon1381.html
>

VillageNet Local History (Peasants’ Revolt 1381) <
http://www.villagenet.co.uk/history/peasantrevolt.html
>

A Family Affair: The Princes in the Tower

Clive, Mary,
The Sun of York: A Biography of Edward IV
, Sphere, London, 1975

Dockray, Keith,
Richard III: A Sourcebook
, Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1997

Hallam, Elizabeth (ed.),
Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses
, Markham, Penguin Books Canada, 1988

Weir, Alison,
The Princes in the Tower
, Pimlico, London, 1993

The Warder, the Wolf and the Woman: John Wolfe and Alice Tankerville.

All the notes have been taken from the general reference books listed above.

Treason in the Bedroom: Katherine Howard

Erikson, Carolly,
Great Harry
, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1997

Fraser, Antonia,
The Wives of Henry VIII
, Vintage Books, Vancouver & Washington, USA, 1994

Weir, Alison,
Six Wives of Henry VIII
, Grove Press, Berkeley, California, 2000 <
http://www.englishhistory.net/tudor/letter13.html
> <
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/tudor_england/20530
> <
http://gen.culpeper.com/historical/howard/part1.html
> <
http://www.datasync.com/~davidg59/henry8.html
>

Nine Days a Queen: Lady Jane Grey

Plowden, Alison,
Lady Jane Grey and the House of Suffolk
, Franklin Watts, New York, 1986

Correspondence of Lady Jane Grey, <
http://ladyjane.iinet.net.au/correspondence.html
>

Lady Jane Grey The Nine Days Queen, <
http://www.castleland.webprovider.com/ladyjanegrey.html
>

Lady Jane Grey [Nine Days], [Correspondence], [Jane the Queen], [Execution], <
http://ladyjane.iinet.au/nine_days.html
>

Lady Jane Grey, Marriage, Early Life, <
htttp://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/index.html
>

Lady Jane Grey, The Nine Days Queen, <
http://www.casteland.webprovider.com/ladyjanegrey.html
>

List of State Papers of Queen Jane, Proclamations of the Accession of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Accession of Queen Jane, Chronicle of Queen Jane, Will of Edward VI, Notes, <
http://tudor.simplenet.com/primary/janemary/app3.html
>

List of State Papers of the Reign of Queen Jane, <
http://tudor.simplenet.com/primary/janemary/app3.html
>

Proclamations of the Accession of Queen Jane and of Queen Mary, <
http://tudor.simplenet.com/primary/janemary/app3.html
>

The Devil’s Dancing Bear: Bishop Edmund Bonner

Alexander, Gina,
Bonner and the Marian Persecutions
, Kidbrooke School, London, 1975

Burnet, Gilbert and Pocock, N. (eds),
History of the Reformation of the Church of England
, London, 1891

Catholic Encyclopedia
online: <
http://www.newadvent.com
>

Dickens, A.G.,
The English Reformation
, Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, 1964

Dixon, R.W.,
History of the Church of England
, 1891

Foxe, John,
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
, Whitaker House, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1985

Foxe, John,
Acts & Monuments of John Foxe
, Vol. VIII, Seeley, Burnside & Seeley, London, 1843–9

The Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and Anthony Babington

Hibbert, Christopher,
Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen
, Guild Publishing, London, 1990

Jenkins, Elizabeth,
Elizabeth the Great
, Coward-McCann, New York, 1959

Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot, <
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jmcgill/project.html
>

Queen Mary’s Letters to Babington/Babington’s Letter to Mary Queen of Scots, <
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jmcgill/marysletter.html
>

Williams, Neville,
The Life and Times of Elizabeth I
, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1972

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot: Guy ‘Guido’ Fawkes

Caraman, Fr Philip (tr.),
The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, Fr. John Gerard,
Four Faces Press, Springfield, Virginia, 2000

Fraser, Antonia,
Faith and Treason – the Story of the Gunpowder Plot,
Doubleday, New York, 1996

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson,
What the Gunpowder Plot Was,
London, 1897

Jardine, David,
A Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot
, London, 1857