Authors: Steven Fielding
Pierrepoint (13 page)
The Prison Commissioners
The Home Office
Whitehall
London
Gentlemen,
The governor of HM Prison Chelmsford engaged me to assist at the execution of F Fourman today. So I arrived at about 3.30 p.m. yesterday. Tuesday, at about 3.45 p.m. Mr H. A. Pierrepoint the executioner, arrived drunk, and appeared on good terms with everyone. They sat him down and we passed the compliments of the day. When the gatekeeper asked him how he was, he stated he was in the pink, got up from his seat, came across and stood by the desk and said this pointing to me was one of the best of pals. We sat talking a few minutes, still the best of friends. The governor came into the room, so Mr Pierrepoint stated he would want the man’s Age, Height, and Weight, the governor told him that the Chief Warder would give him any particulars he required, directly after the Chief Warder came in and was telling him the particulars he required. He appeared to be taking no notice what the Chief Warder was saying to him so I pulls a small book out, commences taking the particulars, which I honestly thought I had a right to do for further guidance. I have always book the Ages, Height and Weight down in a book since I assisted at my first execution in 1901.
Whilst I was booking them down, he commenced using the most disgusting language it has ever been my lot
to hear, I will not repeat it as it is not fit to be said, heard or spoken, then he threatened what he would do for me, made a rush at me, but the Chief Warder and Gatekeeper intervened and talked to him and he appeared to quieten down. Their duties caused them to leave the room, as soon as they had gone, he rushed at me, and knocked me off the chair I was sat on. I got up, but was again knocked off, he was going for me again when Warder Nash who had heard the noise came in, and attempted to stop him, but failed, so the blow caught me behind the ear, then he struck me again, behind the ear, in all he struck me four blows, which have caused me a lot of pain, and still troubling me, so the Chief said I had better go to my room which I was very pleased to do. He is the first person that has ever assaulted me in all my life. Never was a fighting man myself. If I cant agree with people I will not have anything to do with them. I assisted Mr Pierrepoint at the first execution he had which was at Shrewsbury on March 8th 1902 and up to yesterday we have never had a cross word. I have always given him the best advice possible, to take drink in moderation, and always turn up at the prisons sober, as when the public saw him drunk it always caused a lot of un-necessary talk, and it gave them the impression that he had to get drunk to do his work, and that they had a bad opinion of us all that are on the Home Office list, and we were the lowest of the low. The following officers are witnesses, Chief Warder Hale, Warder Gilding and Warder Nash.
I shall be very pleased if you will kindly take the matter up.
I am Gentlemen
Your Obedient Servant
John Ellis
And that was it. A report was sent to the Home Secretary detailing the conduct of the executioner and a letter was sent to the warders asking for their account. They concurred with Ellis’s version and a week later an official memo was circulated.
195,461/2.
HOME OFFICE
WHITEHALL, S. W.2
2nd July, 1910
Confidential.
Sir,
I am directed by the Secretary of State to acquaint you that he has felt it his duty to order the name of H.A. Pierrepoint to be removed by the Prison Commissioners from the list of persons who have been found to be qualified to act as Executioners.
Mr. Churchill is informed that when Pierrepoint was last employed he arrived at the Prison on the day before the execution in a drunken and quarrelsome state, that he made use of bad language and assaulted his assistant.
He would therefore be glad if you would note that Pierrepoint should not be employed on any future occasion to act as Executioner.
I am,
Sir,
Your obedient servant,
E Blackwell
RIVALRY AND
CHANGING TIMES
H
arry made no reference to the incident at Chelmsford Prison in any of the newspaper reminiscences of his work on the scaffold. Sixty-five years later his son Albert claimed he had no knowledge of why his father retired other than that it wasn’t for any professional error. With what we know now about his conduct at Chelmsford, however, Harry must have put two and two together when his brother Tom received instruction that Leeds Prison had two men under sentence of death and was asked whether he was free to officiate as chief executioner.
Tom wrote to confirm his availability and by a strange twist of fate it was the Governor of Leeds Gaol who was left with the dilemma of recruiting an assistant executioner when there was no one available on the list. Since 1905 the only men carrying out executions had been Harry Pierrepoint and John Ellis as chief executioners and Tom Pierrepoint and William Willis as assistants. Up to that time Ellis had conducted just five executions as a number one, with the bulk of his work coming as Harry’s assistant.
The problem was solved, as it had been the previous time, by inviting William Warbrick out of retirement. A letter was sent to his home at Bolton asking if he was able to ‘carry out duties at Leeds on August 9th’. It had been arranged that a double execution would take place. Warbrick confirmed he was available, but by the time he got to Leeds to meet Tom Pierrepoint, one of the men had been reprieved. The man destined to be Tom’s first ‘customer’ was a fellow Bradfordian, John Coulson, who had murdered his wife and young son; each had been almost decapitated with a carving knife. Tom carried out the execution without a hitch, calculating a drop of 6 feet 1 inch. Death was instantaneous.
A large crowd waited around outside the prison gates in the hope of seeing the executioner emerge, but Tom and Warbrick hit on a simple ruse to throw them off the scent. Arming themselves with small reporters’ notebooks, they left the gaol by the front gate, holding the notebooks clearly in their hands as if they were members of the press who had witnessed the execution. To further support this guise they stopped a few feet away from the crowd and made as if to take notes on the event of the day. Satisfied that the two men who had just emerged were press and not the executioners, the crowd turned back to the front gate and waited for the hangmen to emerge.
Harry’s indiscretion at Chelmsford had happened at a time when the country’s newspapers had been full of the exciting chase across the Atlantic to bring Dr Crippen to justice for the poisoning of his wife. Crippen was finally arrested in Canada and convicted – the first time radiotelegraphy had been used in a murder investigation. The engagement went to John Ellis, now the undisputed number one executioner, assisted by William Willis. Crippen had tried to cheat the
hangman by cutting his throat with a piece of his spectacles, but was thwarted.
Noah Woolf had been convicted of the murder of a man at a home for aged Hebrews in Holloway. He stabbed him to death after being dismissed from the home following a quarrel, and carried out the attack in revenge, blaming the victim for his plight. Woolf spent the first week of his time in the condemned cell adjacent to Crippen, one of three other men who were awaiting the gallows when Crippen was hanged. Two others were later reprieved and it was Woolf alone who faced hangman Ellis. Tom assisted, and Woolf, who was given a drop of 7 feet 9 inches, died instantly. Following Harry’s dismissal, the Home Office had gone to work quickly recruiting new assistants. Coincidentally, two were from Ellis’s home county, the other from Tom’s home town of Bradford. Tom carried out his second job as chief executioner, again at Leeds, a few days after Christmas, when he dispatched Henry Ison who had battered to death his common-law wife with a poker following a drunken quarrel.
Although now receiving work as chief executioner, Tom found, as Ellis had a few years earlier once he had gained promotion, that most under-sheriffs preferred to use the most experienced man on the list. Thus, apart from a few county officials going against this, work only came along when the number one had accepted an engagement elsewhere.
Work was sporadic for Tom in 1911. There were two executions in May, when he assisted Ellis at the execution of Thomas Seymour at Liverpool, and Michael Collins at Pentonville. Neither produced any incident of note, nor did the next execution Tom assisted at that year, when Ellis hanged Frederick Thomas at Wandsworth.
In May 1911, Harry Pierrepoint decided to put pen to paper and find out once and for all whether his career was completely at an end.
Prison Commissioners
Whitehall
‘Home Office’
To the Home Secretary.
Dear Sir.
It is with deep regret that I am compelled to write and ask you to consider the following matter which I hope you will kindly consider.
I have had my name on the Home Office list for about ten years, and for about the last five year’s I held the then position of recognised Executioner. I have always been credited for the way I have carried out all executions and have not had a single error in any one of them. I have always been told by those on whose behalf I have been officiating that I should be recommended for the way I have carried out all executions.
I have had nothing wrong with any ‘Sheriff’ or ‘governor’ of any prison or prison official.
I have not been engaged for an execution since I carried out the one at Chelmsford Prison, on the 14th day of July last year when I had Ellis for my assistant and with whom I had a few words and he said at the time he would report me. It came to my notice that he had been showing correspondence concerning myself in a public house in Manchester, where he used to call nearly every Tuesday afternoon when in
Manchester. I was told by three different sources. Of course I took no notice on the first two occasions but when I was told by a most respectable friend who saw Ellis himself with the letter or postcard, I was quite convinced.
The greeting I got when I saw these three people was do you allow Ellis to show letters, he is trying to do you out of your work. I made as little of it before then as I could, but as soon as I saw Ellis at Chelmsford I accused him of it and he denied it, which I knew was a direct lie.
And of course I lost my temper with him. I was only defending my position. Whether he has reported me for it to Mr Metcalf, the ‘Under Sheriff’ or to the Prison Commissioners I don’t know.
I would have reported him many times had I taken the trouble but I never did a man out of his work, under handed nor never will. I have strong reason to think he has been very under minding for a long time.
I have a wife and five young children to keep and I can assure you I have had a lot to bear. I should be pleased if you would communicate with the Rev. Benjamin Gregory of the Huddersfield Mission and inquire about me since I came to Huddersfield this last few months.
Trusting you will do your utmost to have me re-instated.
I am, Sir.
Your Obedient Servent
Henry Albert Pierrepoint
When he received no reply to his letter Harry knew that his indiscretion and violent attack had cost him the position he loved and the substantial income it brought with it. At the end of the year Tom was engaged as a number one, almost a year to the day from his last senior appointment, when he travelled to Stafford to hang George Loake, a retired engine driver who had stabbed to death his estranged wife at Walsall.
The trial of Frederick Seddon was one of the most sensational in the pre-war years. Seddon, a north-London insurance agent, had plotted to swindle his wealthy lodger out of her property. When the old lady died her relatives found that her will had recently been amended to leave all her possessions, a considerable sum, to the Seddons. Their suspicions caused them to inform Scotland Yard who, following an investigation, arranged for an exhumation. When traces of poison were found, Seddon and his wife were charged with murder. The trial showed that Seddon was an avaricious man who was driven by greed. The jury returned a verdict that found Mrs Seddon not guilty and Seddon alone was convicted. As Mr Justice Bucknill was about to pass sentence, Seddon made a Masonic sign, declaring to him before the Great Architect that he was innocent. The judge told him it was a painful thing to sentence a brother Mason, but he believed the verdict was the right one. As Tom travelled down to Pentonville, on 17 April 1912, to assist at the execution, the newspapers were full of news of the
Titanic
, which had sunk two days beforehand. The hangmen had arrived just as Seddon had received word from his solicitor that no reprieve would be granted and he accepted the news in a detached manner, being more upset when he later heard that items of his personal property sold that day had fetched a far smaller return than he envisaged.
When the execution party went to collect him in the morning, Seddon was sitting behind a table in his own clothes with a dejected look on his face. Ellis strapped his wrists behind his back, then left the prisoner in the care of his assistant while he hurried ahead to receive him when he reached the drop. As Tom walked slowly behind Seddon, who walked firmly flanked by warders, a coach-and-four was passing on the outside of the prison wall. Not realising the drama inside the prison walls, the coach driver blew a merry blast on a trumpet horn, its shrill sound echoing eerily down the corridor. As they turned the corner, Seddon saw Ellis waiting for him beside the noose hanging down from the heavy oak beam. The sight unnerved him and Tom had to gently encourage him forward the final few yards. Seddon closed his eyes for the last few paces and the hangmen carried out their last tasks with alacrity. The governor timed the execution at 25 seconds, a record time for an execution at Pentonville.
After assisting at an execution at Wandsworth in October, Tom carried out two executions as chief in the following month. On 5 November he hanged Robert Galloway, a sailor who had strangled a woman in Norfolk, at Norwich Prison. He was helped by one of the new assistants, George Brown. Three weeks later, Tom hanged Gilbert Smith at Gloucester Prison for the murder of his wife. Another of the new assistants, Albert Lumb, was his assistant on this job, and the two travelled together from Bradford to carry out the work. A month later he was the chief executioner at Wakefield, where William Galbraith was hanged for the murder of his wife.
