Pierrepoint (24 page)

On 2 March, Carraher's luck ran out and he was sentenced to death. It was claimed that as Tom went to pinion him in the cell, Carraher turned on his guards and during a struggle managed to punch a warder, breaking his nose.

Tom was called into action three times in April, his busiest period for several years. Besides the visit to Glasgow he made two trips to Manchester, where he hanged Harold Berry on 9 April for the murder of a Manchester moneylender, and two weeks later Martin Coffey, who had shot dead the proprietor of a city-centre pawnshop.

Albert was engaged in two executions in one day at Wandsworth on 2 April, when he hanged two Polish army deserters for the murder of a Russian black marketeer. Fearing trouble on the drop, it was decided the two men would hang an hour apart, a practice the authorities chose to adopt on a number of subsequent executions.

On 15 May, Albert carried out the execution of ten Germans convicted of war crimes: Erich Hoffmann and Friedrich Uhrig were hanged at 3.20 p.m. Ludwig Lang and Hermann Lommes followed at 3.55 p.m. At 4.23 p.m. Wilhelm Scharschmidt and Emil Gunther were hanged. Bruno Bothcer and Otto Bopf went to the gallows at 4.56 p.m.; Karl Amberger and Franz Kircher at 5.30 p.m.

On the following morning he carried out another three doubles and one single execution: Eberhard Schoengrath and Erwin Knop at 9.45am; Herbert Gernoth and Wilhelm Hadler at 10.15am; Friedrich Beeck was hanged alone at 10.40am, and finally two doctors, Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher, were hanged side by side at 11.23am. No problems were recorded at any of the executions.

On 28 May, Tom carried out an execution at Lincoln, hanging Leonard Holmes for the murder of his wife. It was the aged hangman's last execution inside an English prison.
Tom was now walking with a stick and becoming more disabled with arthritis, and with official correspondence concerning his conduct flying to-and-fro from various sources, the end was moving closer and closer.

On 10 August, Tom travelled to Glasgow where he hanged 20-year-old John Caldwell. On 26 March, a couple had asked their neighbour James Straiton, a retired detective, to accompany them back to their house, where they suspected a burglar was at work. Noticing the back window open, he climbed through. Inside were two youths, who made their escape after shooting Straiton dead. Detectives suspected the killer might be the same man responsible for break-ins at a number of houses in the area recently and at which a clear set of fingerprints had been left. This led police to Caldwell who was arrested, along with his father. At his trial before Lord Mackay at Glasgow High Court in June, it was shown that Caldwell senior acted as a fence, who sold on goods that his son and his younger accomplice stole. The trial ended with Caldwell condemned to death, while his accomplice on the night the murder took place, a 15-year-old youth, was detained at His Majesty's Pleasure. Caldwell's father and girlfriend were also convicted, but of the lesser charge of receiving stolen goods.

Details of this, the last execution carried out by Tom Pierrepoint, are sketchy: the assistant, if one was indeed used, was again thought to be Steve Wade.

Like his brother 36 years before, Tom was never informed his services were no longer required; it was simply a case of the letters drying up. Rumours in the press circulated that the Home Office had asked Tom to retire, but in another interview shortly after the death of his wife, he refused to answer questions, or to confirm or deny anything, telling the reporter the Home Office forbade him to even confirm his name. Three
days after his uncle's last execution Albert was at work again at Hameln Prison. Unusually, this visit was to carry out just a single execution, that of Teofil Walasek, instead of the multiple drops he had carried out on previous visits.

Albert had recently left the grocery business and had taken over the running of a public house on Manchester Road, Hollinwood, between Oldham and Manchester. The pub had the memorable name of Help the Poor Struggler, a name sure to give journalists plenty of puns when writing about the hangman.

On 6 September, Albert and assistants Harry Critchell and Harry Allen carried out two executions at Wandsworth. Sydney Smith had shot dead a wealthy horse- and cattle-dealer at his home at Hollington, near Hastings. He was convicted at Sussex Assizes in July. Sussex no longer housed a prison that carried out executions, so Smith was sent to south London.

David Baillie Mason was a Surrey engineer sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for the murder of his wife by strangling. Coincidentally, although the two men's ages differed by 15 years, they had the same height and weight, and working out the calculations Albert gave them an identical drop of 7 feet 7 inches.

Smith went to the gallows at 9.00 a.m. without incident. Mason followed at 10.15 a.m. Harry Allen noted in his diary that Mason's execution was very poor and the hangmen were very grateful of the work done by the ‘screws'. Mason had, in fact, managed to struggle free as they went to secure his arms in the condemned cell, and was able to punch assistant Critchell in the face before being restrained and dragged to the gallows.

Three weeks after the Wandsworth execution, Albert travelled to Austria. After a frightening episode on his first
night in the capital, Vienna, when he was almost mugged by two Russian soldiers, Albert travelled on to Karlou Gaol in Graz, where he was engaged to train an Austrian executioner and two assistants in the British method of execution. Previous execution procedure in Austria was reminiscent of 19th-century British executions when hangman William Calcraft would strangle to death condemned persons with short drops of just a few feet. Eight young men were hanged in four double executions at 30-minute intervals, with the trainees acting as assistants. Within a few weeks, the Austrian authorities wrote that they had been very impressed with the British hangman's skill and that the Austrian hangmen whom Albert had taught were refusing to carry out any further executions unless the British system was copied over there.

October was to be Albert's busiest month as an executioner. On the 8th he hanged 16 war criminals at Zuchthaus Hameln. Starting at 10.27 a.m. with the double execution of Walter Grimm and Karl Mumm, he carried out four more double executions before lunch; two doubles after and finished off with two single executions, the final one being the execution of Ludwig Knorr at 3.36 p.m.

Three days later he carried out another dozen executions: At 8.59 a.m. Karl Reddehase and Walter Quakernack were hanged together. Then followed five more double executions, ending with Johann Frahm and Ewald Jauch, who dropped to their deaths at 11.26 a.m.

On 16 October, the American authorities carried out the executions of the main German leaders who had been convicted at Nuremberg. Reports in the press suggested that Albert was engaged to carry out the sentences, but they were actually carried out by Master Sergeant Woods in a converted gymnasium. Three scaffolds were used, along with the standard cowboy coil noose and a fixed 5-feet drop. Reports
leaked out later that the executions were horrific, some of the trapdoors on the gallows being too small for the bodies to drop into without striking the sides, and a number of the condemned men lived for many minutes on the rope, suffering death by painful strangulation.

At the time, Albert and assistant Harry Kirk were at Pentonville to bring to an end a gruesome murder case that had shocked the country earlier that summer. On the afternoon of 21 June, the body of 32-year-old film extra Margery Gardner was found in a Notting Hill hotel room. She had been bound at the ankles, bitten, whipped and then savagely mutilated; the cause of death was asphyxiation. The room had been booked to a Mr and Mrs N. G. C. Heath with an address in Hampshire. Police suspected the killer may have been Heath, a former airforce officer with a long criminal past, but neglected to release his photograph in the press, fearing it may prejudice the case when it came to court.

Reading about the discovery of the body, Heath wrote to detectives and stated that he had loaned Margery the key to his room so she could ‘entertain a friend'. Meanwhile, now posing as Group Captain Rupert Brooke, Heath had travelled to Bournemouth where he met Doreen Marshall, a former Wren, who was convalescing at the seaside resort following an illness. On the evening of 3 July they had dinner at her hotel and later departed together. When Miss Marshall failed to return to her hotel the police were informed. ‘Brooke' offered to help the investigation, but when he visited the police station he was recognised as Heath, wanted for the Notting Hill murder and detained. Five days later Doreen Marshall's body was found in some bushes. She had been sexually assaulted, mutilated and her throat cut. Heath's three-day trial began at the Old Bailey on 24 September. Faced with the brutal nature of the crimes, his counsel chose
to offer a defence of insanity. The jury took less than an hour to convict him.

Seeing the prisoner in the number 2 condemned cell at Pentonville on the afternoon of Tuesday, 15 October, Albert noted he was the most handsome man he had ever hanged. Five days before, while in Germany, Albert had been entertained in the evening following the 12 executions by a number of RAF officers who had been in Heath's old squadron. Knowing that their erstwhile colleague was to be hanged within the week by the country's chief hangman, they spoke fondly of him, recalling a conversation with Heath about his fascination with women.

‘Neville, you must have had hundreds of affairs,' someone had joked at a cocktail party.

Taking the remark seriously, Heath swilled his pink gin and thought studiously for a moment, as if totting up the figures in his head.

‘Not hundreds, old boy, but thousands… and the funny thing is I've never been the slightest in love with any of them.'

Prisoner 2059 Neville George Clevely Heath was smoking a pipe as Albert and Harry Kirk entered his cell. Without a word they walked across the room and secured his wrists. Heath looked at the door to the scaffold that had silently slid open and spoke to the warders. ‘Come on boys, let's be going!' Contrary to reports that later appeared in the press, there was no hitch and death was instant. Heath was alleged to have asked for a whisky before the hangmen entered the cell, adding: ‘In the circumstances, you might make that a double!'

In early 1947 Albert returned to Germany. On Wednesday, 22 January, he hanged a 28-year-old British soldier named Frank Upson, who had been sentenced to death by court martial in
Germany for the murder of a German girl. Assisting Albert was RSM O'Neill, who had been present on all previous executions, and a new assistant, Sergeant Joseph Hunter, an NCO in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

On the following day, Albert, with the same two assistants, dispatched a further 11 war criminals. Beginning with a double execution at 8.59 a.m., they then carried out four more double executions at 30-minute intervals, ending with a single execution timed at 11.34 a.m.

Returning to Manchester, Albert found a letter waiting inviting him to carry out the execution of Walter Graham Rowland at Strangeways Prison at the end of February. The name of Rowland had once before featured in Albert's diary, way back in the summer of 1934, when as a new assistant he had been detailed to assist his uncle after Rowland had been convicted of the murder of his daughter. A few days before he was due to go to the gallows, Rowland was reprieved and after serving six years he was released on the proviso he join the army.

On 20 October 1946, the body of Olive Balchin, a 40-year-old Manchester prostitute, had been found on a city-centre bombsite, beaten to death with a cobbler's hammer. Rowland was identified as having bought the type of hammer used, and witnesses reported seeing him arguing with the woman on the night before she died. When questioned, he denied murdering her but confessed he suspected she had infected him with venereal disease.

He strongly denied the charges throughout his five-day trial in December, although the evidence against him was strong and he was convicted. On 22 January, five days before his appeal was due to be heard, David Ware, a prisoner in Liverpool Gaol, confessed that he was the real killer. Ware's account was soon rejected when it was revealed that there
was nothing he had said during the confession that hadn't already been reported in the newspapers. Ware later retracted the confession, Rowland's appeal was unsuccessful and on 27 February Albert and assistant Harry Critchell executed him. In 1951, David Ware was convicted of the attempted murder of a woman whom he attacked with a hammer. He committed suicide, by hanging himself with a sheet, in his cell at Broadmoor in 1954.

After carrying out two executions in London in mid-March, Albert travelled across to Dublin at the end of the month for the execution of Joseph McManus, who had shot dead the woman he was having an affair with. Thomas Johnstone, the man Albert had trained briefly at Manchester Prison almost two years earlier, was scheduled to carry out the execution, and at his request the governor of Mountjoy Prison had requested that Albert act in the capacity of assistant executioner, but taking full fee for his trouble.

Meeting the would-be executioner in the prison, Albert could see that Johnstone had forgotten all his training, and at each stage of the preparations, Albert had to step in and put things right. Asked if all was satisfactory, Albert told the governor that he didn't want to take any responsibility for the execution and it was soon decided that the two executioners would swap roles, with Albert taking charge and full accountability. The execution took place without a hitch and Johnstone's brief career as Ireland's executioner came to an end.

Albert made a fleeting trip to Hameln to hang Dr Hans Koerbel on 7 March, before making another more extensive visit at the end of April as the letter below details: