Pierrepoint (29 page)

Their defence at the ten-day trial at Liverpool Assizes was that they could not have been in Liverpool on the night of the murder as they were in Manchester, carrying out a robbery in a factory. This alibi was destroyed in court when the other man who had already been arrested for this offence admitted that the robbery had occurred on 18 August. Large crowds gathered outside the gaol as Albert and three assistants led the two frightened killers to the gallows.

In June, Albert made another trip over to Egypt, to hang Tom Houghton, a 23-year-old private in the Royal Army Supply Corp. Houghton, originally from Hull, had murdered Captain Herbert Mason, shooting him dead with a Sten gun in a jealous rage after the captain had danced with a Greek typist whom Houghton said he was due to marry. Working without an assistant, Albert carried out the execution on the same scaffold at Fayid Prison he had used two years before.

By the time Albert travelled down to Bristol to carry out the execution of Thomas Eames at Plymouth, he had a new address. Leaving the Hollinwood public house, Albert and Anne had taken over the rural Rose and Crown situated on the main road linking Liverpool and Preston at Much Hoole.

Eames was a labourer from Plymouth who had been sentenced to death at Devon Assizes for the murder of Muriel Bent. He had split up from his first wife in 1940, although they remained legally wed. In 1947 he was charged with bigamously marrying Muriel Bent and served a short prison sentence. They reunited on his release and had a child. In early 1952, Muriel left him and moved in with a new lover. He asked her to call at the house to collect her mail and on
the following morning he took a knife to work and sharpened it with a file. Calling at the house as arranged, she told Eames she planned to marry her new boyfriend and as she went to kiss him goodbye he stabbed her twice in the back.

Eames had to be dragged fighting and kicking to the gallows on 15 July. But he was not the only condemned man to put up a struggle on the morning of his execution that year. In September, Albert and Jock Stewart hanged Mahmood Hussain Mattan, a Somalian sailor sentenced to death at Glamorgan Assizes for the murder of Mrs Lily Volpert, a Jewish shopkeeper. On 6 March, Mrs Volpert had been working in her outfitters shop in the docklands area of Cardiff when a man entered. During an ensuing struggle her throat was cut and over £100 was stolen from the till. A witness claimed to have seen a man matching Mattan’s description outside the shop prior to the murder; he was arrested and traces of blood matching the murdered woman were found on his shoes. Mattan was convicted on circumstantial evidence, and mainly on the testimony of a fellow Somalian.

Mattan was violent and abusive to his guards in the death cell, refusing to dress in anything other than his pyjamas. On one occasion when they tried to forcibly dress him he bit a warder on the leg, so it was decided that he should be allowed to wear whatever he wanted. On the morning of his execution, as the hangman came for him, Mattan said he wanted to get dressed in his own clothes, but was told it was too late. He resisted attempts to pinion him and it took quite a struggle to get him to the trapdoors. He was given a long drop of 8 feet 5 inches.

Mahmood Mattan was granted a posthumous pardon in February 1998. The witness who had identified Mattan at the scene of the crime had also identified another Somalian, Tehar Gass, as being at the shop near the time of the murder. When
interviewed by detectives Gass admitted that this was true, but this evidence was withheld from the defence counsel.

Two days after hanging Mattan at Cardiff, Albert and Jock Stewart travelled down to Pentonville, where they hanged John Godar, who had stabbed a woman in a taxi, and at the end of the month they returned to the north-London prison to carry out a double execution. When Albert travelled to Birmingham to hang Leslie Green, who had brutally killed his former employer in Staffordshire, Albert was carrying out his 23rd execution of the year. He had now been a hangman for 20 years, twice as long as his father, and he had already carried out more executions than his uncle and father added together. And there were still a few more sensational twists to come.

O
n 2 January 1953, Albert and assistant Harry Smith carried out an execution at Wandsworth, keeping up the hangman’s regular trend of spending the New Year celebrations in the austere surroundings of high prison walls. At the end of the month he was back at Wandsworth to officiate at what was probably the most controversial of all the executions in his career, and which – along with that of Timothy Evans four years earlier – further helped bring about a reformation of the whole system of capital punishment in Great Britain.

PC Sydney Miles was shot dead during a robbery at a Croydon warehouse in November 1952. Nineteen-year-old Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig, aged sixteen, had climbed up the drainpipe at the side of the building trying to gain entry through a skylight when they were spotted by neighbours. The police were called and Bentley was soon placed under arrest, but Craig threatened to shoot officers if they approached and a stand-off occurred. Eventually,
Bentley was alleged to have shouted, ‘Let him have it’, after which Craig fired and fatally wounded PC Miles before throwing himself off the roof. A greenhouse broke his fall and although he suffered broken limbs he was able to take his place in the dock a little over a month later.

His trial was held before Lord Chief Justice Goddard at the Old Bailey in December. Goddard, a staunch retentionist, was a notorious ‘hang ’em and flog ’em’ judge who seemed determined from the outset that an example was to be made of the young men in the dock. Many claim he was unfairly biased in favour of the prosecution and while there was no doubt that Craig was guilty of the murder of the police officer, he was legally too young to hang. By law, Bentley, as an accomplice, was deemed to be equally guilty of the murder – although, as his counsel strenuously maintained throughout the trial, complicity in the crime had ended when Bentley was placed under arrest before Craig carried out the murder. The speed at which the case came to trial, barely a month after the incident, prevented enough medical evidence being gathered that could have helped show that Bentley, who was of low intelligence and had a mental age of eleven, was medically unfit to stand trial. On the third day of the trial, Craig was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure; Bentley was found guilty of murder, with the jury adding a strong recommendation for mercy. Widespread public appeal for clemency failed, and journalists broke the news to his family that there was to be no reprieve. Albert needed an escort into the gaol by police officers on the afternoon of 27 January, as a large mob gathered, hurling abuse as the car made its way through the prison gates. Arriving at the gaol he was taken to see the governor, who seemed strained and restless. Bentley had just had a farewell visit from his family and as realisation dawned on him that no reprieve was forthcoming he seemed
to be struggling to grasp what was happening, mumbling repeatedly, ‘They can’t hang me…’

Harry Allen assisted Albert. (I was told by a member of the family that he contacted the Home Office after accepting the engagement, telling them that although he would be available to carry out the execution, he hoped they would see their way to granting a reprieve.) Albert and Harry spent the night in their quarters with a glass of beer, listening to the radio, which broadcast the news that a late-night sitting of Parliament had not done anything to reverse the judgement and that the execution was to go ahead as planned. A couple of the guards coming off duty in the condemned cell spoke to the hangmen and voiced their concerns that the burly prisoner could give them a tough time if he lost his temper or panicked when they went for him. Albert listened to their concerns but was always ready for anything that could occur on the morning of the execution. Although trouble rarely happened, other than some brief resistance when the straps were fastened, there were always contingency plans and everyone on duty was briefed on what to do should an incident occur.

Rising early, Albert tested the equipment and with everything in readiness they returned to their room, where Albert was served his favourite prison breakfast of fried plaice and potatoes. At a few seconds to nine the hangmen approached the condemned cell and took their place next to the governor.

‘Good morning, Pierrepoint,’ the governor whispered. ‘I see that this has got to be done.’

‘That’s all right, sir,’ Albert replied.

Moments later the signal was given and they entered through the green cell door. Bentley got to his feet and as Harry took hold of his right arm, Albert fastened the wrist strap. Bentley
looked around confusedly as the door was thrown open leading to the gallows, and he stumbled slowly as he was led to the drop, where he was given a drop of 6 feet 9 inches.

On 30 July 1998, the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction. In an unprecedented and damning attack, the Lord Chief Justice ruled that Bentley’s trial judge – his predecessor, Lord Chief Justice Goddard – had denied Bentley ‘that fair trial that is the birthright of every British citizen’. Passing judgment, Lord Bingham placed the blame for the miscarriage of justice squarely with Lord Goddard, describing him as ‘blatantly prejudiced’, adding that he had misdirected the jury and that his summing-up had put pressure on them to convict the prisoner. Christopher Craig served ten years in gaol.

In February 1953, Albert and Harry Smith carried out an execution rare in modern times, that of a man who had been convicted of the murder of both his parents. Charles Giffard, senior partner in a firm of solicitors, had hoped his son would follow into the profession. Rather than find work, however, his son Miles lived on an allowance paid by his parents. He became besotted with a girl he had met in London and of whom his parents strongly disapproved. They told him to end the relationship, threatening that his allowance would cease if he disobeyed them. Miles had no intention of doing so, however, and wrote to his girlfriend telling her of his parents’ threats and adding that the only solution to the problem would be to kill them.

On 7 November 1952, he returned to the family home at St Austell and waited in the garage for his father to return home. He battered him with an iron pipe before entering the kitchen and attacking his mother. He then telephoned his girlfriend in London, telling her he would be returning to London that evening. The blows to the head had failed to
prove fatal, and finding that both parents were still alive, he placed them one at a time in a wheelbarrow and tipped them over the edge of a nearby cliff.

The bodies were discovered on the following morning, and Miles Giffard was arrested in London later that day. He pleaded insanity at his trial at Bodmin Assizes, his defence claiming that he had been receiving psychiatric care in the past and was unaware of his actions. The jury, however, preferred to believe the prosecution’s case of murder for financial gain, after it was proven that Giffard had sold some of his mother’s jewellery shortly after the murders.

One month to the day after Albert had returned home from hanging Giffard at Bristol, new tenants at John Reginald Halliday Christie’s former home at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, discovered the boarded-up remains of three women in a cupboard. Reg Christie had previously come to the attention of the police in the autumn of 1949, when tenant Timothy Evans had been convicted and hanged for the murder of his wife and child. Evans had gone to his grave inside Pentonville Prison blaming his landlord Christie for the murders.

Christie had moved out of Rillington Place a few days earlier and a subsequent police search unearthed six bodies in total. Two were buried in the garden; three had been discovered in the kitchen, and Christie’s wife Ethel was found concealed beneath the living room floor. All had been strangled and, apart from his wife, all had had sexual intercourse around the time of death. Arrested in Putney a week later, Christie immediately confessed. He offered a plea of insanity at his trial but this was rejected, and while claiming he could not remember if he had killed Beryl Evans in 1949, he was adamant that he had not strangled the young child.

Albert and Harry Smith met up in the gatehouse at Pentonville on the afternoon of 14 July. They were given Christie’s details as age 55, height 5 feet 8 ½ inches and weight 149 pounds, and took a look at him later that afternoon before preparing the drop. He seemed quite upbeat and not to be feeling the strain of his impending doom. That was all to change overnight.

On the following morning, as Albert and Smith returned to their quarters after completing the preparations, they halted as they passed a small window over the gatehouse that overlooked the Caledonian Road, where a large, raucous crowd had gathered. Smith seemed a bit perplexed by their demeanour, saying that it looked like a Bank Holiday crowd. ‘I suppose that’s the sort of lot who watched hangings at Tyburn, with blokes selling sweets and hot rum to the crowd!’ he declared. Mostly it was the sight of large groups of children that shocked Smith. Seeing the discomfort in his assistant’s face, Albert told him to come away from the window. Albert was used to large crowds gathering outside the prison walls, but admitted later that this crowd had disturbed him more than any other he could recall.

Christie had his back to the door as Albert entered the cell after receiving the signal from the governor. As they approached they could see he had a sneer on his face as he listened, tight-lipped, to the words of the chaplain. Smith lifted Christie’s skinny wrist and Albert secured it before removing his spectacles, which he carefully placed on the table. Christie blinked his eyes as he focused on the side door that had mysteriously opened and as he was motioned to move Albert recalled later that his face seemed to melt. ‘It was more than terror… at that moment I know Christie would have given anything in his power to postpone his own death.’

Christie approached the drop in a slow, pitiful stagger, his
legs barely moving one in front of the other. Sensing the condemned man would not make it to the drop without falling into a faint, he motioned for Smith to stand clear as he moved towards Christie. He slipped the white cap over his balding head, and had the noose in place before he had reached the chalked ‘T’ on the trapdoors. Without waiting for the leg straps to go on he pulled the lever and the notorious killer of Rillington Place dropped 7 feet 4 inches to his death.