Pierrepoint (4 page)

Six weeks later Harry was back at Pentonville, again assisting Billington, to hang Henry Williams, a 32-year-old former soldier, whom Pierrepoint later described as the bravest man he had ever hanged. Williams had slit the throat of his five-year-old daughter, Margaret, at their home in Fulham, in September. Having recently returned from serving in the Boer War to find his wife had been unfaithful, he had covered the body of his daughter with a union flag, then given himself up, telling police he had killed her so she wouldn’t grow up to be like her mother.

He was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey and was hanged two months and a day after committing the murder. Recording the execution in his memoirs, Harry noted that Williams had walked bravely to the scaffold and stood erect on the drop while his executioners prepared him for execution. The memoirs then erroneously state that Harry placed the noose around the neck of the condemned man – an act
always
carried out by the chief and never delegated to the assistant. This was probably journalistic licence adding spice to the memoirs years after the event.

In December, Harry was back at Strangeways Gaol for the hanging of another Bolton-born criminal, when he assisted William Billington at the execution of Henry McWiggins (aka Harry Mack), who had committed an horrific murder in nearby Oldham. The 29-year-old Mack, a foreman fireman and petty criminal, had been living with Esther Bedford since June 1902. Initially they had a happy relationship, but subsequently he had started to act violently towards her. On 2 August, their landlady heard noises from the front bedroom;
on investigating, she found Mack dragging Esther around the room by her hair. He then struck her in the face and kicked her as she lay on the floor. A week later, as Esther slept, he woke her up by savagely kicking her, then hit her in the face with a shovel. Advised to call the police, Esther refused, saying that she didn’t want to cause trouble for Mack. In truth, she was terrified of him. On 13 August screams were heard coming from Mack’s room and Esther was found lying face-down on the bed in agony. Mack had thrown a kettle of boiling water at her before fleeing the house. Having spent the rest of the night drinking heavily, he returned at midnight and kicked Esther several times in the stomach.

On the following morning, a doctor was called, quickly followed by the police. Esther was taken to hospital, where it was found that the brutal kicking had caused her bladder to rupture. The police were advised that Esther was unlikely to last the day, and statements were taken at her bedside. Again she was too terrified to testify against Mack: she denied the landlady’s claims that he had kicked her, and added that the scalding was an accident. She died the following day, and Mack, who had been held in custody following her admission to hospital, was then charged with murder. Tried before Mr Justice Jelf, the defence claimed that accounts of the attacks had been greatly exaggerated by the witnesses and offered a plea of guilty of manslaughter. It took the jury just 20 minutes to return a verdict of guilty of murder.

Mack weighed 168 pounds and stood just under 5 feet 9 inches tall. The drop was calculated at 6 feet 9 inches, and the execution was timed at 75 seconds. At the inquest the coroner recorded that death had been due to dislocation of the second and fourth vertebrae.

The next entry in Harry’s diary notes that he assisted at the execution of Thomas Fairclough-Barrow at Pentonville on 9
December. He records that the condemned man was 49 years old, weighed 137½ pounds, stood 5 feet 8½ inches tall and was given a drop of 6 feet 6 inches. Barrow was a partially disabled man who lived with his stepdaughter Emily Coates (aged 32), as man and wife, at Wapping. In October 1902, Fairclough-Barrow saw Emily drinking with another man and became violent towards her, to the extent that she feared for her life. As a result, she left him and took out a summons for assault. On 18 October, Fairclough-Barrow approached her as she walked to work and stabbed her several times in the heart; she died instantly. At his Old Bailey trial, a weak defence was put forward based on a claim of insanity; it proved unsuccessful. Prison records list the hangmen as William Billington assisted by his brother John – no mention of Harry – and the details of the prisoner’s height, weight and drop differ slightly from those recorded by Harry. It’s difficult to see why he should record the details in his diary if he wasn’t present. However, it is recorded in the diary and contributes towards the overall total of 105 executions credited to Harry Pierrepoint.

There is no confusion surrounding the next entry in the diary. William and Elizabeth Brown had been married for 22 years. On 2 November they were heard to quarrel in a public house at Mortlake and on the following morning 42-year-old Brown, a labourer, went to a neighbour’s house and announced that his wife was dead. The police were called and found Elizabeth’s body at the foot of the stairs. Arrested and charged with murder, William claimed Elizabeth had fallen down the stairs, but later he was alleged to have made a statement admitting that he had killed her. At his Old Bailey trial, held just three weeks after the death of his wife, Brown denied ever making such a statement. The key witness for the prosecution was a young neighbour, who claimed that through a window he had seen Brown beating his wife.

As sentence of death was passed, the father of the victim stood up in court and shouted to the judge: ‘Give him mercy, my Lord. I know her faults and he was a good husband to her for twenty years.’ But even as petitions for clemency were being forwarded to the Home Secretary, the Governor of Wandsworth wrote to Harry asking him to carry out the execution as the chief. As on his previous engagement as number one, he was assisted by John Ellis. Brown was given a drop of 6 feet and the execution passed off without incident.

The last execution of the year took place at Warwick on 30 December and again Harry was asked to act as chief, after Billington had to turn down the offer, being engaged for a job in Ireland at the time. George Place had taken lodgings with Eliza Chetwynd at Baddersley Ensor, Warwickshire. Shortly thereafter, the 28-year-old miner began a relationship with her 30-year-old daughter, also named Eliza. Within a year George and the younger Eliza were living together as man and wife and she became pregnant. A son was born and Eliza took out a bastardy naming George as the father of the child. When he heard about this, George became enraged, stormed out of the house and did not return for two days. On 23 August, he was seen brandishing a revolver in a public house, claiming he was going to make the Chetwynds pay. In the early hours of the following morning, an armed and angry George Place returned to the house. Shots were fired and Eliza senior and the still unnamed child died instantly; her daughter died later from her injuries. Eliza’s brother heard three shots and saw Place come out of the bedroom holding the revolver.

At his trial Place said that it had been his intention to commit suicide after he had killed the Chetwynds, but that he had changed his mind afterwards. His defence was insanity; it was unsuccessful. Pierrepoint and Ellis went to work, and
Ellis noted that Harry worked with assured confidence, as though he had been doing it for years. Place stood just an inch over 5 feet tall and was given a drop of 7 feet. A total of 25 executions were carried out in 1902, with Harry being involved in nine of them – bringing in a healthy income to supplement his salary from the furniture shop.

1903 was also to be a busy year for Harry Pierrepoint. The first executions that took place were in Ireland, and were carried out by William Billington. The first date in Harry’s diary was to help at the double execution at Holloway of two nurses who had been convicted at the Old Bailey for the murder of a young child.

Twenty-nine-year-old Amelia Sach ran a nursing home in East Finchley, London, where – for a hefty fee – unmarried mothers would be looked after until they had given birth and helped to find a suitable foster home for their newborn infants. Sach had a business partner, 54-year-old Annie Walters, to whom she would pass on the children for rehousing. On the occasions when she couldn’t place children with suitable parents, however, Walters would resort to administering a few drops of morphine-based drugs, which caused the babies to die from asphyxia, or to smothering them with a pillow.

In August 1902, a Miss Galley gave birth to a boy at Amelia Sach’s nursing home. By now the police had become suspicious about the activities of the two women, however, and on 18 November, when Walters left her lodgings carrying a small bundle, she was followed to South Kensington railway station, where detectives stopped her. The bundle contained the dead body of Miss Galley’s child. Cause of death was found to be asphyxia; it appeared that the baby had been
smothered. Walters claimed she had been taking the child to Kensington to meet a potential foster mother, and that when the child began to cry loudly she had administered two drops of chlorodyne in milk. She claimed that she hadn’t realised the child was dead until she was stopped by the police.

Amelia Sach denied giving children to Walters, but when her home was searched more than three hundred articles of baby clothing were found. Detectives deduced that this suggested more victims – there had been a spate of small bodies found in the River Thames, or uncovered on rubbish dumps, in recent years. The pair may have been responsible for around twenty deaths, and were now finally to face justice.

Harry met up with both William and John Billington and travelled across to Holloway Gaol on the afternoon of 2 February 1903. The case had filled the newspapers since Mr Justice Darling had presided over the trial in December and as the date of execution became imminent crowds were already hovering around the gates of the prison, hoping to catch sight of the executioners.

The three men managed to slip inside unnoticed and made their way along the long, narrow corridors and up two flights of cast-iron stairs until they reached the cells of the condemned. Each woman sat with two wardresses watching over her. A matron entered the cell at the request of the hangmen and got the prisoners to move to the other side of the table so that they could assess their build and general physique.

Once William Billington had sized up the first of the condemned women, Harry followed and realised he was looking into the cell of Mrs Sach. He saw that she was a tall, gaunt woman who seemed to realise her position most keenly. Through the small eye-hole he saw she presented a pitiful appearance: ‘A poorer wreck of humanity as I have ever seen,’ he later noted. Weariness clouded her face and stray
tears rolled down her cheek. Silently moving aside so the younger Billington could observe, he followed William down the corridor and waited his turn to observe Mrs Walters. The latter’s demeanour presented the hangmen with something of a shock – her features showed no trace of emotion. Describing her as stout and stocky, Harry recorded that she was cheerful and talkative, as if unaware her last hours were ebbing away.

Details of the prisoners’ weight and height were passed to the hangmen and as they rigged the gallows, it was decided that in case of emergency two male warders should be brought in from Pentonville. It was feared that Mrs Sach’s distress may cause upset to the female warders if, as anticipated, she should be overcome with terror in the morning.

The morning broke cold and frosty as the hangmen went across to the execution shed to finish their preparations. At a few minutes to eight they were in position outside the condemned cells. As they waited for the signal from the governor, Harry silently raised the peep-hole into Mrs Sach’s cell. She was, in his words, ‘broken up’, her appearance grotesque – her hair had been scraped up in a ‘peculiar fashion’ to prevent it fouling with the noose.

The chimes of the hour rang out from the adjacent church clock, and the party entered the cell. As Harry pinioned her arms, Sach swooned as if in a faint. A warder whispered words of comfort to her as she was led out into the corridor. In contrast, Mrs Walters submitted bravely to the pinioning, and followed Billington senior as he walked out of the cell.

At this point, the two women came face to face for the first time since sentence of death had been passed on them. Harry took a grip of Mrs Sach and steadied her on the short walk to the gallows. She was crying bitterly and barely conscious. Mrs Walters followed behind, quite bravely and calm. In a
flash both women were placed on the trap and as Harry dropped to his knees to fasten the leg strap on Mrs Sach, John Billington did the same to Mrs Walters.

William Billington then placed the noose and caps over the culprits’ heads and as he moved across to the lever, Mrs Walters cried out in a firm voice: ‘Goodbye, Sach.’ The younger woman was about to fall in a faint, and Harry was forced to leap to his feet and support her arm. Seconds later the doors crashed open; the Finchley baby farmers had paid the ultimate penalty. They had made no confession.

One month later, Harry was back in London, this time at Wandsworth Gaol, where he was engaged to execute 44 year-old Edgar Edwards, an habitual criminal with a long string of convictions for theft and burglary. (Newspaper reports of the trial had used the name Edgar Edwards, although his real surname was Owen.) Released in 1902, after serving five years at Northampton Gaol, he moved back to London, telling his wife he was taking over a shop in Camberwell. John Darby had put a grocery store in Camberwell up for sale; Edwards said he was interested in purchasing and asked to see the accounts. While Darby prepared the books, his wife, carrying their infant daughter in her arms, invited Edwards upstairs to view the living quarters. Alone with the young woman, he took a large sash weight he had concealed inside a rolled-up newspaper and battered her to death. He then went back downstairs, bludgeoned Darby to death, then callously strangled the crying child. Edwards began pawning Darby’s belongings and, using the name William Darby, took the lease on a house in Leyton. Now believing he had got away with committing the murders, Edwards decided to repeat the venture. On 23 December, another grocer with a business for sale was invited to Leyton to discuss terms, and as he turned
to leave was struck from behind. Despite a fearful beating the man managed to escape and raise the alarm.