Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (48 page)

Hopwood and East consulted a broad variety of experts including the governor at Pentonville, the chaplain, Reverend G. W. Cleavely and Dr Liddell the medical officer, as well as Dr Grierson, Dr F. H. Taylor from Brixton and Dr Young from Wormwood Scrubs. They also interviewed the six warders who had supervised Heath twenty-four hours a day since his conviction. They had two prolonged interviews with Heath himself and studied the case documents. Again Heath said he had little memory of what had taken place at the time of the two murders. The doctors felt that this was not due to any sort of mental disease or defect. They thought that it may be that the details of the crimes were so horrific that Heath had effectively shut them out of his consciousness. Hopwood and East saw no reason to stop the execution on medical grounds.
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On the same day as the medical review, Rosemary Tyndale-Biscoe, one of the two female jurors at the trial, wrote a letter to the home secretary, Mr Chuter Ede, enclosing a petition voicing the concerns of several members of the jury who had served on the trial with her. She suggested, ‘You might give consideration to the law of Insanity 1843, to bring it more up to date with regard to modern knowledge and conditions. We found the responsibility of finding the verdict extremely hard. May I please add my petition for the future abolition of the death penalty?’
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On 11 October, Chuter Ede wrote in green ink across Heath’s file, ‘The law must take its course.’
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This was telegrammed to Mr Lawton, the governor at Pentonville, who then informed Heath that Mr Ede would not intervene with the process of the law; he would be executed at 9 a.m. on Wednesday 16 October.

Reading of the results of the medical enquiry in the newspapers, Mrs Tyndale-Biscoe wrote to Chuter Ede again, further outlining her concerns, not just about Heath’s case, but highlighting how the law in its present form was unable to properly assess cases which focused on psychiatric issues.

I now read in the public press that Heath is not to be reprieved. In my view the law urgently requires review in the light of modern psychological science, and as a juror carefully following the trial and medical evidence and also the discussion by the jury after it and before verdict, I feel Heath’s case comes within the category of cases requiring such review.

Though as the law now stands it was no doubt my duty to concur in the verdict, I feel and I believe there is a widespread feeling among the public, that reconsideration of the law is overdue and meanwhile this man should be reprieved pending such reconsideration.
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The letter was acknowledged, but the sentiment ignored. Mrs Tyndale-Biscoe then sent an anonymous letter to Heath in Pentonville. ‘Whether under the regulations he will ever see it, I do not know. But I shall go on praying for him.’
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The days before the execution were filled with almost ritualistic preparation, much of it behind the scenes, with the public as well as Heath unaware of the process. On 14 October, a messenger from the Home Office left Whitehall with a small box containing a rope specially made for executions by John Edginton & Sons in the Old Kent Road. The rope was signed for by the governor of Pentonville, Mr Lawton, and then kept in a safe until 4 p.m. on the afternoon before the execution. Two ropes were always supplied, a new one and a used one. Most hangmen favoured the used ropes as there was less stretch in them and this resulted in a more accurate drop.

Heath’s solicitor drew up his will, with two of the ‘deathwatch’ guards acting as witnesses. In a letter to his father, Heath particularly requested that after he died, he wanted any remaining money to be given to his brother to help get his ‘A’ licence. Like his brother, Mick Heath had recently failed his matriculation exams and Heath felt that the focus on him must have been the reason. His beloved caterpillar badge, which would be forwarded with his effects from the police, he left to his mother. Despite pressure from them, he persisted in refusing to see either of his parents before he died.

I want my mother to remember me as she last saw me outside. I do not want her to see me as a man condemned to death for murder. I hope she will always remember me as the son she knew some years ago, and will forget the situation in which I now find myself.
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Albert Pierrepoint, the hangman and his assistant, Harry Kirk, also arrived at 4 p.m. the day before the execution. This time of arrival had been designated in the days when hangmen would get drunk the night before the execution and either made mistakes in their work or didn’t turn up. Pierrepoint had served as an executioner since 1931, his father and his uncles having served in the same role; it was almost a family business. From the mid-1940s Pierrepoint would become something of a celebrity. As well as executing several British murderers – including Evans, Christie, Haigh, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis – he also executed over 200 Nazi war criminals in the autumn of 1946.

Pierrepoint was given Heath’s statistics, but also looked through the ‘Judas Hole’ in the door of the condemend cell, so that he could assess Heath’s physique. The execution shed was just next door, a small room painted green with trapdoors set in the floor. These trapdoors had two hinged leaves that were bolted on the underside. To one side of the doors was a lever; when this was released, the bolts were drawn back and the trapdoor opened. A cotter pin acted as a security device to prevent the lever being pushed by accident. A set of stairs to the side of the execution chamber connected it to the pit below.

Pierrepoint tested the equipment, using a sandbag to calculate the drop using the ‘Home Office Table of Drops’. He adjusted the length of the drop tailored to Heath’s weight and stature. The sack was left overnight to stretch the rope.

That evening, Violet Van Der Elst arrived at Merton Hall Road in her cream and black Rolls-Royce and told Bessie Heath, ‘I’ve come to make a last effort to save your boy.’ Mrs Van Der Elst was the daughter of a coalman but had become a successful businesswoman by developing Shavex, the first brush-less shaving cream, amassing a huge personal fortune in the process. As well as standing three times, unsuccessfully, as a Labour MP, she was a vehement opponent of capital punishment and had campaigned against the death penalty for years. After talking to Heath’s parents she drove to the Home Office and insisted on speaking to the home secretary. When she was told this was not possible, she left him a note outlining the incident at Venlo and the difficulty of Heath’s birth. She also stated that his parents did not appear at the trial as Heath had told them that if they did, he would plead guilty.
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Isaac Near tried one last time to persuade Heath to see his parents before he died, but he was adamant. He didn’t want to see them because he didn’t want to break down at this stage. Near felt that Heath didn’t seem worried by the prospect of his own death and was resigned to his fate.
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A gambler to the last, he spent his last hours playing poker with the guards for imaginary stakes, as he wasn’t allowed any money.
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After Near left him for the last time that night, Heath sent him a note to thank him for his professionalism and his friendship.

I don’t know what time they open where I’m going, but I hope the beer is better than it is here.
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Next morning, Pierrepoint was woken at 6.30 by the warder who shared his quarters and checked that the rope was in the correct position at the right height for Heath, 5 feet 11 inches. The sandbag was put in the corner of the pit, where there was also a stretcher to be used after the execution was completed. Pierrepoint drew a ‘T’ in chalk to mark where Heath’s shoes would be aligned. He edged out the cotter pin so that it was only just in place – this would only save a fraction of a second, but it all helped to make the job faster. Throughout all their preparations, Pierrepoint and Kirk barely spoke, and if they did, only in a whisper, as Heath was in the condemned cell next door, unaware that the execution chamber had been right next to him since he had arrived in Pentonville. The door was hidden behind a wardrobe. Pierrepoint took great pride in his professionalism and attention to detail:

[The] job had to go to a perfect rhythm, with full understanding all round, as silently and well timed as a team of commandos hijacking a German general from his own HQ. That is craftsmanship.
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Pierrepoint and Kirk then went for a breakast of bacon and eggs.

That morning there was a crowd of 3,000 people outside Pentonville, mostly women ‘with shopping baskets and children in prams’. There were also eighteen press photographers. Extra police had been arranged to deal with the expected crowds. The 100-yard drive between the main road and the prison was cordoned off by the police. At 8.55 a.m. Mrs Van der Elst arrived in her Rolls-Royce. Dressed in mourning clothes, she distributed handbills urging the abolition of the death penalty. Headed ‘The Fresh Evidence’, Mrs Van Der Elst’s leaflets claimed that Heath was not responsible for his actions. She had visited Mrs Heath the previous evening and had been told that when he was born, Heath’s brain was ‘terribly injured’ and that his parents thought he would not survive. Mrs Van Der Elst claimed that ‘this man was a possessed madman and should have been sent to Broadmoor’.
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The leaflets were snatched by the crowd and flung high in the air, falling ‘like a snowstorm’ on the crowd which swarmed around her car. The car in conjunction with the crowd then started to cause a traffic jam, so a police inspector, Thomas James, told Mrs Van Der Elst that she was causing an obstruction and must move on.
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In the condemned cell, unaware of the commotion outside, Heath had risen early and was permitted to dress in the new grey, chalk-striped suit that he had worn for his trial. The prison around him continued its normal routine and the other prisoners carried on with their regular tasks, the prison authorities doing their utmost for the execution to take place as discreetly as possible. Prisoners normally occupied near the execution shed were given additional exercise in a yard remote from it. The prison clock was disconnected for the hour of nine.
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Just before 9 a.m., Pierrepoint and Kirk waited outside the condemned cell with Harold Gedge, the deputy under-sherriff, Mr Lawton the governor, two senior prison officers and the prison chaplain, Reverend Cleavely. Seconds before 9 a.m., the door was opened quickly and Pierrepoint went straight up to Heath, putting his hands behind his back and strapping his wrists as another door in the cell was opened to the execution chamber for the first time. On this occasion Pierrepoint used a special strap made of pliant pale calf-leather that he only used about a dozen times when ‘I had a more than formal interest in this particular execution’.
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He told Heath, ‘Follow me.’

Heath walked seven paces into the execution chamber with the noose straight ahead of him. The two prison officers gently stopped him on the ‘T’ marked on the trapdoors so that his feet were positioned across the division between them. As Harry Kirk tied Heath’s legs with the ankle strap, Pierrepoint looked him in the face, eye to eye, ‘that last look’.
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Pulling the white cap from his breast pocket he drew it over Heath’s head. He then reached for the noose, pulling it over the cap. The noose was not knotted, but the rope ran through a metal eye. In seconds, Pierrepoint tightened the noose to his right, pulled a rubber washer along the rope to hold it and darted to his left, pulling out the cotter pin with one hand and pulling the lever with the other. There was a snap as the falling doors opened and Heath’s body dropped into the pit. His neck was thrown back and his spinal column was severed instantaneously.

His body hung lifeless, swinging to stillness. Pierrepoint estimated that the average time it took from entering the condemned cell to pulling the lever was twelve seconds. But he had done it in seven.

The notice of execution with declarations from Harold Gedge the deputy under-sherriff and Dr Liddell was posted outside the prison gates at 9.25 a.m. Mrs Van Der Elst turned to a police officer near her and shouted, ‘You swine. I remember you. You do your damnedest. Why did they hang that young man? You do not care a damn.’

She was charged with obstruction to boos and jeers from the crowd. Police officers forced her back in the car, one officer stepping on the running board and directing her chauffeur to Caledonian Road Police Station to be formally charged. At the station she was asked if she had any other witness to call on her behalf, to which she replied, ‘Yes, my chauffeur.’ Asked the chauffer’s name she couldn’t remember. After some time, she said, ‘Jackson.’ She was charged £2 for obstructing a public highway. She emphatically denied that she had sworn at a police officer.

Twenty minutes after he was hanged, Madame Tussaud’s opened and Heath’s wax figure was already on display in the Chamber of Horrors. The figure was dressed in sports jacket and flannels, similar to the ones he had worn at the police court hearings, but Bernard Tussaud, an ex-RAF serviceman himself during the First World War, would not permit the model of Heath to wear the RAF tie that Heath himself had worn in court for the first two days of the trial. A blue and white striped tie was found from the stocks at the museum.
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When the museum opened its doors that morning, Heath’s body was still hanging within the precincts of Pentonville Prison.
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