Pierrepoint (14 page)

1913 was a good year for Tom Pierrepoint. All the engagements he participated in were as chief executioner,
bringing in a healthy income to the household. At the end of January, with Ellis engaged elsewhere, he went to Pentonville to hang Edward Hopwood, who had shot dead a woman in a taxi; two months later he hanged Edward Palmer, a boxer who had cut his wife’s throat at her home in Bristol. It was the first execution at the city’s Horfield Prison for almost 25 years, and a large crowd waited for a glimpse of the hangman, but Tom was able to slip away unnoticed. Further executions included visits to Dorchester, Newcastle and Cambridge, before Tom carried out an execution on New Year’s Eve at Wakefield. The condemned man was George Law, a Sheffield engineer who had strangled his landlady. It was the second execution Tom had carried out at the gaol that year, and on both occasions he was assisted by Lumb.

In contrast to the previous year, 1914 was quiet for Tom. His first four engagements – at Stafford, Winchester and Lewes – were all as assistant to Ellis. In fact, Tom actually assisted at the last two executions to take place at Lewes. In the first, Herbert Booker was hanged for the murder of a woman on a train at Three Bridges, Crawley. Both of them had been wearing Liverpool Football Club rosettes, having just watched their team lose in the FA Cup Final at Crystal Palace, and after a drunken quarrel he had cut her throat, before repeatedly stabbing her. In November, Tom carried out his first execution at Shepton Mallet: Henry Quartley was a builder hanged for the murder of Henry Pugsley, whom he had blasted to death with a shotgun.

The first half of 1915 was a bleak time for the hangmen. Neither Tom nor Ellis carried out any executions in the first
six months of the year and when Tom did receive an engagement it was, for the first time in his career, to hang someone who had been sentenced to death for an offence other than murder. Robert Rosenthal was a 23-year-old German-American who had been convicted of treason at Middlesex. He had been arrested on board ship from Newcastle to Copenhagen just as it left British territory, on his way to pass secrets of naval formations to his German contacts. The trial was held ‘in camera’ (in secret) so that the enemy did not know of his arrest and conviction.

Tom executed Rosenthal at Wandsworth Gaol on 15 July, just nine days after sentencing, aided by a new assistant Robert Baxter. Rosenthal was the only spy to be hanged during the First World War, though eleven more spies were shot dead at the Tower. Rosenthal was hanged and not shot because, unlike the other prisoners, a civilian court and not a military one had tried him.

The year did pick up for Tom at the end of December, when he hanged two men a week apart at Wakefield. On 22 December he hanged Harry Thompson, who had murdered a soldier’s wife at Huddersfield, and, a week later, John McCartney, who had cut the throat of a woman he had bigamously married. After just nine years Wakefield, despite having a purpose-built gallows, now ceased as a place of execution.

Tom carried out no executions in 1916. The only appointment in his diary, a job at Leeds, was cancelled when the condemned man was reprieved a week before he was due to die. The name of Pierrepoint did feature regularly throughout the year, however, as the first of Harry’s newspaper serialisations appeared in the weekly news. Harry
had been working at Huddersfield gasworks following his dismissal from the list. Shortly after the newspaper account of his memoirs began its six-month run in July 1916, Harry was able to move his family to a new house on Mill Street, Failsworth, Manchester. He stayed at the gasworks while his wife left her job in a munitions factory to look after the young family. The fees from the newspaper accounts afforded them the small luxury of Mrs Pierrepoint not having to find work urgently.

Tom was not much busier in 1917 than he had been in the previous year. At the end of March he travelled to Leeds to hang John Thompson, a shepherd who had cut the throat of a teenage girl at Beverley, and a month later he was back at Leeds, where Robert Gadsby paid the ultimate penalty for cutting the throat of his paramour. A week before Christmas, Tom hanged William Cavanagh at Newcastle; Cavanagh had stabbed a sailor following a brawl.

The armistice had been signed, and the First World War brought to an end, before Tom was next in action. John Walsh was a collier who had strangled his sweetheart at Wakefield. Walsh was hanged at Leeds a week before Christmas 1918, having been convicted at West Yorkshire Assizes, one of four men sentenced to death that winter.

Tom hanged three people in two days in early January 1919. On 7 January, Ben Benson walked calmly to the gallows to pay the price for the murder of his girlfriend. He had cut her throat after catching her in bed with a lover when he had arrived home
unannounced from the war. Baxter was Tom’s assistant. In August 1918 a brutal robbery had taken place at a Pontefract jeweller’s shop. The shopkeeper was battered about the head and died on the following day. Four days later two young deserters were arrested in London while selling rings in an East End public house. Some of the rings still had blood-splattered price tickets attached to them. Percy Barrett and George Cardwell each blamed the other for the attack but were both deemed equally guilty in the eyes of the law and they were hanged side by side.

A number of cancelled executions meant Tom had to wait almost a year to the day before he was next in action. Lewis Massey had been convicted at Leeds Assizes in December 1919 for the murder of his wife. They had separated and despite his repeated requests she would not have him back. He finally lost patience with her refusing to come back, discovered where she was living and beat her to death. Willis was the assistant and the execution at Leeds passed off without incident.

At Lincoln, on Tom’s second hanging of the year he was again assisted by Willis. William Wright, a tailor, was convicted of the murder of his pregnant girlfriend, who was found strangled at her cottage. Wright confessed he had throttled her following a quarrel over a brooch he claimed had been given to her by another man.

In April 1920, Tom and Edward Taylor travelled to Leeds, where they hanged Miles McHugh, who had cut the throat of his girlfriend following a jealous quarrel. Three weeks later there was another execution at Leeds, where Thomas Hargreaves Wilson was hanged for the murder of his wife.

Tom and Edward Taylor headed for Durham Gaol on 30 November 1920. James Riley, a miner, had been convicted of
the murder of his wife at West Auckland. He was hanged despite a petition for reprieve signed by over thirty-two thousand people.

The busiest day in the bloody history of capital punishment was 30 December 1920, when three executions took place on the same day. Ellis was engaged at Birmingham, Willis carried out his first senior execution at Pentonville, while Tom was on duty at Leeds to deal with Edwin Sowerby, who had been sentenced to death at Leeds Assizes for the murder of his former girlfriend after she had broken off their relationship.

1921 was only a week old when Tom was at Maidstone, where former Sergeant Major George Lever was hanged for cutting his wife’s throat.

In August 1920, two men and a young girl were seen walking in the direction of the Crumbles, a stretch of beach between Eastbourne and Pevensey Bay. On the following day the body of a young woman was found partially buried in shingle. She had been battered to death. The body was later identified as that of Irene Munro, a London typist who was holidaying alone in the area. Two men who had been seen with her shortly before her death were soon traced. They claimed to have an alibi, but were convicted at the Old Bailey, before Mr Justice Avory, and sentenced to death.

At their appeal the two men changed their stories – each now blamed the other for the murder. It did them no good: 19-year-old Jack Fields, and William Gray, ten years his senior, were hanged side by side, having come face to face with each other as they met up in the corridor seconds before they were led to their deaths.

On 7 June, Tom and Robert Baxter carried out the execution of three men at Dublin. At 7 a.m. they hanged
Patrick Maher and Edmund Foley, who had been convicted of the murder of a police sergeant during an attempted rescue of prisoners in 1919. An hour later they hanged William Mitchell, who had shot dead a justice of the peace during a robbery. Anxious to keep Tom’s identity secret, as Ireland was going through a politically volatile period, the newspaper announced the name of the hangman as Mr Harte.

It was to be the spring of 1922 before Tom was next in action, carrying out another execution at Durham. The condemned man, James Williamson, was another wife killer who had dispatched his spouse with a cutthroat razor following a quarrel. It was an extremely violent murder, the victim’s head almost being severed.

Tom’s only other execution in 1922 was at Lincoln Gaol, where he carried out a double execution. George Robinson and Frank Fowler, two farm labourers, had been convicted at Lincolnshire Assizes of separate offences, but it was decided they would hang together, for convenience. Robinson had killed his young girlfriend after she jilted him, while Fowler shot dead a bride of three days, against whom he bore a jealous grudge.

In the summer of 1922,
Reynolds News
ran a series entitled ‘Ten Years as Hangman’ by Harry Pierrepoint. It was basically a rehash of the
Thompson News
series from six years earlier, but often contradicted statements made in the former. In a cheap notebook purchased for him by his son, Harry also set down his life story under the title of ‘My Life Story as Public Executioner’: ‘Now that the bonds of secrecy are released through relinquishing my post as Public Executioner I now take up my pen to write the details of my executions, and travels as Executioner…’

The pages of the exercise book retold his adventures and tales of the famous people he dealt with, in no sort of chronological order and with no real details not already recorded in the newspaper accounts. However, it ended with the poignant paragraph:

Harry Pierrepoint died on 14 December 1922, the day after Tom returned from Lincoln. He was 48 years old and had been suffering from a terminal illness for several years. His last words in any newspaper were a comment on the inconsistency of reprieves – they were prompted by the reprieve earlier that summer of well-to-do Ronald True, who had murdered a prostitute and was sentenced to death in the same week that 18-year-old Henry Jacoby was sentenced to death for the murder of a wealthy widow in the hotel where he worked. True, who had influential friends, was deemed insane and sent to Broadmoor, while Jacoby, a poor boy with no money or friends of influence, went to the gallows at Pentonville. Harry had also commented on the upcoming
trial surrounding the Ilford murders.

In January 1923, two executions took place in London that were the culmination of a murder trial which had filled the headlines since it ended in the convictions of Edith Thompson and her young lover Frederick Bywaters, for the murder of her husband – the Ilford murder. The original dates scheduled coincided with a prior engagement Tom had at Leeds Prison and he therefore had to turn down the offer to execute Bywaters at Pentonville. Following the appeal of both the Leeds killer and Bywaters, the revised dates of execution meant that Tom would have been free to carry out the execution of Bywaters, but the offer had since gone to Willis.

Instead, assisted by the recently appointed assistant Tom Phillips, Tom carried out the execution of Lee Doon, a Chinese laundryman who had battered to death his boss in Sheffield, and then concealed his body in a trunk. He was arrested when a neighbour spotted him dragging the heavy trunk into a garden where he had planned to bury it.

Four days leter Tom Phillips assisted Ellis at the execution of Edith Thompson, who was dragged screaming and fainting to the gallows, while Tom went about his carrier business at home in Bradford, no doubt rueing the missed fee.

Two executions at Durham were the only dates in the diary over spring and summer. A blacksmith who had shot dead his son-in-law was hanged in April, and an African sailor who had shot dead a married woman at South Shields. On both executions he was assisted by recent recruit Robert Wilson.

On 12 December, Tom travelled to Dublin to carry out a double execution, and three days later he carried out a single execution. Unlike the previous visit to Dublin’s Mountjoy Gaol, none of these three executions were
political – rather, they were prompted by a mixture of greed, revenge and jealousy.

When Tom carried out the execution of Matthew Nunn at Durham in 1924 his conduct was severely criticised. The chaplain claimed that a minute before the appointed hour of execution as he sat with the prisoner, Pierrepoint and his assistant Phillips burst into the room and manhandled the prisoner out into the corridor and towards the scaffold. The chaplain asked them to wait while he dressed in his surplice but the hangman ignored him such was his haste to get the job done. ‘I have been present at a number of executions in the past and never have I witnessed such callous haste,’ he wrote.

Due probably to illness and stress, John Ellis tendered his resignation in March 1924 and thereafter Tom began to receive a larger share of work. Willis received promotion to replace Ellis and, in August, Baxter was also promoted to Chief Executioner. Baxter’s first job as a chief was to hang Jacques Vaquier, who had poisoned a love rival, an execution that has often been mistakenly credited to Tom.