Pierrepoint (18 page)

Tom carried out 80 per cent of all the executions which took place in England in 1934. In early January he travelled to Hull, where he hanged Roy Gregory, a Scarborough boot maker who had murdered a young child. From Hull he
travelled straight to Ireland, where he carried out an execution at Dublin – for some reason, without the aid of an assistant. In the spring, Tom carried out two jobs at Leeds and one at Bristol, before he received the offer of carrying out an execution at Wandsworth. It was unusual for Tom to get work in London, which was mainly the domain of Robert Baxter, but the Sheriff of Sussex was responsible for selecting the number one and opted for Tom ahead of Baxter. The execution of Frederick Parker and Albert Probert was notable in that it was the last time that members of the press were able to witness an execution.

On the night of 13 November 1933, 80-year-old shopkeeper Joseph Bedford was found on the floor of his general store at Portslade; he had head injuries. Bedford was taken to hospital, where it was quickly found that the old man had not fallen, as was at first thought, but had been struck over the head. He died the following morning. Witnesses reported two men seen near the shop on the evening of the murder and on the following day detectives questioned two men they had in custody who had been picked up for loitering. Parker, a criminal, bully and casual labourer from Hove, and Probert, a fitter from Dover, were questioned separately, unaware that Bedford had since died. Parker admitted helping Probert to rob the shop, but was insistent it was his friend that had committed the assault. ‘I wish it had been a bigger job,’ he rued, adding the haul had yielded just £6. Despite Probert denying any involvement, the two men were then charged with murder. Both died bravely without giving any trouble. Tom was assisted by Tom Phillips, Stanley Cross and his nephew. As they relaxed in their quarters on the evening before the execution, Phillips was asked by Albert what had really happened at the execution of Mrs Thompson at Holloway back in 1923. Phillips denied that the horrendous scenes reported in the press had taken
place, but said it was a very upsetting execution, especially for the female prison officers who accompanied the condemned woman as she fainted on her last walk.

Albert had his first experience at the execution of a woman when he was engaged by the governor of Hull Prison to assist his uncle to hang Ethel Lillie Major, the daughter of a Lincolnshire gamekeeper. In May 1934, Arthur Major, her husband, complained of stomach pains after eating corned beef. He was in agony for two days before he died. The death certificate stated death was due to status epilepticus. As the widow arranged the funeral, police received a letter urging them to investigate the death, as a neighbour’s dog had also died after eating the scraps of a meal prepared by Mrs Major. The funeral was halted as the guests began to arrive at the house, and when police questioned Mrs Major she made a fatal slip by admitting her husband had died of strychnine poison although no mention had been made up to this point of the cause of death.

The hangmen reached Hull on the afternoon of 18 December 1934 and as they went down to the execution chamber to rig the drop the chief warder gave them the condemned woman’s details. Mrs Major was 42 years old, stood 4 feet 1½inches tall and weighed just 122 pounds. They worked out a drop of 8 feet 6 inches. When they returned to their quarters, Albert questioned his uncle.

‘What are women like?’ he asked. ‘What do you have to do, anything special?’

Smiling slowly, his uncle asked, ‘Why lad, you’re not afraid are you?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I was just wondering.’

Tom put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder and reassured him there was nothing to worry about: ‘I shall be very surprised if Mrs Major isn’t calmer than any man you have seen so far.’

Albert watched his uncle strap the woman’s hands as they entered the cell on the following morning. He saw that the pinion was only strapped loosely, having learned from his uncle he did this because unlike men, he had never known a woman to resist the inevitable, and all had gone bravely to the drop. Ethel Major didn’t resist. She was the last person hanged at Hull Gaol and her ghost is still said to haunt the prison.

1935 brought mixed fortunes for Tom and Albert Pierrepoint. Tom had spent the final day of the old year in quarters at Leeds Prison in the company of assistant Stanley Cross. At 8 o’clock on New Year’s Day they carried out the execution of Frederick Rushworth who, along with his girlfriend Lydia Binks, had killed their newborn baby. Binks was reprieved just a few days before she was due to hang. Tom carried out further jobs as far afield as Durham, Wandsworth and Gloucester without any problems being recorded.

The first letter that Albert received in 1935 was for an engagement in Bristol in March and, opening it, he found it was asking him to carry out the role as number-one executioner. Reginald Woolmington had been convicted for the murder of his young wife, but after legal history was made when the conviction was quashed in the House of Lords, Albert received a further letter saying his services would not be required at Bristol Gaol after all.

Albert did get to assist his uncle when they travelled to Bedford for the execution of Walter Worthington. A retired poultry farmer from Huntingdon, Worthington had been convicted of the murder of his third wife by shooting her after a row about her infidelity. The murder was witnessed by two of his sons and immediately after committing the crime he walked to the local vicarage and confessed to the vicar, who
in turn called the police. It was Albert’s only execution date in his diary that year. A week later Tom carried out an execution at Durham, before he too had a lean spell that lasted until the spring of 1936.

Following the death of her husband, 36-year-old mother-of-four Dorothea Nancy Leech took the name Waddingham, and, posing as a qualified nurse, set up an old people’s home in Nottingham, which she ran with the help of her lover Ronald Sullivan. In January 1935, Mrs Louisa Baguley, an 89-year-old widow and her spinster daughter Ada, aged 50, arrived on the recommendation of Nottingham council as their first patients. Early in May, Ada, who was obese and bedridden, instructed her solicitor to change her will in favour of Nurse Waddingham, who had promised to care for both women till the end of their days. A week later the old lady died, followed a few months later by her daughter. Waddingham’s haste to have Ada Baguley cremated alerted the attention of the same doctor who had signed the death certificate of the mother. He arranged for an autopsy to be carried out and when this revealed an excessive amount of morphine, an exhumation was also ordered on Mrs Baguley. When this also revealed excessive amounts of morphine had been administered, Waddingham and her lover were charged together.

They stood trial before Mr Justice Goddard at Nottingham Assizes in February, but it was decided there was not enough evidence to proceed with charges against Sullivan and he was acquitted. After a two-week trial, ‘Nurse’ Waddingham, who had recently given birth to her fifth child, was convicted on overwhelming evidence and sentenced to death. The jury surprisingly added a recommendation for mercy when returning a guilty verdict.

When Albert and Uncle Tom arrived at Winson Green Prison on the afternoon of 15 April, they found that demonstrations, led by the wealthy abolitionist Mrs Van der Elst, were already well underway. They received the prisoner’s details and found they were almost identical to those of Mrs Major. Although six years younger than the Lincolnshire murderess, Nurse Waddingham was just half an inch shorter, but weighed a pound and a half more. She was to be allowed a drop of 8 feet 5 inches, 1 inch less than Mrs Major.

The demonstrations that had started on the previous afternoon had grown to a crowd of over five thousand, many carrying sandwich boards protesting that the hanging of a mother of five children was barbaric. Inside the prison the sound of the hymns sung by the crowd could clearly be heard as the execution was speedily carried out.

Parsee doctor Buck Ruxton, who had been convicted of the murder of his wife Isabella and her maid, 20-year-old Mary Rogerson, at Lancaster, was the next name in Tom’s diary. The women had disappeared in September 1935, and Ruxton told relatives his wife had taken Mary away to have a pregnancy terminated. While police investigations were being carried out in Lancashire, two dismembered bodies were discovered in a ravine in Dumfriesshire. They had been wrapped in a copy of a Sunday paper available only in Lancaster and Morecambe and this led police to Ruxton. His house was searched and traces of blood were found in the bathroom where he had dismembered the two women, after strangling them.

1936 was to be a unique year in modern times: two women went to the gallows. Less than three months after the execution of Nurse Waddingham, Charlotte Bryant followed her to the gallows. Bryant was an Irishwoman who had met her husband Fred while he was serving in Londonderry in the Black and Tans. She accompanied him back to Dorset, but
she soon became disillusioned with life on a farm and began a steady stream of affairs with local farm hands and labourers. It seemed her husband chose to ignore her behaviour and in 1933, Leonard Parsons, one of her lovers moved in with the Bryants and their five children and began to live with her as man and wife. Somewhat amazingly, Parsons and Fred Bryant became good friends. In December 1935, after Parsons had moved out, Bryant began to complain of stomach pains and when he died on 22 December an inquest was ordered. It was discovered that he had died of arsenic poison and a tin found to have contained arsenic was discovered in the garden.

Mr Justice Mackinnon at Dorchester Assizes sentenced Charlotte Bryant to death at the end of May. It was alleged that her striking black hair turned white as she awaited execution. She had written a letter to the new king, Edward VIII: ‘Mighty King. Have pity on your afflicted subject. Don’t let them kill me on Wednesday.’ It was in vain.

The name of long-time rival to Tom Pierrepoint, Robert Baxter, had been removed from the list of hangmen at the end of 1935, when failing eyesight brought his career to an end. He had been succeeded briefly by Alfred Allen, who had carried out one execution in 1936, and one in 1937 before he died. Albert assisted his uncle at the end of 1936 at Durham and again in February 1937 when they were engaged to hang a dwarf who had been convicted of a gruesome murder at Nelson in Lancashire.

Max Mayer Haslam was born with a crippling bone disease that left him unable to walk until he was nine, by which time he had grown bow-legged. Reaching his early twenties he stood a little over 4 feet tall and his disability caused him to
become a surly loner. After a number of convictions and prison terms for bungled robberies, he was released from Manchester’s Strangeways Gaol in May 1936. On Friday, 19 June, Haslam broke into the house of Miss Ruth Clarkson, a wealthy 74-year-old recluse, who lived alone with her dog in Nelson. Despite outward appearances, Miss Clarkson was a wealthy woman who owned property and collected antique jewellery and when word reached police that a dwarf was selling some stolen jewellery in Nelson they called at her house, to be greeted by a fearful sight. Miss Clarkson had been battered 17 times with a bloodstained tyre lever found beside the body, while upstairs, suspended from the headboard of the bed, was the body of her pet dog.

Haslam’s alibi, that he was at a cricket match when the crime was committed, failed to convince the jury. He was due to hang alongside George Royle, a Stockport man who had strangled a hitchhiker, but just hours before the scheduled double execution Royle was reprieved and Haslam alone faced hangmen. He weighed 127 pounds; Tom worked out a drop of 8 feet 6½ inches, after taking into account the abnormal muscle formation of the 23-year-old.

In June, Tom and Albert carried out an execution at Dublin and by the time Tom and his young nephew travelled down to Exeter to hang Ernest Moss, Tom was now the unrivalled chief executioner. Moss, a 26-year-old former Brixham policeman, had left the force and become a taxi driver after his marriage collapsed. He moved to Exeter where he met 18-year-old Kitty Constance Bennett. The two swiftly became lovers and moved into a bungalow at Woolacombe. Soon, however, Moss realised he no longer wished to live with Kitty and decided that the easiest way to end the relationship would be by committing suicide. He had an abrupt change of mind, however, picked up a shotgun and battered her to
death with its butt. He then confessed to the police and insisted on pleading guilty when he appeared before Mr Justice Hawke at Devon Assizes in November.

It was Albert’s first visit to Exeter, the scene of a unique incident in the annals of capital punishment. In 1885, hangman James Berry had attempted to hang a man convicted of the murder of his employer. Three times, John Lee was led onto the drop, three times Berry pulled the lever and three times the trapdoors held firm and refused to open. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and Lee went on to outlive his would-be executioner.

Two doors down from the grocery store where Albert was employed was a sweet shop and tobacconist managed by Anne Fletcher, an attractive blonde lady originally from Bolton now living with her aunt in Newton Heath. They soon became a couple and Anne often accompanied Albert on his cross-Pennine jaunts in his recently purchased wire-wheeled Ford 8. Tom and his wife had given up the general store in Clayton and were now living a mile or so down the hill at Lidget Green.

Tom Pierrepoint officiated at every execution carried out in 1938, the first time in over 20 years that one hangman had carried out all capital sentences in one calendar year. He travelled as far afield as Norwich, Durham, Liverpool, Manchester and Wandsworth. (Nephew Albert assisted on visits to the last three prisons.) It was a year that saw over a dozen reprieves including three women.

In March 1939, Albert received a letter asking him to assist at an execution at Wandsworth Prison. The executioner was not his uncle, who had accepted an engagement scheduled to
take place at Pentonville on the same day; instead it was to be the debut execution of Tom Phillips. Phillips had been an assistant dating back to the days when Ellis was the chief executioner and had worked as Tom’s assistant on over a score of occasions.