by Rod Madocks
The letter he read out was the usual one from Ma, written for her by Mary Bond from next door. I think she said in her letter that she had tried to get Solicitor Rowse in Newton Abbot to petition for me but nothing could be done. It seemed then that it was the usual hopelessness. For a while, after I had done about twenty years, I had really believed I would be freed especially after the warder from Crediton brought me the cutting about the crowds waiting for me at the station. I had the black dog on me when that disappointment had finally bit home. I grew thin and faint-hearted and they eventually sent for Dr Brayne from Broadmoor but by the time the doctor arrived my spirit had revived and they could not find reason to carry me away to the mad house.
Briscoe made me wait a while longer, he read out a few other pointless things, letters from Mr Bryan about lobbying members of parliament and the like. I had a good deal of friends like Bryan, do-gooders and kindly folk working to free me, I was not quite sure who Bryan was and why he had taken me up but I was grateful for his efforts. There had been many like him over the years. They usually had meetings in their home towns then got up petitions yet one after the other ran out of steam and all hopes were dashed. Why did they want to help me? I knew not but supposed that all the world loved an innocent man to prove his case.
Mainly, I did not want to show weakness but Briscoe was only playing with me on that day. They did that sort of thing all the time. He said there was one more thing then took out a letter with the Home Office mark across the top. Briscoe read out that the letter instructed him to remit prisoner L150’s sentence and release him before the ending of the year. I was sure it was a trick at first and kept a face like a shut door. Briscoe said again that I would be released. The warders seemed to shrink away from me. Briscoe told me to deal with this news with good sense. He went on to say that I did not have permission to discuss this with anyone else and if I did so it would prejeediss the date of my release. He said also he was not going to let this news make for unrest among the other convicts. I asked if I could tell my mother but he refused. He said in due time I would be released, when that happened I would be able to work but not break my conditions, nor make an exhibit of myself, nor associate with low persons, nor would I bring the attention of the public to myself or he would be seeing me again. He went on about how I’d be staying on a while longer. Then he told me to get back to work. That’s how I heard it, Doctor Kaiser, just like that, after twenty-two years in Hell.
Banjo
What could you do with the stuff Mulvina laid on me? Sure, I was dumb as a stick for bringing those family objects for her to get her vibrations off. That just stirred up the spirits to no purpose. Her reading was pretty obscure but I recognized some of it. Banjo, for instance. It’s not that I had forgotten Banjo, it’s more that I have pushed the memory of him to the back of my mind. Banjo was my dog when I was a kid, a mongrelly hound, whitish with a black ear. My folks bought him to draw me out and help me make friends, but me and Banjo never clicked. One time, I invited a neighborhood kid called Melvin Reinhard to our place. I wanted to impress Melvin and got out a crossbow I had secretly ordered by mail order. I fired the thing in Banjo’s direction without really meaning to hit him but it went and stuck him in the backside. There was a lot of yelping and blood. Ever after the dog was real wary of me and hopped around with a limp. Dad was so mad with me, more angry than I had ever seen him before. Banjo got run over by a car a little while later. I was about 12 then. I always believed the dog had been hit on the road because he was running away from me, frightened of getting crossbowed again probably. So I wasn’t too pleased by his return as a spirit animal. I thought that maybe he was still pissed with me. If my folks had sent him as a psychic emissary then that probably meant they were also pissed. Not that I believed that they were haunting me. What I really thought was that mediums were telepaths. Surely all they do is pick up all our mental sludge and broadcast it? That’s why that classical stuff was in there. Was that a reference to Horace and the falling tree? Faunus, protect and all?
My own brain was full of fear and all that stuff had been echoed by Mulvina. I bet that picture she drew was of John Lee in his derby hat, glowering over me. That must come from me also. You might ask why I went to see her in the first place if that’s what I think. Well, shit knows. I might have hope without belief; I want to use everything to understand what is spooling out. Lee secretly believed in spells and wise women, that Ladywell stuff is never far from him. Well, Mulvina is my wise woman. I want her on my side just in case. Now do you see how messed up I am? I’m in such a state of screweduppiness that botch, flub, foul-up and bollix all rolled into one won’t cover it.
Okay, now I’ve made that clear and shown I have nothing left to lose I’m going to try again I’m going to surpass my own low expectations and deal with Lee rigorously. That’s right, I’m going to employ some Edgar Allen Poe-type ratiocination. Somehow my own troubles and those of Lee have got tangled up. Those old ghost gods can care for themselves for a while—that’s what Mulvina’s zany word spaghetti referred to isn’t it? She mentions “This Man Eebus”, surely that’s her phonetic ’Scansin version of what was in my head: Dis Manibus. It’s laughable really. It’s Latin, dudes. D.M. is on all the Roman tombs. Look it up, homies. Okay, I’ll tell you. It means: ‘in memory of the ghost gods, the Manes’. Hell, it doesn’t take long for me to track back into the supernatural again, does it? Alright, Manes help me, what I want to do is to bottom out this John Lee hanging fuck-up. What the hell happened at his execution party?
Time for another coffee—no, better not, the shaking will be off the Richter scale—Mountain Dew it is then.
It’s weird that Lee never said a whole lot about what had actually happened in the execution chamber at Exeter. Maybe it was on one of the spools that were broken or lost. I’ve have to piece it together from all the various published accounts. I’ve relied on what’s written down, no flaky medium messages or Lee’s unreliable memories. This is how it went according to the reporters who had a front view, sitting in a special pen on one side of the governor’s garden. In addition, Cowtan described it in detail in a letter to the Chief Constable and even Chaplain Pitkin wrote about it in his memoirs called ‘The Prison Cell In its Light and Shadows’. You can try and triangulate the truth by lining up all those accounts but whatever you do its still seems a freaky business. I come from the post-grassy knoll generation, I’ve studied the shape of the smoke clouds above the Twin Towers. The truth is hard to find although there are pictures of it from every angle. Some said it was the rain-warped drop boards swelling after the night’s heavy rain that had bound together and so would not fall when Berry pulled the lever. Some said it was all on account of a spell put out by Grandma Lee of Ogwell who was paid to hex the execution. Others yet claimed they saw a white dove perched on the gallows cross-beam sent by the Lord who did not want to see an innocent man hanged. Those who liked a conspiracy said that it was convict laborers who set up the workings of the device and had cunningly fashioned it so that Pitkin would stand on a loose board which would then jam the drop lever. Here’s how it actually went down.
The newspaper men, a dozen of them, were placed so that they could see the procession and look in through the open doors of the van-house-turned-hanging-chamber. It was a cold, wet February morning. The bell was tolling and the prison locked down. The procession trailed near to them before crossing the governor’s grass lawn. All seemed caught in a sickly yellowish light. At the head was Chief Warder Rainford, then the robed chaplain calling out the burial service. Lee followed walking straight and erect, tied at the wrists. Two warders were on each side of him. The young guy looked ahead, his pale face was set in a determined expression. You had to hand it to him, whatever he had done, he had guts. It was so strange for them to view a conscious being that would soon no longer exist. It was such a privilege to see a man die like that. They said that it shook you up and made you really taste your own life fresh again after witnessing such a thing.
The prison surgeon Dr Caird and Governor Cowtan came past and lastly the solid figure of Berry bringing up the rear. Berry stared intently at the back of Lee’s head as if to forestall any sudden moves from the prisoner.
They could see the procession enter the shed. It was the same setup that had killed Annie Tooke six years before, she had been hanged by Marwood, Berry’s tutor. There used to be a music hall joke that the journalists all knew: If Pa killed Ma who’d kill Pa? Marwood!
Poor Annie Tooke, she had screamed her head off as she was dragged to be hung. There was none of that from Lee. He kept a grim silence, not replying to Reverend Pitkin calling out the prayer responses. He wore his best gray jacket, the same he had on for the trial. They came to a halt and Lee turned to face the observers across the yard. They could see his pale eyes following a bird flighting across the garden then glancing up at the beam and noose above him as if taking a technical interest in the arrangements. Berry placed him on the drop boards. He had planned a six and half foot drop. He didn’t want Lee’s head yanked off nor yet to strangle him and have to hang on his legs. He strapped broad ankle bindings to the still figure and motioned two warders to step forward and hold him on each side. Berry took a white hood from his pocket and pulled it down over Lee’s face. Usually he did this before the condemned man got to the gallows but Lee had seemed so steady that Berry must have decided to let him gaze upon everything without fear of him panicking. He spoke to Lee as he stood there with the hood pulled down and the rope adjusted and tightened below the left ear on its metal ringlet. Lee shook his head slowly, refusing whatever Berry had asked him.
The executioner moved fast to the left to grab an iron lever set in the floor. He signaled to the warders to let go of Lee and step back off the hatch. Pitkin, Cowtan and Dr Caird stood together to the right. Pitkin raised a shaky voice, “We therefore commit his body to the ground.”
Cowtan nodded to Berry and he pulled at the lever with both hands. There was a grating sound and the boards moved a little but Lee did not disappear from sight into the pit as all expected. He remained standing, erect and unwavering. Berry wrenched at the lever again. There was the same grumbling of metal but no movement of the trap. The executioner next threw all his weight on the lever and yet again there was a loud graunching, the boards shivered but nothing else happened. The reporters were freaked and they looked at each other in amazement. That tableau of figures in the shed remained fixed for a moment before all hell broke out. Berry ran forward and gestured to the warders to lead Lee off the hatches. His hood and noose were taken off. The reporters could see him staring ahead while the dark figures milled about behind him. Cowtan and Caird frantically discussed the situation, Pitkin mopped his face with a kerchief and Berry, first of all on his knees peering at the locked boards, then prying at them with a metal pipe that had been one of the fittings of the coach house. The boards stayed wedged together and Berry began to stamp on the wood while great drops of sweat rolled down his face. After several minutes of prodding and banging he hurried back and pulled the release lever. The heavy doors fell with an echoing bang. Everyone jumped except Lee, who remained erect and still. Berry and the warders then leaned over the pit and drew back the doors with hooked poles. The trap was locked in position, Lee took four steps back onto the boards and all seemed set to launch him into the big zero. Pitkin started another wavering reading, “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower…”
Before he had finished Berry yanked at the lever again. There was a grinding sound and the boards sagged down two inches. Lee, almost imperceptibly, raised himself on his toes to ease his neck from the rope’s strain.
“This is terrible!” called out Governor Cowtan who made gestures urging Berry to do something. The executioner pulled and pulled again to no effect. He put his whole body into it so that the iron lever bent but there was no further movement of the trap. There were muttered voices and hurried movements as the frightened-looking officials scurried around the shed. Lee was again taken off, backwards this time. His hood and the noose were removed and his ankle ties loosed. He seemed to watch the wig-out frenzy going on in front of him calmly. Berry stamped on the boards, then made fat sweaty Warder Halse hang on the rope while putting weight on the trap. Berry moved the lever and the doors fell with a thundering crash leaving Halse dangling clutching the rope until other warders dragged him back. All was hurriedly reset and Lee was hustled forward, newly-hooded, bound and noosed. Pitkin read from the Psalms, his voice shrill and cracking, “God is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved.”
Berry put all his weight on the lever again. A grinding and a grating could be heard but nothing else happened. Lee remained a still dark figure with the white bag on his head. That is what the newspaper men would always remember—that unmoving white rectangle with the dark uniforms swarming in the background. More and more warders came running, some carrying tools, and the prison bell clanged on. Lee was unbound and taken to a small holding cell in the nearby blocks. From this place you could hear the crazy hammering and sawing as Berry made the warders cut back the edges of the drop flaps. At one stage Berry himself flailed at the wood with a hatchet. When they had whittled the wood back as far as it would go Berry ran to the lever and pulled it. There was a dull clank and the drop doors thundered down, to bang against the brick-lined pit. All now thought that the last block had been cleared and the whole nightmare farce was finally done. Berry fetched Lee from the cell where he had been standing in silence as if in a trance. Berry called out,
“My poor fellow. I don’t know what I am doing. You must return.”
Once more he stood on the drop. Pitkin voice was now scratchy and almost inaudible.
“Now is the Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that sleep.”
The hooded man waited and in that moment a legend was born as Berry again pressed on the lever but the boards remained more stubbornly closed than ever. That was it. The fight went out of them. All of a sudden Berry slumped against the shed wall and called out, “I cannot carry on.” Pitkin, who had run away in the last moments, squeaked from the yard, “Is it over?” and Cowtan began to argue with Berry. He wanted him to carry on and finish the job but the furious Dr Caird snapped at him, “In God’s name put a stop to this! You may experiment as much as you like on a sack of flour but you shall experiment on this man no longer!”
It was a defeat for the system. Executions depended on a set process being carried out and no one seems to have considered during that half hour of turmoil simply pushing the noosed prisoner into the open pit and so finishing up the whole dang business.
The rain kept falling. Lee was led away and someone was told to stop that bell ringing. The newspaper men rushed out over the railway bridge and ran down the wet pavements of the High Street to the post office to telegraph their stunning copy. Lee was taken back to his cell as if in reverse time along those winding corridors that he had dreamed of the previous night. He still seemed to be in a sort of trance when Berry began to untie his wrists.
“Why am I not dead?” he had whispered, “I want to be hung.”
Pitkin called out, “You should know by the laws of England they cannot put you on the scaffold again.” Lee rubbing his numbed arms, blinking, staring about him. He croaked, “Every time that trap grated I thought I was gone.” He was handed a glass of brandy but refused it. Pitkin took the glass and downed it behind their backs as they all stared at Lee, his cuff, belt and ankle bindings lying around him like the discarded casings of some amazing creature that had just hatched out.
I’ve listed some of the more fanciful explanations for what had actually stopped Lee from getting hung. It seems there had actually been a small but stubborn mechanical fault that had stopped the machinery from working on the day. A bolt was slightly out of line. Lee himself describes the technicalities in his next reco
rding. Like any explanation it depends how far back you go to find the first cause. It’s like the house that Jack built.
Spool Four
“In Debtor’s Yard the stones are hard
and the dripping wall is high”
Prisons, London, Plymouth and Portland, 1884-1907
—I’ve heard that in England now that they don’t have a bell ringing during a hanging. Now they only pin a notice on the jug door. Crowds still likely gang up outside as if smelling the approach of death and that’s the same all over the world. They ain’t too particular here neither. A few years back you could see the pictures in the Chicago Tribune of that Ruth Snyder all bundled on the electric chair. You remember that?
Doctor Kaiser: Yes, of course. A disturbing picture.
—I’d heard later how Berry retired a few years later—or he had been sacked for selling his souvenir ropes, depending upon which paper you read. He later toured the country preaching against hanging and showing lantern slides about his doings. I was the only failed hanging out of a hundred and thirty-one. Berry even got to the States, selling his story. I’ll tell you some more about that Berry fellow later if you like.
Doctor Kaiser: I want you to concentrate on what is helpful to you.
—Not sure who is helping who here, doc, [laughter]. I get the feeling you’re getting something out of this also?
Doctor Kaiser: You’re a good patient, Mister Lee. Just tell me your story.