by Giles Ekins
‘Don’t give me excuses man, can you do it or not?’
‘Yes sir, of course. Professionals we are at our trade. Professionals!’
‘Tradesmen, especially common hangmen, do not qualify for the professional classes, Dennison,’ Billington sneered.
‘No sir, course not, what I meant was that we would do our job in a professional manner, like.’
‘You damn well better, it’s what you get paid for isn’t it? To do your job properly – you’ll get no plaudits from me for simply doing what you should in the way it ought.’
‘No, sir.’
‘One other thing, Dennison,’ Billington said, waving the Home Secretary’s letter in the hangman’s direction, ‘after the execution, the effects of the condemned man are to be burned, together with the rope.’
‘But sir, hangmen always gets to get the effects of the condemned, ’is clothes an’ that. Traditional perky-squite is that, ’as been since time immemorable.’
‘Not in this case, the Home Secretary states, and I fully agree, that there is too much ghoulish interest being shown in this case and that the common mob will only take an unhealthy curiosity in Sinistrari’ s effects. Damn it man, you would only sell the clothes to a carnival sideshow or vulgar waxworks, now wouldn’t you, hoping to make a few shillings from macabre sensationalism.’
‘No sir, ’course not,’ Dennison declared indignantly, even though he had done just that, negotiating a deal with Fred Covey, carnival and freak show owner for the sale of Sinistrari’s effects. Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork Museum had been also been after the clothes and rope for their Chamber of Horrors exhibit and Dennison had thought about trading one of against the other but Fred Cavey was not a man to be crossed and Dennison decided against it. Even now he was going to have a job explaining why the effects were not available – and repay the ten guineas advance he’d already received – and spent.
‘Don’t give me that lie, man, I know your sort, Dennison, you’d sell your own mother for a tuppence and throw in your grandmother for another farthing,’ Billington then belched, suddenly and loudly and patted his stomach in appreciation. Billington refilled his glass’
‘All right man, all right, be gone and on your way. If the preparations for your profession mean you have much to do, why are you wasting my time with your idle chatter?’ ‘Go on then man, be about your business.’
‘Right sir,’ answered Dennison, barely able to keep the outraged indignation out of his voice.
‘And for goodness sake man; get it right. Get it right.’
THE THREE-INCH THICK OAK DOORS OF THE SCAFFOLD DROP opened and instantly fell away as Dennison threw the lever that operated the release mechanism. The crash as the doors hit the side of the pit echoed like distant thunder through the bricks and stone fabric of the prison. The hempen rope suspended from the hook in the crossbeam above quivered under the load that had plummeted into the pit eight feet below. In the exercise yard, Edward Sinistrari looked up and stopped his steady pacing as the sound boomed dully across the narrow court. A slow smile of satisfaction crossed his face.
‘Keep on moving Mister Sinistrari, if you please,’ called Bartholomew Binns, one of the prison officers on death-watch duty, ‘We wouldn’t want you to take on a chill and catch your death of cold, now would we?’
Sinistrari turned to Binns, his eyes flaring with anger, as if about to say something. Binns reached for his truncheon, ready to subdue Sinistrari if he turned violent, but then Sinistrari bared his teeth in a grimace and hissed, like an angry cobra and Binns felt a chill of horror down his spine. ‘Right, well. Move on,’ he mumbled but without conviction.
Some minutes earlier, Dennison and Jenkins had watched Sinistrari from a window above the exercise yard. He had been the only prisoner in the yard, briskly pacing around the well beaten circle as though out on his morning constitutional across Regents Park instead of a condemned man taking his final exercise before execution. Dennison was gauging the condemned man’s height and physique, his general demeanour and stature, essential if he were to calculate the drop correctly and ensure that death occurred instantly from dislocation of the vertebrae. Too little drop and Sinistrari would slowly strangle at the end of the rope, too much drop and they risked tearing off his head, a messy business, but not unknown. Only three years previously, in 1885, the head of Robert Goodale, executed by James Berry at Norwich Castle, had been ripped clean off his shoulders.
‘Wotcha fink, Jenks?’ Dennison asked his assistant, making notes in a small pocket notebook.
‘He’s tall, very tall, six foot four or so and well built. But slender necked, should be easy to snap on a regular drop.’
‘The medical officer said ’e weighs twelve and half stone, give or take a pound or two.’
‘He’ll not ’ave fattened up a deal while he’s been in here.’ ‘Right, twelve and a half stone, tall but slender necked,’
Dennison muttered as he consulted his ‘drop tables’ in a battered leather bound notebook. ‘That’s ’ow many pounds, twelve and half stone? Fourteen times twelve is?’ He scribbled the calculation at the edge of his notebook. ‘Two times four is eight; four times one is four, making forty-eight. Carry over the nought, one times twelve is twelve, so that’s 120 plus 48 is … 168. Add another seven for the ’alf stone gives
175 pounds. Right?’
‘If’n you say so.’
There was a formula devised to ensure the fracture and dislocation of the neck, but it was too complicated for Jenkins who had difficulty counting anything at all once he had run out of fingers and toes.1
Dennison studied his tables again, chewing on the end of his pencil as he did so. ‘175 pounds? For 175 pounds it says five foot two inches ’ere. Not enough by bleedin’ alf, ’cos ’e’s tall an’ all. We got to add a bit more for his height so let’s give ’im five foot ten inches. Or should it be less for ’is height?’
‘Has to be more – stands to reason ‘cos he’s closer to the crossbeam.’
‘Aye, let’s give him a drop of five foot eleven?’
Jenkins shrugged, not committing himself. If the hanging went wrong and the drop found to be incorrect, he wanted to be sure that no blame could be attached to him. Dennison was the number one on this job; let him take the responsibility. That’s what he got paid for.
‘Five foot fucking eleven it is then,’ muttered Dennison, aggrieved that Jenkins had been so unhelpful and made his way back to the execution shed.
From his brown leather hold-all Dennison took out the rope with which he would hang Sinistrari. Thirteen feet long and three-quarters of an inch thick, the rope was made from the finest Italian hemp. A stout brass ring, about the size of a thumb and forefinger held to form an ‘O’, was sliced into one end of the rope. Dennison threaded the other end of the rope through the ring to form a nooses and slid a leather washer up behind the brass ring to hold the noose in place. He then fastened the rope to the cross beam, carefully measuring out the length of the drop with a tape measure. Meanwhile Jenkins placed two heavy sandbags into a heavy canvas sack on the trap doors of the scaffold. When Dennison had secured the rope to the hook on the crossbeam Jenkins secured the canvas bag of sand onto the noose and opened the drop. The doors crashed down and the hempen rope quivered under the strain of the sudden load.
Satisfied that the drop mechanism was working satisfactorily, Dennison and Jenkins left the scaffold house and went for dinner in the warder’s dining room, Dennison liked to hang a man on a full stomach, another man’s dying made his gastric juices flow all the sweeter. The bags of sand would hang from the noose until about an hour before the appointed hour for the execution, to stretch the rope and make it more pliable – in hangman’s terms more ‘fit’.
Sinistrari was taken back to the condemned cell from the exercise yard, ready to take his final meal.
At eleven, Dennison and Jenkins returned to the scaffold house. Jenkins went down into the pit and unhooked the bags of sand. Dennison pulled the ro
pe back up, re-measured the drop and made adjustments to allow for the two or three inches that the rope had stretched. He then re-set the noose and leather washer and then lightly coiled the rope so that the noose hung at head height, tying up the coils with white cotton thread.
Together two men reset the heavy trap doors and oiled the hinges again – just to be sure. Dennison then checked that he had the white hood in and pinioning straps ready to hand. Everything was now ready for the execution of Edward James Sinistrari.
Shortly after 11.00pm, the Under Sheriff, James Botting, arrived to witness the execution. He went straight up to see the governor, Sir William Billington, who offered him a glass of port or brandy. Sir William’s florid complexion bloomed ruddy in the yellowing gas light that puttered from the softly hissing globes on the wall. He swayed slightly on his feet as he passed the glass over to Botting, wishing the execution were over. It was not that he disliked like hangings, far from it, a hanging normally set him up in fine fettle and he had on occasion ejaculated when hanging a woman; he enjoyed a good flogging even more so but setting the execution for midnight upset his routine and Sir William lived by routine. By now he should have been leaving his club to venture to a discreet house of ill repute he frequented in Mayfair where the girls understood his special needs. Lady Billington did not live in town, thank goodness – she hated the dark and gloomy Governor’s residence attached to the prison and these days rarely left their heavily mortgaged home in Gloucestershire to make the journey up to London – for which Billington was profoundly grateful.
Doctor Pasha Rose, who would also witness the execution, pronounce death and then perform the post-mortem, arrived soon after Botting. He too partook of a generous measure of brandy – and likewise cursed the Hon. Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary; not only had the execution been brought forward from eight AM to midnight the Home Secretary had also given instructions that the autopsy was to take place ‘as soon as practicable after the execution but no later than two hours thereafter.’
Burial of Sinistrari’s corpse was to take place in the prison grounds as soon as it was light enough to do so, the grave already dug earlier that day by three prisoners on punishment duty. The grave would not be marked in any way. The Home Secretary was anxious, very anxious, that the entire unpleasant matter of Edward Sinistrari be dealt with and buried away out of public perception as quickly as possible. The case, with its ritual killings, mutilated victims and other vile practices had been taken all too readily to heart by ‘the common masses’, unhealthily so in the Home Secretary’s opinion, hence his urgent desire for haste, ‘to put the matter out of the minds of the lower orders and labouring classes.’
‘Time for another, I think gentlemen,’ Billington said, his speech surprisingly clear considering he had already that day drunk more than two and half bottles of port, a bottle of claret with his meal and was now onto his third full glass of brandy.
The Under Sheriff eagerly accepted another large brandy, as did Doctor Rose. Rose did not need a particularly steady hand to open up Sinistrari for post-mortem, after all it was not as if Sinistrari was going to be in a position to complain if the post mortem stitches weren’t straight. Billington swiftly drained his glass, licked his lips in appreciation and then checked the time by his pocket watch.
‘Gentlemen, we have an archfiend to hang.’
‘Never a man I ever heard tell of deserves it more than he,’ Botting said, his tongue convoluted by generous measures of Sir William’s third best brandy.
‘The bounder actually wheedled his way into my club, the very gall of the fellow,’ harrumphed Billington, probably believing this to be a more heinous crime than his string of horrendous murders.
The Governor in the lead, the procession made its way down to the condemned cell. Dennison and Jenkins were waiting outside the cell; they would not enter until called for by Botting, the Under Sheriff. The Chief Officer, William Brunskill, together with William Calcraft and Bartholomew Binns, the warders assigned to conduct Sinistrari to the gallows shed were already in the cell as Billington, Botting, and Doctor Rose entered.
The time was 11.56.
The Prison Chaplain, the Reverend John Thrift, joined them in the cell; normally he would spend the final hour with a condemned prisoner, praying with him. Taking his confession if necessary but every time he had entered the death cell, Sinistrari had abused him and refused his ministry. Even so, Thrift could not allow a man to go to his death without his presence; convinced that at the very end Sinistrari would call for him and make his final peace with God.
Sinistrari sat at his table, immaculately dressed as usual, sipping delicately at the last of a bottle of claret that had been sent to his cell to accompany his last supper. A half-smoked Havana cigar wreathed blue smoke into the dank air. He looked up and glared malevolently at the chaplain.
‘I told you priest, I want no prattling prayer over me. Save your worthless piety for the nuns and parish orphans. I spit on you and piss on your Bible. Get out now and take my curse with you.’
‘For God’s man,’ snapped Billington, ‘He’s a man of the cloth, show some decorum.’
‘Decorum?’ Sinistrari sneered, ‘You propose to suspend me by the neck from a length of rope and you talk to me of decorum. You’re a buffoon, sir.’
‘What? What?’ blustered Billington, his face turning ever more flushed, ‘I am the Governor here By God, sir, show some me respect else I’ll have you flogged, just see if I don’t.’
‘Before or after you hang me? As I say, sir, you are a buffoon.’
Botting coughed discreetly. ‘Perhaps, we ought to proceed?’
‘At least someone here shows some sense,’ Sinistrari said, getting to his feet. He took another pull from the cigar, blowing out the smoke into the face of the Governor who spluttered with indignation, smoke inhalation and wounded dignity all at the same time. ‘Now, if we can get on with this farce as soon as possible, I do have other matters to attend to.’
He stood up straight and faced the Under Sheriff, gesturing for him to proceed with a short impatient jerk of his head. Botting gestured to Dennison, ‘Your prisoner, sir.’
Dennison and Jenkins entered the cell and moved swiftly over to Sinistrari ‘Come wi’ me, sir, if you would. Follow my instructions and everything will go just fine and dandy. This way sir,’ Dennison said, taking his arm. Jenkins and the other guards took up station alongside, ready to subdue the prisoner if he turned violent.
John Thrift, the chaplain hurried forward to lead the procession to the gallows as usual but Sinistrari snarled at him, ‘Get back, prattle merchant, I told you, no canting priest, so get out of my way.’ Chastened, blushing deeply with embarrassment at his own incompetence and indecisiveness, the Chaplain fell back as the hangmen led Sinistrari across the damp dark yard to the execution shed, orange reflections from his glowing cigar casting an eerie processional glint across the rain-slicked stonework of the walls.
‘Rot in hell, Sinistrari,’ an anonymous voice shouted from a darkened cell window above. Footsteps echoed like muffled drumbeats, a slow drum of death.
As they approached the execution shed Sinistrari took on last pull on his cigar, sighed with a deep satisfaction and handed the remainder to one of the guards. ‘Thank you for your good attention, Mister Calcraft,’ he said and walked swiftly on, as if anxious to conclude a matter of some particular importance before going on elsewhere for more personal diversions.
Dennison led Sinistrari up the steps into the hanging shed escorted by Binns and Calcraft. Calcraft hastily trod out the remnants of Sinistrari’s cigar, coughing sharply as he took one last deep puff. John Thrift, the Chaplain, nervously rang a finger around his twice-about clerical collar and hovered by the door of the hanging chamber like a white robed ghost, unsure what to do. Unwilling to send a soul to perdition unshriven he wanted to offer his prayers but was deeply hesitant to risk the wrath of Sinistrari once again. In the end, he silently mouthed prayers to himself, mumbling
into his Bible as he did so.
The Governor, Under Sheriff and Medical Officer lined themselves up along the walls of the chamber as Dennison expertly pinioned Sinistrari’s upper arms about his chest with a leather strap and bound his hands to the front. He then placed the condemned man on chalk marks over the centre of the trap doors. ‘Just keep on looking over my shoulder,’ he instructed and placed the white hood over Sinistrari’s head and swiftly looped the noose into place and tightened it – making sure that the brass ring of the noose was squarely placed under the angle Sinistrari’s left jaw and held in place by the leather washer. Meanwhile Jenkins pinioned Sinistrari’s legs just below the knees.
The warders, Binns and Calcraft, stood either side of Sinistrari on planks laid across the trap in case the condemned man needed support; it was not uncommon for those about to die to feel faint and the warders were placed either side to offer support if needed. Ropes hung down from the gallows beam for them to hold on to as the trap sprung open. However, Sinistrari stood tall and straight, contemptuously shrugging off the warder’s hands.
Barely twenty seconds after entering the scaffold house Dennison was ready and took his place by the drop lever as Billington angrily beckoned Thrift further into the cell, officially, no execution could take place without the presence of a Chaplain and the now hooded Sinistrari was unable to see him.
‘Anything to say, Sinistrari? Any final words?’ Billington asked.
‘Not at the moment but thank you for askin. No doubt something apposite will occur to me later and we can discuss it then at greater length.’
At that, Billington gave Dennison the nod. The hangman threw the lever that slid the drawbar across so that the ends of the supporting hinges fell away. The trap doors swung open, Sinistrari plummeted down into the pit, and then the rope jerked taut, zinging like the angry plucked string of a double bass. The heavy oak doors of the trap slammed into the restraining catches and the ponderous timbered crash of the impact echoed like the thunderclap of doom but high above the booming echoes, a sharp crack like the cracking of a whip or the snapping of sun dried twig beneath the feet in the stillness of dawn was heard as Sinistrari’s neck broke. The rope swung from side to side under the weight of the body, spinning slowly like a mason’s plumb bob. A collective sigh of pent up breath hissed around the walls of the scaffold house like escaping steam. The rope creaked rhythmically against the crossbeam, squeaking loudly in the stillness of the chamber.