Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders

by Abbott, Geoffrey

  Laurence Shirley, Earl Ferrers

  In a more enlightened age this gentleman would have been diagnosed as having a serious mental deficiency, and confined somewhere where he could neither harm himself nor anyone else; as it was, he was simply put to death.

  For the account of his crime we are once again indebted to the Newgate Calendar & Malefactors’ Bloody Register, which described the Earl as being a man who was highly intelligent when sober, but a madman when drunk:

  ‘Some oysters had been sent from London which, not proving good, his lordship directed one of the servants to swear that the carter had changed them, but the servant declined to take such an oath; the Earl flew on him in a rage, stabbed him in the breast with a knife, cut his head with a candlestick and kicked him in the groin with great severity. On another occasion, during a dispute with his brother and his wife, who were staying there, Lady Ferrers being absent from the room, the Earl ran upstairs with a large clasp-knife in his hand and asked a servant whom he met where his lady was. The man said, ‘In her own room!’ and, being directed to follow him thither, Lord Ferrers ordered him to load a brace of pistols with bullets. This order was complied with, but the servant, being apprehensive of mischief, declined to prime them, so the Earl did so himself. He then threatened that, if the man did not go immediately and shoot his brother, he would blow his, the servant’s, brains out. Upon the servant hesitating, the Earl pulled the trigger of one pistol but it missed fire.

  Earl Ferrers Shooting Mr Johnson His Steward

  Hereupon the countess dropped to her knees and begged him to appease his passions, but in return he swore at her and threatened her destruction if she opposed him. The servant managed to escape from the room and warned the brother, who promptly roused his wife from her bed and they left the house, though it was then two o’clock in the morning.’

  At this stage the really unfortunate victim enters the scene, a man named Johnson, who was steward (the keeper of accounts) to the household. The Earl had formed the opinion that Johnson was conspiring with the trustees over a contract for some coal mines, and had made up his mind to kill the man. And on Sunday 13 January 1760, he sent orders for Johnson to come up to the big house. When he arrived, the Earl took him into his own room and locked the door. Then, as graphically described in the Calendar,

  ‘he produced a paper to him, purporting, as he said, to be a confession of his villainy, and required him to sign it. Johnson refused and expostulated, and his lordship, then drawing a pistol which he had charged and kept in his pocket for the purpose, presented it and bid him kneel down. The poor man then knelt down on one knee, but Lord Ferrers cried out, so loud as to be heard by one of the maids in the kitchen, ‘Down on your other knee; declare that you have acted against Lord Ferrers; your time is come – you must die!’ and then immediately fired.

  The ball entered Johnson’s body just below the last rib, yet he did not drop, but rose up, and expressed the sensations of a dying man both by his looks and by such broken sentences as are usually uttered in such situations. The report of the pistol having alarmed the women in the wash house, the Earl shouted, ‘Who is there?’ and ordered one of the women to send for one of the men and another to assist in getting Mr Johnson to bed. He then sent for Mr Kirkland the surgeon.

  From the time the fact was committed, Lord Ferrers continued to drink porter till he became drunk; meanwhile the surgeon arrived and the Earl told him he had shot Johnson but believed he was more frightened than hurt; that he had intended to shoot him dead, for he was a villain and deserved to die; but ‘now that I have spared his life, I desire you would do what you can for him.’ My lord [Ferrers] at the time desired that he would not suffer himself to be seized, and declared that if anyone should attempt it, he would shoot him.’

  The surgeon arranged for Johnson to be taken back to his house where he survived until nine o’clock the next morning, then expired.

  A crowd of locals had meanwhile set out to arrest the Earl, and one of them, Curtis, saw him on the bowling-green.

  ‘My lord was then armed with a blunderbuss, two or three pistols, and a dagger; but Curtis, being far from intimidated, marched up to him boldly, in spite of the blunderbuss, and my lord was so struck by the determined resolution that appeared in this brave fellow that he suffered him to seize him without making the least resistance; yet the minute he was in custody, declared that he had killed a villain, and gloried in it.’

  From his home in Ashby de la Zouch the Earl was sent to Leicester Gaol and, a fortnight later, taken to London in his own coach and six horses under strong guard, where he arrived on 14 February ‘dressed like a jockey, in a close riding-frock, jockey boots and cap, and a plain shirt. Being carried before the House of Lords, he was then committed to the Tower of London, having behaved, during the whole journey and at his commitment, with great calm and propriety. He was confined in the Round Tower near the drawbridge [now the Middle Tower, one in which the author was also often accommodated, though as a yeoman warder, not a prisoner!].’

  On 16 April he was put on trial before the House of Lords and ‘his lordship, in his defence, examined several witnesses to prove his insanity; none of whom proved such insanity as made him not accountable for his conduct.’ Accordingly he was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to be hanged and then anatomised.

  In the meantime a scaffold was erected under the gallows at Tyburn, and part of it, about a yard square, was raised eighteen inches or so above the rest of the floor, with a contrivance to sink down upon a signal being given, and the whole covered by a black cloth. The introduction of a platform on which the victim would stand was an innovative idea designed to replace the previous method whereby the felon stood in a horse-drawn cart, the rope around his or her neck, the steed then receiving a smart slap on its flanks.

  About nine o’clock on the morning of 5 May, Lord Ferrers was brought out ‘clad in a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with silver, and said to be his wedding suit.’ A long procession then departed for Tyburn, consisting of a very large contingent of constables, a party of horse-grenadiers and foot soldiers, and four coaches, with a hearse bringing up the rear. So great were the crowds lining the streets, all agog to see a real live lord going to execution, that it took the cavalcade almost three hours to cover the three miles or so to Tyburn.

  Arriving there, he ascended the scaffold with the same composure and fortitude of mind he had possessed since leaving the Tower. After prayers he called for Tom Turlis, the executioner, who came to him and asked the Earl’s forgiveness, to which his lordship replied, ‘I freely forgive you, as I do all mankind, and hope myself to be forgiven.’ His neck cloth was taken off and a white cap was put over his head. His arms were then bound with a black silk sash – for a common cord could not be used on a man of his rank – and the noose was placed round his neck. The raised stage started to sink but stopped after a few inches so that the victim’s toes still touched its boards. An onlooker described how ‘he suffered a little, having had time by their bungling to raise his cap, but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled on his legs so that he was soon out of pain and quite dead in four minutes.’ (That ‘raised-drop’ method was not used again at Tyburn, but adapted, becoming the falling-trapdoor system later used at Newgate.)

  After the regulation hour had elapsed, during which the Sheriffs and other officials took breakfast seated at one side of the scaffold, the body was cut down and placed in a coffin lined with white satin, his hat and the noose at his feet, then escorted by the Sheriffs in the same circus-like procession, to Surgeons’ Hall, where it was anatomised. After being washed and laid out on an operating table before a large audience of medical men and students, ‘a large incision was made from the neck to the bottom of the breast, and another across the throat; the lower part of the belly was laid open and the bowels taken away.’ For the next three days it remained on display to large numbers of the public, who queued for hours to shuffle past the bier and gaze upo
n the final remains of Laurence Shirley, Earl Ferrers.

  George O’Donnell, confined in the condemned cell at Winchester, commented to the warders guarding him that he hoped the hangman was not cross-eyed because he had met a cross-eyed man on the day he committed the murder, and seeing someone like that had always meant bad luck for him!

  Elizabeth Godfrey

  The executions on 22 February 1807 of three people found guilty of the murder of two men, John Cole Steel and Richard Prince, sparked off what was undoubtedly the most tragic calamity London’s Newgate had ever experienced.

  Two men, John Holloway and Owen Haggerty, had been sentenced to death for Steel’s murder on Hounslow Heath, though much doubt existed over their culpability; the other victim, Richard Prince, had been stabbed to death by 34-year-old Elizabeth Godfrey; her weapon being a pocket knife implying that it was unpremeditated and that the charge should have been manslaughter, if that. Be that as it may, Elizabeth was sentenced to be hanged at the same time as Haggerty and Holloway, and when word got round the taverns and alleyways that not only was it going to be a triple hanging, but that one of them was a woman, thousands turned up at Newgate, some getting there as early as six o’clock in the morning.

  What occurred on that day was dramatically described by a local chronicler:

  ‘The crowd which assembled to witness the executions was unparalleled, being, according to the best calculation, nearly 40,000, and the fatal catastrophe which happened in consequence will cause this day long to be remembered. By eight o’clock not an inch of ground was unoccupied in view of the platform. The pressure of the crowd was such that, before the three malefactors appeared, numbers of persons were crying out in vain to escape from it; the attempts only tended to increase the confusion. Several females of low stature, who had been so imprudent as to venture amongst the mob, were in a dismal situation; their cries were terrible. Some, who could be no longer supported by the men, were suffered to fall and were trampled to death. This was also the case with several small men and boys. In all parts there continued cries of ‘Murder! Murder!’ particularly from the female part of the spectators and children, some of whom were seen expiring without the possibility of obtaining the least assistance, every one being employed in endeavours to save his own life.

  A woman, who was so imprudent as to bring with her a child at the breast, was one of the number killed; whilst in the act of falling, she forced the child into the arms of the man nearest to her, requesting him in God’s name to save its life; the man, finding it required all his exertion to preserve himself, threw the infant from him, but it was fortunately caught at a distance by another man who, finding it difficult to ensure its safety or his own, got rid of it in a similar way. The child was again caught by a person who contrived to struggle with it to a cart, under which he deposited it until the danger was over and the mob had dispersed. In other parts the pressure was so great that a horrible scene of confusion ensued, and seven persons lost their lives by suffocation alone. A cart, which was overloaded with spectators hoping to get a better view of the execution, broke down, and some of the persons falling from the vehicle were trampled underfoot and never recovered.’

  Trapped on the scaffold by the screaming and panic-stricken crowd which surrounded it, their struggles shaking and rocking the very structure itself, hangman William Brunskill and his assistant John Langley had no alternative but to continue with their grim task, capping and noosing their three victims, the woman in particular shuddering with terror, both at the deafening riot taking place around the gallows and her own rapidly approaching execution. Brunskill operated the drop, but for once there were no triumphant cheers, no yells of abuse; the members of the chorus were too busy trying to save their own lives to take any notice of the three on the scaffold slowly losing theirs. It was reported, probably by someone on the very outskirts of the mêlée, that the two men seemed to die fairly quickly, but the woman was writhing and kicking for as long as half an hour afterwards. Although this would seem somewhat exaggerated, the very swaying of the scaffold under the immense pressure of the surging crowd about it might well have given that impression.

  While it was possible to cut the ropes after the regulation hour had passed, it was out of the question to attempt to retrieve the bodies, since that entailed descending the scaffold steps into the swirling maelstrom of struggling humanity below and somehow getting beneath the platform, so the two executioners had to wait until the sheer cacophony of sound began to abate as the marshals and constables started to clear the streets.

  As the officers began their grim task, it was reported that nearly one hundred people, young and old, lay dead or in a state of insensibility. A mother was seen carrying away the body of her dead boy, and a sailor boy who had been suffocated still grasped a bag in which he had some bread and cheese.

  After the bodies of the dead had been stripped and washed, they were ranged round a ward in St Bartholomew’s Hospital and laid out on the floor with sheets over them, their clothes as pillows beneath their heads and their faces uncovered. There was a rail down the centre of the room and the persons who were admitted to see the shocking spectacle went up one side and down the other. The entrances to the Hospital were beset, it was said, ‘by mothers weeping for their sons! Wives for their husbands! And sisters for their brothers! Various individuals for their relatives and friends! And all to see John Holloway, Owen Haggerty and Elizabeth Godfrey swinging from a rope! Oh, what a tragedy!’

  James Botting, the London hangman of the day, was once jeered at by some youths loitering at a street corner. When asked why he did not verbally respond to their abuse, he commented drily, ‘I never quarrel with my customers.’

  Nor was he wrong in his judgment; ironically one of his tormentors, a man named Falkener, did qualify as one of his customers, being later found guilty of rape and, on 12 April 1817, had the dubious pleasure of meeting Botting again – on the scaffold.

  Robert Goodale

  It is doubtful whether Goodale would even have been caught, let alone hanged, had his fruit farm been supplied with mains water; as it was, a forty-foot-deep well provided water for his needs and those of neighbouring families. When, in 1885, the area was affected by drought and the well dried up, what should be found at the bottom but the body of Goodale’s wife, Bathsheba, the cause of death being several severe blows to the head. There was little doubt about his guilt and so, having been sentenced to death, he was imprisoned in Norwich Gaol. There he was subsequently visited by the hangman, James Berry, who needed to make the usual routine preparations. On arrival Berry became aware of the nervous tension which was prevalent throughout the prison staff: not only had the governor ordered the operation of the gallows to be twice checked and tested, but one of the prison warders had told his colleagues that he had had nightmares in which the condemned man had not been hanged, but beheaded.

  Berry did his best to ignore such prognostications, and got on with the job of deciding what length of drop to give the victim. It should be realised that while a short drop brought death by strangulation, it was not enough simply to give a much longer drop, since that would mean that the victim would be travelling too fast when the rope became taut, and so could be decapitated. When Berry’s predecessor, William Marwood, a humane and thoughtful man, had taken over in 1874, he had devised a method of calculating the distance a victim should fall which would result in death coming quickly due to the severance of the spinal cord, by taking into account the person’s age, weight, muscular development and similar factors. Berry had improved on this, basing his calculations on the assumption that an ‘average’ man weighing 14 stone would require a fall of eight feet, every half-stone lighter requiring two inches longer, depending on other concomitant features.

  Now Goodale weighed over 15 stone and was of a flabby build, and Berry estimated that although by Marwood’s criteria, Goodale should be given a drop of 7 feet 8 inches, he would err on the safe side and reduce this to just 5 feet 9 inches. Alas
, events proved that he should have reduced the distance even further.

  Execution day started badly. Goodale was determined not to go quietly, shouting for mercy and struggling wildly as Berry sought to pinion him, the hangman finally having to recourse to using lengths of cord to bind the man’s wrists and arms instead of the more usual straps. The next problem was how to get him to the scaffold for, begging for mercy and almost collapsing with terror on seeing the gallows, he had to be half-dragged by four warders, and the situation was not helped at all when one of the warders suddenly fainted.

  At last they positioned their man on the drop, holding him there while Berry pulled the white cap over his head and noosed him. The cataclysmic events of the ensuing few minutes are best described in Berry’s own Memoirs:

  ‘The whole of the arrangements were carried out in the usual manner and when I pulled the lever, the drop fell properly and the prisoner dropped out of sight. We were horrified, however, to see the rope suddenly jerk upwards, and for a moment I thought the noose had slipped from the culprit’s head or that the rope had broken. But it was worse than that, for the jerk had severed the head entirely from the body and both had fallen to the bottom of the pit. Of course death was instantaneous, so that the poor fellow had not suffered in any way, but it was terrible to think that such a revolting thing could have occurred. We were all unnerved and shocked. The Governor, whose efforts to prevent any accident had kept his nerves at full strain, fairly broke down and wept.’

  After descending into the pit and seeing the head, still in its white cap and covered in blood, lying some distance away from the huddled torso, Berry himself was almost overcome and had to be revived later.