Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  Pierrepoint: It was a cold wintry day when I arrived at Durham on the afternoon before the execution. I called in at an hotel opposite the prison from where the landlord used to send our meals across to the prison. While I was talking to the landlord at the counter, who should come in but Atherton’s father and sister-in-law in deep mourning dress. Atherton’s father was talking about his son and saying he was innocent. He pulled out some last letters they had just received from him while paying their last visit. I took a seat until they had gone, and pretended to interest myself in some curios that hung on the wall. It was now time for us to go to the prison, and as I was walking across the road I saw Atherton’s father and sister-in-law standing watching to see if I went into the prison. I knew they had guessed from my speech who I was when they came into the hotel.

  I made my usual arrangements after my arrival. Then I went to Atherton’s cell. I found him fairly cheerful, but a sad downcast look upon him. He was only of short stature, 5 feet 1? inches high, but of strong build.

  Reporter: After the visit from his father Atherton seemed reconciled, and retired to rest at about ten o’ clock on Tuesday night. He slept pretty well, and at half-past five was aroused, washed, and dressed in his own clothing. The Chaplain arrived at the Gaol before seven o’clock, and administered the Communion to Atherton in the condemned cell. Atherton partook of a light breakfast, after which the Chaplain again joined him, and remained with the condemned man until a few minutes to eight, then he left to robe to take part in the final act. Wednesday morning broke clear and frosty. At ten minutes to eight Mr AA Wilson, Acting Under Sheriff, entered the Prison, and was followed by the three Press representatives. D Gilbert was the last of the officials to enter. Principal Warder Hunt took charge of the Press men, and at about four minutes to eight conducted them to a position immediately in front of the execution shed. Warders were already in position, at a signal from Engineer Stanton, to throw back the doors of the execution shed, and officers were stationed to signal to Warder Elliott, who had ascended to the prison bell, ready to toll the passing knell. Although all was perfectly quiet within the walls, imagination readily supplied the grim details which were being enacted within the Prison.

  Pierrepoint: When all the officers arrived to witness the last dread act, I entered the condemned cell. Atherton was looking a little terrified. I pinioned his arms and prepared his neck. Then I gently tapped him on the shoulder, and said, ‘Keep your pluck up, my lad.’ This put life in him. I said I would get it over as quickly as possible. I brought him into the corridor. The procession started.

  Reporter: The colliery buzzers had commenced to sound, and the first stroke of eight on the clock over the Assize Courts had sounded, when the voice of the Chaplain was heard reciting the opening sentence of the burial service: ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.’ A second later the procession came in view, in the following order: Chief Warder Barlow; the Chaplain, the Rev D Jacob; the pinioned culprit, with Assistant Warder Hutton and Assistant Warder Duke on either side; the executioner and his assistant; Principal Warder Lenthrall, and Schoolmaster-Warder Dawson; the Acting Under Sheriff; Captain Temple, the Governor; the medical officer; Assistant Warder Jones bringing up the rear.

  The culprit, who seemed remarkably calm and composed, and walked with a firm step, fixed the Press representatives with a look which betokened that he had something to communicate. However, the procession hurried on, and Atherton saw the preparations which had been made for the carrying out of the dread sentence. From the beam there was the rope reaching well nigh to the floor. On the drop there was the ankle strap lying ready for use, and across the drop there were two stout boards with foot-pieces, ready for the attendant warders to render Atherton assistance if required.

  At the door the Chaplain stepped aside, and the remainder of the procession passed inside. The moment the threshold had been passed, Atherton’s cap had been removed from his head, and the executioners urged him forward to the mark in the drop. The assistant instantly dropped on to his knees and fastened the ankle strap, and while Pierrepoint was adjusting the noose, Atherton in a husky voice cried out, ‘Yer hanging an innocent man.’

  Pierrepoint: Whether or not, I could not flinch … I pulled the lever, which gave Atherton a drop of 7 feet 3 inches, and launched him into the hereafter.

  Reporter: Atherton shot from view before – incredible as it may seem – the clock had ceased striking … As the Press representatives stepped forward and looked into the pit the body was hanging perfectly still. The execution house was then closed till nine o’clock, when the executioners withdrew the body from the pit, released it from the rope, and removed the other paraphernalia of their dread office. In the meantime the official notices were posted at the Prison gates, certifying that judgment of death had been duly executed on Atherton.

  The inquest was held at nine-thirty in the Governor’s office at the Prison, by Mr Coroner J Graham, assisted by a jury. Prior to the enquiry the jury viewed the body of the law’s victim which was lying on the floor of the execution house enclosed in a plain black deal coffin. Atherton’s lips were very blue, and there was a swelling of the neck. Otherwise his features were placid, and gave no appearance of a violent death.

  APPENDIX C

  Albert Pierrepoint’s own account of his first execution as chief executioner follows. It took place at Pentonville Prison in 1941, the victim being a club manager, Antonio Mancini, aged thirty-nine, sentenced to death for the killing of Harry Distleman, who was stabbed at the Palm Beach Bottle Party club in London’s Soho. Pierrepoint’s assistant was Steve Wade.

  At five minutes to nine we were given the signal that the Sheriff had gone to the Governor’s office. wade and I walked across the prison yard with an officer who led us up to the corridor outside the condemned cell. I think the next minutes of waiting were the worst, not only then but on every occasion. It is impossible not to feel apprehension and even fear at the prospect of the responsibility of the moment, but with me the frailty passed as soon as there was action. At half a minute to nine a small group came down the corridor. There was the Sheriff, the Governor, the doctor and some senior prison officers. I suddenly had a strange realisation. I was the youngest man there, and the eyes of everyone were on me. The party paused at the next door to that of the condemned cell, the door of the execution chamber. A finger was raised and they passed in. The chief opened the door of the cell and I went forward with a strap in my hand.

  The prisoner was standing, facing me, smiling. In his civilian clothes he looked as smart as I had already registered him. In my civilian clothes, amid all those uniforms, we might have been meeting for a chat in a club in Leicester Square. But who would have foreseen a robed priest in the room? I quickly strapped his wrists and said ‘Follow me.’

  The door in the side wall of the cell had been opened as I came in, and I walked through it into the execution chamber. He followed me, walking seven paces with the noose straight ahead of him, and the escorting officers mounting the cross-planks gently stopped him as he stood on the T. I had turned in time to face him. Eye to eye, that last look. wade was stooping behind him, swiftly fastening the ankle strap. I pulled from my breast pocket the white cap, folded as carefully as a parachute, and drew it down over his head. ‘Cheerio,’ he said. I reached for the noose, pulled it down over the cap, tightened it to my right, pulled a rubber washer along the rope to hold it, and darted to my left, crouching towards the cotter pin at the base of the lever. I was in the position of a sprinter at the start of a race as I went over the cross-plank, pulled the pin with one hand, and pushed the lever with the other, instinctively looking back as I did so. There was a snap as the falling doors were bitten and held by the rubber clips, and the rope stood straight and still. The broken twine spooned down in a falling leaf, passed through a little eddy of dust, and floated into the pit.

  I went to the side of the scaffold and walked down into the pit. I undid the prisoner’s shirt for the stetho
scope, and the doctor followed me. I came up again, and waited. The doctor came back to the scaffold. ‘Everything is all right,’ he said. It was a curious way for a doctor to pronounce death. I suppose his intention was to reassure the Governor and possibly me …

  At ten o’clock Wade and I returned to the execution chamber. He went down into the pit and, kneeling on the scaffold floor, I complied with a strange requirement. By regulation, I had to measure from the heels of the hanging man to the level of the scaffold from which he had dropped. This measurement was longer than the drop I had given him. The extra length was made up by the stretch of the man’s body after death … He had been hanging for an hour, and the stretch was considerable …

  I put the tape measure away, and went below. I stared at the flesh I had stilled. I had further duties to perform, but no longer as executioner. I had been nearest to this man in death, and I prepared him for burial. As he hung, I stripped him. Piece by piece I removed his clothes. It was not callous, but the best rough dignity I could give him, as he swung to the touch, still hooded in the noose. He yielded his garments without the resistance of limbs. If it had been in a prison outside London, I should have left him his shirt for a shroud, and put him in his coffin. In London there was always a post-mortem, and he had to be stripped entirely and placed on a mortuary stretcher. But in common courtesy I tied his empty shirt around his hips.

  Wade had fixed the tackle above. I passed a rope under the armpits of my charge, and the body was hauled up a few feet. Standing on the scaffold, with the body now drooping, I removed the noose and the cap, and took his head between my hands, inclining it from side to side to assure myself that the break had been clean. Then I went below, and Wade lowered the rope. A dead man, being taken down from execution, is a uniquely broken body whether he is a criminal or Christ, and I received this flesh, leaning helplessly into my arms, with the linen round the loins, gently with the reverence I thought due to the shell of any man who has sinned and suffered.

  APPENDIX D

  The Home Office memorandum given to the Royal Commission set up in 1949 to consider whether capital punishment should be limited or modified detailed the routine of the last days of a man condemned to death.

  Immediately a prisoner sentenced to death returns from court, he is placed in a cell for condemned prisoners and is watched night and day by two officers. Amenities such as cards, chess, dominoes, etc, are provided in the cell and the officers are encouraged to – and invariably do – join the prisoner in these games.

  Newspapers and books are also provided. Food is supplied from the main prison kitchen, the prisoner being placed on hospital diet, with such additions as the medical officer considers advisable. A pint of beer or stout is supplied daily on request and ten cigarettes or half an ounce of pipe tobacco are allowed unless there are medical reasons to the contrary. The prisoner may smoke in his cell as well as exercise.

  It is the practice for the Governor, medical officer and chief officer to visit a prisoner under sentence of death twice daily, and the chaplain or minister of any other denomination has free access to him.

  He may be visited by such of his relations, friends and legal advisers as he desires to see and as are authorised to visit him by the Visiting Committee and the commissioners, and he is given special facilities to write and receive letters.

  The executioner and his assistant arrive at the prison by 4.0 pm on the day preceding the execution, and are not permitted to leave the prison until the execution has been carried out.

  They see the prisoner at exercise and test the execution apparatus with a bag of sand approximately of his weight. The bag is left hanging overnight to stretch the rope … It is common practice for the Governor to visit a prisoner before he retires for the night to talk to him and give him an opportunity to say anything he may wish. Some like to take advantage of this opportunity, others do not, but no one is forced to say anything.

  On the morning of the execution it is usual for the chaplain to spend the last hour with the prisoner and remain with him until the execution is over.

  Some twenty minutes before the time fixed for the execution the High Sheriff, or more usually the Under Sheriff, arrives at the prison, and a few minutes before it is due, proceeds with the Governor and medical officer to the place of execution.

  The executioner and his assistant wait outside the condemned cell, with the chief officer and officer detailed to conduct the prisoner to the execution chamber. On a signal given by the Sheriff they enter and the executioner pinions the prisoner’s arms behind his back. He is escorted to the drop with one officer on either side. The Sheriff, the Governor and the medical officer enter the execution chamber directly by another door.

  The prisoner is placed on the drop on a marked spot so that his feet are directly across the division of the trap doors. The executioner places a white cap over the prisoner’s head and places the noose round his neck, while the assistant pinions his legs. when the executioner sees that all is ready he pulls the lever.

  The medical officer at once proceeds to the pit and examines the prisoner to see that life is extinct. The shed is then locked and the body hangs for one hour. The inquest is held the same morning.

  Burial of the body takes place in the prison graveyard during the dinner hour. The chaplain reads the burial service.

  Burial within the prison precincts, where suitable space is strictly limited, gives rise to increasing difficulties. In some prisons bodies are already buried three deep.

  The duty thrown on prison staffs and others concerned is a distasteful one not only in carrying out the execution itself, but in the long-drawn preliminary stages. Indeed the actual execution may come as a relief from the mounting tension of the previous days.

  Anything tending to increase this atmosphere of tension in the prison generally has been, as far as possible, eliminated. The hoisting of a flag and the tolling of a bell were discontinued many years ago, and today the prisoners are no longer locked in the cells during an execution. The time fixed is after the normal routine of the prison is under way, and all prisoners are out at work or about their normal business.

  AFTERWORD

  I operated on behalf of the state, what I am convinced was the most humane and the most dignified method of meting out death to a delinquent – however justified or unjustified the allotment of death may be – and on behalf of humanity I trained other nations to adopt the British system of execution …

  I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.

  Albert Pierrepoint, 1974

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BEATTIE, John, The Yorkshire Ripper Story, Quartet Books, 1981

  BERRY, James, My Experiences as an Executioner, reprinted by David & Charles, 1972

  BLOM-COOPER, Louis, see MORRIS, Terence

  BRABIN, Hon. Mr Justice, The Case of Timothy John Evans, HMSO, 1966

  BROWNE, Douglas G, and TULLETT, EV, Bernard Spilsbury, George G Harrap, 1951

  COBB, Belton, Murdered on Duty, WH Allen, 1961

  DEARDON, Harold, Some Cases of Bernard Spilsbury and Others, Hutchinson, 1934

  DEELEY, Peter, and WALKER, Christopher, Murder in the Fourth Estate, Victor

  Gollancz, 1971

  DEW, walter, I Caught Crippen, Blackie & Son, 1938

  DOWNIE, R Angus, Murder in London, Arthur Barker, 1973

  Famous Trials, Geoffrey Bles (Norman Thorne)

  FARSON, Daniel, Jack the Ripper, Michael Joseph, 1972

  FIELDING, Steve, Pierrepoint:A Family of Executioners, John Blake,2006

  FURNEAUX, Rupert, Famous Criminal Cases, Vol 1, 6, 7, Oldham Press, 1954–62

  HASTINGS, Macdonald, The Other Mr Churchill, George G Harrap, 1963

  HIGGINS, Robert, In the Name of the Law, John Long, 1958

  HUGGETT, Renee, Daughters of Cain, Allen & Unwin, 1956

/>   HUMPHREYS, Travers, A Book of Trials, Heinemann, 1953

  KNIGHT, Stephen, Jack the Ripper:The Final Solution, George G Harrap, 1976

  LA BERN, Arthur, The Life and Death of a Ladykiller, Leslie Frewin, 1967

  LESSON, B, Lost London, Stanley Paul, 1934

  LINKLATER, Eric, The Corpse on Clapham Common, Macmillan, 1971

  LUSTGARTEN, Edgar, The Woman in the Case, André Deutsch, 1955

  MORRIS, Terence and BLOM-COOPER, Louis, A Calendar of Murder, MichaelJoseph, 1964

  NICHOLSON, Michael, The Yorkshire Ripper, WH Allen, 1979

  Notable British Trials, william Hodge (Peace, Maybrick, Dougal, Crippen, Morrison, theSeddons, Smith, Armstrong, True, Bywaters and Thompson, Browne and Kennedy, Craig and Bentley, Christie and Evans)

  O’DELL, Robin, Exhumation of a Murder, George G Harrap, 1975

  O’FLAHERTY, Michael, Have You Seen This Woman?, Corgi, 1971

  Old Bailey Trials, Jarrolds, 1945 (Jones & Hulten)