“Yes, I was, Mr Manley. Fair made our eyes pop out. Don’t think the timing could get any faster than that.”
The head warder made a quick sideways glance at the governor who wasn’t looking too happy. Reg seemed to be milking the occasion this time and he reckoned someone would be getting it in the neck for this and he didn’t want it to be him. He added quickly, “Having worked with Mr Manley before, I think we can get the fellow through the trap in about fifteen seconds. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Sounds about right, Mr Cummings. Twenty seconds, tops. OK. We have one minute more, gentlemen. Could we please organize ourselves so we don’t have to shuffle backwards and forwards outside the cells and unduly alert the prisoner? Mr Cummings, would you lead the way, please? Mr Wallace, Dr Monson, Mr Lorne and Mr Vine. We will make up the second party.” He turned to the priest. “Padre, you will be last in behind Mr Lees. We’re not going to wait for you so best start saying whatever prayers you want before we go through the door. Mr Cummings – wait for 9 o’clock on the mark of the hour if you would.”
The governor’s door opened and the group variously shuffled themselves into position behind the figure of the head warder. With the governor and the officials ahead of him, Reg turned to his assistant. “Got the stopwatch ready Jim, old son?”
Jim tapped his breast pocket. “Ready and waiting, Reg. Make it a good ‘un, eh?”
Reg winked. “Let’s do it.” A quick look at the wall clock.
8.56
“Thank you, Mr Cummings. Time to go.”
E Wing ran off the Panopticon at the centre of the prison and the condemned cell was on the second-floor landing – second to the last on the left. The very last door was that of the execution chamber. Reg had walked along these gangways a number of times but for Jim Lees this was his first visit to Wandsworth. He had thought Durham was grim but this beat it hands down. It wasn’t just the peeling paint and an all-pervasive smell of dampness that seeped through the outer walls. The slopping out system meant that spillages from the buckets were frequent, often deliberate, and the stones of the cell walls both inside and out were stained a permanent yellow. A new surface of paint every five years failed to keep the splashes and smears covered for long. As the execution party rounded the centre of the Panopticon, Jim could make out the large ‘E’ painted in whitewash over the archway running off the centre hub. A number of prison warders were gathered at the entrance to each wing but with all the prisoners locked in their cells they had little to do now except wait. An all-enveloping claustrophobic silence wreathed the prison.
As they turned onto E wing, a hidden voice, incarcerated in one of the cells, suddenly blossomed into the dense air, singing in a golden and bright high tenor:
“Snyku mily i wybrany, Rozdziel z matka swoje rany.”
Jim felt the hairs on the back of his head rise. In this vast man-made Golgotha this single dazzling voice cleaved through the gloomy chasms:
“A wszakom cie, snyku mily,w swem sercu nosila, A takiez tobie wiernie sluzyla.”
The troop, unfaltering in its step, headed on down the walkway of E wing. Behind them the voice sang on, hovering in expectation, before finally falling silent:
“Prezmow k matce, bych sie ucieszyla, Bo juz jidziesz ode mnie, moja nadzieja mila.”
The head warder, governor and others reached the entrance to the execution chamber. Reg and Jim with the priest halted at the condemned cell. Jim turned to the priest who stood beside him flicking through the pages of his missal and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What was that singing? Do you have any idea?” he whispered.
“Polish prisoner,” the priest lisped.
Jim heard the catch in the priest’s voice and was surprised to see a tear had rolled down his cheek and rested at the corner of his mouth.
“More eloquent than anything I – or this – could ever say.” He waved the missal in front of him. “A mother’s lament for her son, I just hope he heard it.” The priest gestured towards the door.
Reg eyed the giant clock hung above the archway at the end of the wing. 8.59.
He whispered to the warder by the door. “On my signal, open and stand back. Got it?”
The warder nodded.
Reg turned to his assistant. There was total control in his voice, no wavering. “Ready? Stopwatch. Arm tie. Leg tie. And no fuck-ups. In that order.”
Lees tapped his breast pocket. Thumbs up. Everyone on the landing watched the clock with its big hand nestling up to the hour. Reg quickly turned to look at the head warder and back again. They all seemed to be ready. Back to the clock.
Twenty more seconds.
Jim poised with his finger on the stopwatch button in his top pocket. One clock ticking, one ready to start. A life twenty seconds from ending.
Wait.
Wait.
The minute hand of the large clock fell over onto the hour.
Reg turned to the head warder and gave him the thumbs up. Cummings opened the execution chamber and went in followed by the others. The timing was vitally important. Reg had given Cummings ten seconds to get everyone placed and the connecting door open. He tapped the warder on the elbow.
“Watch my fingers and open on one…”.
He held both hands up, fingers outstretched, and closed each one into his fist, mouthing the numbers to the warder as they dropped. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. One hand closed. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. The warder clicked over the lock, pushed the door and stood back.
Through the door, Jim following, the priest beginning to say words behind them.
“Stand up!” Cummings gave a parade ground shout as he came through the connecting door and Henry, startled, instinctively turned towards him. The two warders on cell watch, Wickes and Greenslade, moved to one side, scraping the chair legs across the concrete floor. Reg came up behind Henry and grabbed both his arms, pulling them together behind his back. Lees slipped the tie around the wrist, noticing the fresh dents on Henry’s fingers where he had been holding a pencil.
Buckle!
Reg came around to the front of Henry and looked him in the eye.
Henry smiled. “I’ve left something for you Mr Manley.” He indicated the table where he had been sitting.
Instinctively Reg followed his gaze and noticed a box and a book sitting on the table top.
“You must read it. You must. Thank you.” Henry whispered. And he smiled again. Later, Reg was to say that this was the precise moment he realized the execution was going to go wrong.
Reg put his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Follow me, son.”
Six seconds
Cummings, Reg, Henry, Lees, the priest. Forward through the connecting door, Henry ducked his head as he passed through the archway. The gallows rope hung in readiness from the beam that stretched across the whole width of the execution chamber. Reg saw the witnesses jammed up against the cell wall. Good. Well out of the way.
Ten seconds.
Cummings quickly peeled off to the left leaving Reg to lead Henry onto the trap. His feet were placed on the white chalk mark that the Reg had made the night before.
Dead centre.
Thirteen seconds.
Jim. Right pocket. Leather strap in hand. Bent to bind ankles. Reg flicked the cloth out from his breast pocket, the bag billowing open perfectly.
The priest watching from the back wall thought for a moment that a bird had flown into the cell as he saw the bag hover in the air. Reg placed the cloth over Henry’s head and pulled down the noose and quickly slipped it over Henry’s head. Knot under his left ear.
Tighten.
Buckle!
Reg tapped Jim on the shoulder to step back off the trap.
“For you, Mr Manley. Read it!” Henry shouted, and the bag sucked in and out at the words.
Again. “Read it!”
Eighteen seconds
Reg moved to the side of the trap and knocked out the cotter pins in the lever.
Like a railway signalman changing the p
oints on a loop line, Reg stretched and stooped forward with the lever.
The trap-door parted in the middle and Henry descended away from the world.
The slam of the heavy oak against the restraining buffers in the cell beneath rocked the room, physically shocking the witnesses. Reg and Jim look at each other. Jim removed the stopwatch from his breast pocket and squinted at the face.
“Twenty seconds, Mr Manley.”
Reg nodded. “Good. Good. Not bad. Could have been a little quicker.”
He checked the taut rope and steadied the minute swing with his hand. Difficult to get such a big fellow absolutely bang on the middle but this was pretty nigh perfect. But something about this was different, and Henry’s calm had unsettled Reg who had seen every shade of terror and despair in the eyes of the men he dispatched.
From the viewpoint of the governor, pressed against the side wall, Henry’s bagged head hovered just above the parapet of the trap triggering a grotesque association in his imaginations – a “Chad” peering over a wall, a nightmarish “Kilroy woz here.”
The doctor, whose duty it was to certify death, waited for Reg’s signal that he should come forward and check for signs of life, but the hangman seemed preoccupied. His gaze was not, like everyone else’s, down at the bagged head of Henry Eastman, but towards the connecting door between the execution chamber and the condemned cell. After the shock of the reverberating trap doors, the silence that descended was even more intense.
Time, rushing headlong just seconds before had come to a full stop. No-one had moved. Through the archway of the door Reg could see the table at which Henry had been sitting just over thirty seconds ago. His chair, the seat probably still warm, was now pushed to one side. On the table lay a black book on top of which sat a box.
“Read it!” Eastman had said.
Why me? Why me? I’m just the bloody hangman.
And then, from the trap in the execution chamber, came a stuttering breath.
Resurrection
Reg, momentarily frozen like everyone else in that room, listened to hear if there were any more sounds from the trap-door. He looked at Jim who still had the stopwatch in his hand. His mouth open, he stared at Reg as if hoping for guidance. The quick, halting breath came once more.
“Holy fuck, he’s still alive!” Reg snapped. “Jim, follow me. Quick. Quick.”
The governor’s face had turned white. “Oh, mother of God.”
Reg, Jim and the prison engineer quickly headed over to the far corner of the execution chamber. Reg lifted a sunken handle in the floor and pulled up a second trap-door.
“I hope, for everyone’s sake, you’ve got a fucking ladder ready down here, Mr Vine. Otherwise we’re well and truly buggered.”
“Yes, I put it there myself last night.”
Reg was the first down, quickly followed by the other two. The comparative darkness of the chamber enveloped them as they descended to the floor. Fifteen feet above their heads, the two heavy wooden flaps of the execution trap lay at right angles to the ceiling, caught by the snatch mechanism that stopped them flapping back and forth when released. The only light came from above, filtering past the body of Henry hanging in the trap. Another breath. This time the head moved in the bag.
“Oh, Jesus, sweet fucking Jesus! Mr Vine, get me the ladder. Quick!”
There was a panic in Reg’s voice Jim had never heard before and it set his stomach churning.
“OK, son, I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming. It’ll be alright. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”
Jim watched Reg. Even in this gloom he could see beads of sweat on his forehead as he continued to talk, almost to himself. The prison engineer manoeuvred the tall ladder towards the hanging body.
“OK, son, soon be finished. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Reg placed the ladder against the wall as close to Henry as possible and turned to Jim.
“Hold the bloody ladder while I go up. Don’t move from this spot until I come down.”
He climbed the steps and, as he did so, Jim could hear him muttering “Oh sweet Jesus, oh Lord, this isn’t right.” He reached a spot opposite the hanging body, just below Henry’s waist. He looked down at Jim and the engineer.
“Hold that ladder tight, Jim, and get ready to catch me if I should fall.”
Another breath came from the bag. Reg leant out from the ladder and carefully measured the distance between himself and Henry’s legs. About three feet he reckoned. With a grunt he launched himself off the ladder and reached around the knees of the hanging man. For a split second Reg thought he was going to slip down and fall away into the chamber but the adrenalin made him grasp more firmly. From below, Jim and the engineer saw the two figures swinging backwards and forwards, pushed by the momentum of Reg’s jump. Then, suddenly, there was a sharp crack. Henry’s neck had, at last, snapped.
Clawing with his feet and pushing hard against Henry’s body, Reg managed to get himself safely back on the rungs of the ladder.
The crack had been heard in the execution chamber above but all that the governor could see was Henry’s bagged head swinging to and fro at the entrance to the trap-door. The nightmare that had kept him awake for nights on end, sweating into his pillow, was manifesting in front of his eyes. He turned to the padre: “I’ve got to get out of here. Are you coming?”
Reverend Ripley, looking as pale as the governor, nodded but as they made moves towards the door, Mr Cummings, the head warder, quickly came up to the governor’s elbow.
“Er… a moment, Sir. Before we can leave, the doctor has to make an initial check on the prisoner. Just to make sure. Just to be on the safe side. I think it would be OK for you just to stand in the doorway though, Sir, if that would make you more comfortable.”
The governor nodded, unable to answer. He stepped into the doorway. Two warders outside on the landing eyed the ashen-faced governor but said nothing.
“Doc, if you would, please.” The head warder indicated the trap-door. From his pocket the doctor pulled out a stethoscope, placed the two ends into his ears and walked over to the trap-door. Lowering himself to the floor he leant into the open gap and peered down into the darkness.
“Mr Manley, is it OK for me to make an examination?” The doctor called down but couldn’t quite make out the figures in the gloom below Henry Eastman’s swinging feet. There was no reply.
“Mr Manley?”
Below, Reg had regained the foot of the ladder but was resting his brow against one of the rungs. This had never happened before. Never. He was sure he had got the weight/drop ratio spot on. He’d dropped plenty without much more than a scuffle or two on the trap-door. Most of them were too scared shitless to do anything but just stand there like rabbits caught in a headlight. The machinery did the stuff. Bag, noose, lever, bang, bye bye. Some called out for their mums. Funny that. Not this one though. He was different, right from the start. Reg could still feel Henry’s legs against his chest as he had swung back and forth, praying for the sound of the crack. If this got out there’d be questions asked. If? If? Bloody when it got out, more likely. The governor would be the first to be on the blower to the Home Office and those bastard warders would have the news round the prisons before long. His hand, resting on the rung next to his head, was shaking. Oh, Christ in a teacup, what a shambles!
“Reg… Reg… Doc wants to examine. Is it OK?” Jim spoke at Reg’s shoulder. He could see the sweat sliding down the side of Reg’s head. Without lifting his head from the ladder, Reg nodded and whispered hoarsely, “Yes.”
Jim looked up to the open trap-door and called: “OK, Doc. Reg says go ahead.”
The doctor leant over the edge of the trap and reached down to the shirt of Henry which was open at the neck just below the noose. As he pulled apart the shirt front with a swift tug a couple of the buttons fell away and dropped into the chamber floor by the hangman’s feet. Placing the bell on Henry’s bare chest the doctor listened carefully for a matter of seconds. Jim waited
anxiously below for his reply. This had been a fuck-up of massive proportions and even though he had done nothing wrong he was bound to be bracketed with Reg. The Home Office hated anything going wrong and there would be a black mark against “Manley and Lees” on this one, no doubt.
“Heart stopped.” The doctor called down.
Jim turned to Reg. “It’s over, Reg.” He put his hand on Reg’s shoulder but was shocked to feel a vibration running through the hangman. Christ! He was crying. Jim quickly turned to the prison engineer. “It’s OK. We’ll take it from here. You carry on back up and we’ll follow on in a minute.” He watched as Mr Vine retreated to the stairway leading up to the execution chamber
“Reg.” He whispered. “It’s OK, mate. All done and dusted.” He leant in closer. “Vine’s gone.”
A sob escaped from Reg. “Oh shit. Fucking shit.” He scrabbled in his trouser pocket for a handkerchief and pulling out a perfectly ironed white square that his wife had packed for him, he flicked it out by its corner, letting it blossom outwards before bringing it to his face. He blew his nose noisily. “What went wrong, Jim? I’m sure I got everything right. Definite.” He pushed the handkerchief back into his pocket and took in a large breath. “They’ll crucify us for this, especially that bastard governor.”
Jim wasn’t happy to hear the “us”. He had done his job as asked, no less, and he didn’t like to think his chances of becoming more than just an assistant would be jeopardized by something Reg had done wrong.
His boss seemed to gain some composure. “I’m going up top. I want to take a look at that noose.” Halting at the base of the stairs, he took another look at the hanging body of Henry, shook his head and then began the climb up to the upper chamber. Upstairs the execution chamber had emptied except for the doctor and the head warder still standing close by the door.
“Mr Cummings.” Reg had regained some semblance of his usual authoritative voice. “Thank you for your assistance. Pity this one didn’t go quite to plan. Can’t win ’em all, eh?” He laughed but it sounded false and there were no reciprocating smiles from either the doctor or the head warder. Reg pulled out his watch. “It’s ten past nine now, so could we meet back here in thirty minutes, Doc? Just to finalize things before we take him down and move him out?” Without waiting for a reply Reg turned to the head warder: “Jim and I just want to check the apparatus here first and then we’ll join you in the governor’s office, Mr Cummings. Try and sweeten the bugger up before we get down there. Would be his first hanging, of course. Tell him this was my thirtieth and I’ve never had any trouble before.”
A Coin for the Hangman Page 24