“My son, God is an angry God but a forgiving God. You will be granted entry to the Kingdom of Heaven, but never forget when the day of judgement comes, you will be held to account and you will meet your victims again. You must be resolute in your denunciation of your own evil acts. There is no penance I can set you other than the fate you are about to meet. Dare I say it, but my son the Old Testament talks of an ‘eye for an eye’. What do you yourself think? Do not be trite in your request.”
The priest’s words struck home quickly and hard with Klosowski. But he knew he was right. He began to shiver in fear of what was approaching and the harsh comfort that he had been given and felt constantly sick. He was a little deaf to some of the words the priest was now speaking but caught the tale end of the delivery as he saw the priest make the sign of the cross.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, may God bless you and save you. Amen.” The priest then walked out leaving the shivering wreck on the hard cold stone floor. Klosowski knelt alone and terrified, his face buried in his hands, his forehead on the cold floor. He was sobbing.
Just before 7.a.m and shortly after the priest had left, the guards brought in a last meal; a breakfast consisting of bread, butter and coffee. He had become a withdrawn nervous wreck in the face of imminent death and the slightest movement or sound saw him move in startled way like a terrified animal. He made eye contact with everyone who came into contact with him now looking for hope, help and rescue from his fate. He knew that this was really a pointless expression of emotion and merely fear controlling his psyche. He could barely bring himself to eat anything; he was starting to rock backwards and forwards in whatever position he was in, seated, kneeling, standing or otherwise. He was mumbling to himself and only managed two bites from the bread before he threw it into the corner of the cell and kicked the enamel mug holding black coffee across the floor in an act of futile defiance or so it seemed. He was not unsurprisingly slipping into a moody and depressed humour.
Elsewhere within the walls of Wandsworth prison had slept Mr William Billington the executioner for that part of London and his assistant Mr Henry Pierrepoint. This act of sleeping within the prison was a long held tradition and one that both men were happy to adhere to; not because of any sense of joy in their work but through a sense of solemn duty. On the Monday evening before, William Billington tested the gallows with an appropriately weighted sand bag which also had the effect of taking the stretch out of the rope. Billington had been born in 1873 and came from a family of state executioners holding this office from 1902 to 1905. It was a position that he had taken over from his father James who resigned office having been the executioner for the Wandsworth jurisdiction since 1884. He himself also became the London executioner in 1892 having succeeded the famous James ‘Hangman’ Berry.
Perhaps knowing that ultimately his fate would lead to a rendezvous with the executioner, Klosowski had obtained a rare copy of Berry’s book on his work. Being all too aware that he faced a front seat in the proceedings, he feared the remaining hour and minutes of his life having read about what was in store for him in great detail.
Henry Pierrepoint was also an accomplished executioner in his own right despite only being an assistant in these proceedings. He held office from 1901 to 1910 and despatched 117 prisoners in his tenure. Both he and Billington were known for their brisk and efficient work in the hangman’s shed and this morning would prove to be no different. Oddly they were also known for their abilities to keep the prisoner calm in the minutes they were led from their cells to imminent death with a softly spoken and almost caring demeanour in their spoken word.
The prison governor Major Knox gave the orders to commence the execution procedure around 8.a.m. Following his signal the grim face execution team entered the cell lead by Henry Pierrepoint and all observed how terrified Klosowski had become by his shaking and pallor. He was ordered to stand and knew that time to leave this world had come. Attempting to stand, at first he faltered and leaned back against the back wall of the cell in a slump. But before long he was slowly able to stand and with quiet brisk efficiency, born out practice and experience, the team moved forward and prepared him for the gallows with Pierrepoint briskly completing the task of ‘pinioning’; the practice of pinning the condemned man’s arms by their side. This practice was developed from the previous method of tying their arms in front of them which seemed to allow resistance from the prisoner. Klosowski looked on at the work being done around him wide eyed and in an almost trance like state numbed with fear.
Major Knox entered the cell with the pinioning having been completed.
“Prisoner, I don’t know what you said to the padre,” he said pacing the cell in his characteristic black suit and with a lit pipe in his right hand, “this is your chance for some honesty. There are some who believe you are guilty of several others murders, but in the main those perpetrated in Whitechapel fifteen years ago. Your next trial which it has been decided not to go to public expense with would have been for those murders and an attempted murder in Tottenham that same year. Now tell us, we can all bear witness to your confession, are you Jack the Ripper?” The cell was deathly silent. Klosowski’s head was bowed and he was gently sobbing. He looked up slowly into Knox’s face with an expression of helplessness. He appeared unable to speak. After a few seconds, that seemed like an eternity his mouth opened as if to speak.
He began to wretch, then cough and within another few seconds of this accompanied by a violent convulsing movement by his torso he vomited profusely. He wept loudly having ejected the meagre food he had taken in for breakfast and as the execution team held him upright he urinated in his trousers; it running down the inside of his trouser legs onto the floor. He never spoke in a language any of them recognised from that point until the rope dropped.
“Get over to the shed please, gentlemen,” said the Major in a somewhat disappointed tone.
The colour had now drained completely from his face and he was led by two prison guards out of the cell on his slow final death walk. Once out into the open air his true ashen pale colour showed through in the subdued morning daylight and he stumbled on numerous occasions having to be supported by the two guards. When he eventually looked up having taken his first unsteady steps out in the open he noticed the executioners wooden shed now less than fifty yards away from him. He fell to his knees immediately dragged back up by the two guards and began sobbing loudly again and screamed for mercy in Polish, a language that none of the gathered officials could understand. About ten yards from the shed door he collapsed one last time and was then physically carried into the building and to the base of the steps of the scaffolding.
In Polish, as they began the walk up the thirteen steps to the point of the executioners ‘6-6’ drop, he cursed those that would ‘take his miserable life’ under his breath. He was centred on the wooden trap door, which gave slightly as it took up his weight, by Billington and would soon drop away.
“All right son, nice and steady, nice and still that’s it,” said Billington as he neared the completion of his work. He strapped his legs together tightly and said nothing else to the clearly terrified and violently trembling Klosowski.
The white hood was then placed over his head and adjusted accordingly. The rope with thirteen turns constructed of hemp and silk was placed over his head and tightly pulled. Billington quickly found the right place for the knot to be placed for best and swiftest effect. With the shock of having had the rope placed over his head Klosowski seemed to raise his body as the final reality of it struck home. The thirteen foot rope, now stretched from the night before by Billington, would allow the proper force to be transmitted to the prisoner’s neck for the maximum and quickest effect. Klosowski was muttering incessantly below the hood while Billington gave a swift look to the officials gathered with Major Knox. Billington always tried to make the procedure within the shed as brisk as possible to keep the massive fear of imminent death to the minimum.
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sp; Almost as Knox gave a nod Billington pulled the lever for the trap doors. They opened with a small banging sound and 37 year old Severin Klosowski dropped the 6’6” from the trap door to the end of the rope’s fall. As the rope almost instantly reached the end of its drop it snapped the prisoner’s neck and his head jerked backwards ending his life with an incredibly loud audible snap of bone and vertebrae tissue. The sound of the trap doors banging open would have been the last sound Klosowski heard. His body twitched and shook for a moment and then swayed silently as bodily fluids drained out of it. There was silence across the scaffold amongst the execution team and the gathered witnesses, most of who despite not being strangers to these events were still shocked by the controlled brutality of the procedure.
Attending as a government official was a local doctor called Beamish who now stepped forward from the witness gallery to certify that life was extinct. Placing a stethoscope on Klosowski’s chest there was a faint heart beat that very quickly faded away to nothing and Dr Beamish was indeed able to pronounce him dead. He was then left hanging in the shed, which was secured to prevent theft of the body, for one hour which ensured that there would be no mistake in his death.
An hour later the execution team led by William Billington returned to the locked shed and removed the body to be taken to the district coroner Mr Troutbeck. Under his examination and following a short inquest it was noted that the dead Klosowski’s neck was now elongated by about one inch. The traditional black flag was raised above the prison to signify that an execution had taken place. Gathered outside the prison gates was a crowd of about 150 people consisting of journalists, the curious members of the public, a small group of relatives of the victims of Jack the Ripper and curiously, with her brother Stanislaus and her sister, was Lucy Klosowski, formerly Baderski. They were comforting her as the flag was raised as Severin had refused to see her or anyone else prior to his execution barring the compulsory visit of the priest. The rest of the crowd cheered as the flag moved up its pole, especially those with family links to the victims who had gathered following the reported speculation that Klosowski was the infamous Whitechapel Murderer as a result of Abberline’s comment to Godley. There were some women who then broke in tears who had a close link to either Tabrum, Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes or Kelly. Photographers with the journalists took a few still pictures of the throng and of the flag above the prison. As the wave of macabre euphoria passed among the crowd the journalists got to work interviewing the most vulnerable or vociferous.
Stanislaus gave his grieving sister a hug having introduced her to Severin many years before. Despite his monstrous acts he was still her husband and the father to her three children and she therefore felt affection for his part in this family group. Seeing a journalist and photographer approach them, Stanislaus ushered all three of them away and they disappeared through the crowd and then out of sight.
Klosowski was buried in an unmarked grave within the walls of the prison with the rope still tight around his neck. He would be one of only 763 hung throughout England and Wales during the 20th century upon the last working gallows to be dismantled in England. They were last used on September 8th 1961, the anniversary of Annie Chapman’s murder and dismantled on the 31st July 1992.
***
St John’s Hospital situated at 307 South Euclid Avenue, St Louis, Missouri had been established in 1871 by Mother M de Pazzi Bentley as a charitable hospice for the care of the old and infirm and terminally ill. It had been run for sometime by the Sisters of Mercy and as Francis Tumblety reached seventy years of age with failing health he had decided that it would be a good place to die. The fight, resilience and resourcefulness within him had long since gone and he found it difficult to look after himself. He had become particularly fond of Sister Mary Theresa the red haired pretty Irish nun who treated him with a tenderness for which he had always longed. She knew him as Francis Townsend the name under which he had registered when he had arrived at the hospital on Sunday 26th April 1903. He was fond of shuffling around the grounds with his walking stick for support in his faded red and threadbare military tunic. He had few possessions all of which he was open about as none of them held a clue to his evil past.
On Monday 25th May he had become very weak and he realised with the medical knowledge he possessed that had little time left owing to a serious heart condition he had developed in the last twelve months. That day he insisted on dressing for his usual walk and showing his old and normally subdued strength of will and independence he went for his walk alone. The air smelt fresh and cool during that morning and its fantastic summer nature reminded him of when he had first met Mary Kelly. The aggression and bitterness that accompanied their relationship was something that he failed to recall with halcyon images of their times together before Paris, and the renewal of his faith in womankind. He strolled amongst the leafy orchard of peach trees with it’s fantastic fruit laden scent, the sumptuous lawns and the finely laid ornamental gardens with their elegant topiary; it was here he concluded that this was a fitting last place on earth in which to exist.
He had walked for quite sometime tiring himself greatly but not really aware of the flat footed nature with which he was shuffling around the grounds. He made it back to the steps at the rear of the hospital which ran down from a set of fine oak carved ornamental double doors that opened out onto this idyllic vista. He sat slowly and awkwardly on the steps, his every muscle and joints in his legs straining to get himself seated to take in the view. He was unaware that his stick was only teetering on the edge of a step to give him support and as it tried to bear all of his body weight it slipped forward off of its precarious perch. Tumblety fell forward completely losing his balance and toppling down several of the steps his face striking hard on one of the steps breaking his nose. He was fortunate not to break any other of his fragile bones as he lay concussed at the base of the steps.
His strolling of the grounds and now this drama was being observed by a middle aged well dressed stranger. He was lean in his build with marginally greying hair, and looked on with concern from the orchard as he saw the old man fall. ‘Bollocks. Not having come this far. He can’t collapse without the chance of a question being asked.’ The thoughts of disappointment rushed through his mind. He looked on to see two of the nuns rush down the steps to tend the frail old man. They gently lifted his limp body between them and got it sat on the steps; his face lifted to look out over the grounds which showed the old man’s face streaming with blood. He looked seriously distressed but he was at least alive. ‘Still a chance to speak to this man about his past’. A third nun came into view at the top of the steps with a heavy wooden wheel chair. She then descended the few steps to join her colleagues and they eased the old man up the steps and into the wheel chair. He looked ill and winced as one of the nuns tried to gently wipe the blood from his face. The stranger hoped there was still time to have his questions answered. He would use the guile that he knew the old man had used many years ago in London to evade justice. The old man was turned around into a wheel chair and taken back into the hospital building. One of the nuns walked back down the steps and picked up the old man’s stick. The stranger had seen this stick many years before and knew it had itself born witness to the terrible acts committed by the one who now left it lying at the base of the steps.
***
Thursday 28th May; the weak and ailing Francis Townsend lay in his bed in a private room with the warm summer sun streaming through the window. His squinting eyes were able to make out the deep green leaves of the peach trees in the orchard having been propped up in the bed by Sister Mary Theresa when he had first woken. With his sins playing over in his mind along with the thoughts of the life he had led he knew that his time was drawing near. He stared around the comfortable though austere room and felt sad that he had so little to show for his seventy years from an intrinsic point of view that he could willingly pass on. In reality, however, he had no one to benefit from any mementoes he would leave behind
.
He heard the door to the room open and turning his head slowly he looked across the room toward it. Closing the door behind him was a smartly turned out, middle aged, lean, slightly greying catholic priest carrying a bag that had a familiar look to it in his failing glance. He had thoughts of requesting absolution but had felt almost too guilty to do so for fear of the sisters discovering his secret; not that a priest would pass on his secret. Seeing the priest he knew he must seize the opportunity to do so and die at least he felt with a clear conscience.
Tumblety’s eyes were failing and he could not really distinguish the finer points of the priest features, yet when he spoke he sounded familiar and certainly hadn’t been a local man by birth.
“Father, how fortuitous for me to see you. Thank you,” said Tumblety weakly, his mouth feeling dry and his heart seemingly labouring.
“You are welcome, my son. The sisters had informed me you had not been well these last few days.” The priest’s voice was that of an Englishman and had a colloquial quality he recognised.
“Are you from London, father?” He asked quietly.
“Yes, my son. From a London parish but I am here as a missionary. Tell me, what can I do for you?”
“Forgive me, father, I have sinned.” Tumblety began with a rasping voice and with a struggle for breath. “I have done terrible things and I seek absolution. I have fuelled the commission of terrible things too.”
The priest sat at the side of the bed with seemingly an air of curiosity over any other emotion. As he sat Tumblety could hear the knocking of the priest’s rosary beads; as a formerly devout catholic during his formative years it was a sound that took him back to his childhood.
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