Drop Dead

by Lorna Poplak

  As she afterwards explained in “her own hesitant and broken speech” to Honor D. Fanning of the Pittsburgh Press , “I was afraid. I felt hot. He went upstairs to bed. That was noon. The children were out at play. I was mad. Blood was hot. No place for me to go. No friends, I could not stand it. I was crazy. I go to the kitchen for the axe. I go upstairs. I think if he is awake he kill me. I did not care. I was sick of life. He was asleep. I struck him. I kill him. It had to be.”

  The facts emerged during Angelina’s trial in Sault Ste. Marie. She and Pietro were both Italian immigrants who had arrived in Ontario in 1909. Her husband, a steel mill worker, started pressing her to earn more money for the family through prostitution. Angelina, a mother of four, refused. Pietro became increasingly insistent and increasingly violent. His wife was hospitalized after he attacked her viciously in November 1910, slashing her nine times on her head and shoulders. On the day of the murder, he had again threatened to kill her.

  Her lawyer, appointed after trial proceedings had already begun, argued that her actions were driven by her husband’s abuse and made reference to the stabbing in 1910. Interestingly, this was the first time that the battered woman defence was ever used in a Canadian court. The judge was not impressed: if everyone were to use an old injury to justify murder, he ruled, chaos would ensue. Angelina was sentenced to hang in August, which would allow just enough time for her baby to be born.

  Public reaction was huge and immediate. Some argued that the murder proved that foreigners were a danger to the country, especially hot-blooded ones who were only too ready to resort to violence to settle their differences. But masses of people leapt to Angelina’s defence, as the Norwalk Hour reported in July 1911: “Hundreds of thousands of men and women are petitioning against the death penalty in this case.… In Ottawa, Minister of Justice Aylesworth … is deluged daily with petitions pleading for her pardon. From every province of Canada, from every state in the American union, from the kingdoms over the sea, men and women are writing urging mercy.”

  Dr. Alexander Aalto, a middle-aged bachelor from Ashtabula, Ohio, offered to take Angelina’s place on the gallows. And, according to an article in the Reading Eagle , so did Claude Winsby, an artist from Fort Scott, Kansas: “My desire is to offer my life as a substitute for one which is capable of bringing into the world a child, which, if in this country, might rise to the head of the nation. In America we esteem a pure woman. In your country, if reports are true, you hang them for defending their chastity.”

  What a huge black eye for the Canadian criminal justice system.

  Also stepping up to defend Angelina was the Common Cause , a British publication that styled itself as the organ of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies: “We imagine that the sentence will not be carried out. But what decent purpose could be served by passing sentence of death upon a pregnant woman? What fantastic notions of the ‘sacredness of life’ can men have who will perform such monstrosities in the name of justice?”

  Those men were listening. On July 14, 1911, the federal Cabinet commuted Angelina’s sentence to life imprisonment. After eleven years in the Kingston Penitentiary, she was granted parole.

  As Sir Wilfrid Laurier summed it up in the House of Commons in 1917, there was “something revolting in the idea that a woman should be sentenced to death.”

  But by the time Florence Lassandro committed her crime in 1922, things were changing in Canada and across the world. Women were on the move. They were marching, waving banners, organizing protests. They resented being treated as inferior to men. They campaigned for the right to vote in public elections and take part in political life. And, in addition to demanding the same opportunities as men, women were prepared to accept the same responsibilities.

  In sentencing Florence to death, Judge William Walsh said: “The only thing that can be said in favour of the prisoner, Lassandro, is that she is a woman. I know, of course, quite well the reluctance that there is to execute the death sentence upon a woman.… If she was a man, there could be no question but that the sentence should be executed.”

  The letters and petitions for and against commuting Florence Lassandro’s death sentence to life in prison piled up. The outspoken Emily Murphy, Canada’s first female magistrate, stressed her own opinion in a letter to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King: “I also desire to protest against the pernicious doctrine that because a person who commits a murder is a woman that person should escape from capital punishment. As women we claim the privileges of citizenship for our sex, and we accordingly are prepared to take upon ourselves the weight of the penalties as well.”

  As you can imagine, Emily Murphy’s objection did not help Florence’s cause.

  What a difference a decade made. The same voices that had militantly supported Angelina against a male-dominated legal system were the undoing of Florence when women started pushing their way into the political arena.

  But there were so many black marks against Florence that even the most passionate support from the women’s movement would probably not have made the slightest difference. As noted by Jana Pruden in the Edmonton Journal , Florence packed a gun. She took part in the violent and criminal act of bootlegging. She shot a policeman in front of his family, which many saw as the wicked act of an ungrateful immigrant.

  Emilio Picariello was hanged at the Provincial Gaol, Fort Saskatchewan, on May 2, 1923. Then Florence Lassandro, her senses dulled by a combination of alcohol and morphine, followed her boss up the eighteen steps to the scaffold. And she, too, dropped to her death.

  Coincidentally, thirty years later, the eleventh and last woman to hang, Marguerite Pitre, also went to the gallows for helping a man commit a murder. Albert Guay wanted to get rid of his wife and marry his mistress. On his instructions, Marguerite bought dynamite that was used to make a time bomb, which was then planted on an airplane. The bomb exploded, punching the plane out of the sky. Mrs. Guay was on that flight, and she perished. So did twenty-two other passengers and crew members.

  Chapter 8

  The Science and Art of Hanging

  W illiam Marwood, the British executioner who trained John Radclive, has been credited with introducing to his native country the long drop method, which determined the length of rope required for a hanging. A cobbler by trade, Marwood must have been a very convincing salesman. He persuaded the authorities at Lincoln Castle’s prison to let him try out this new technique to hang William Frederick Horry in 1872. The execution went off perfectly, launching fifty-four-year -old Marwood’s new career as official hangman.

  The long drop, also known as the measured drop, was designed to break the prisoner’s neck instead of causing death by strangulation. Within a few years, this method, originally developed by doctors in Ireland, entirely replaced the existing types of hanging: the short drop, where the condemned person would fall just a few inches and strangle to death, and the standard drop, where the individual would fall between four and six feet and break his or her neck (or, if that failed, die more slowly of strangulation).

  The advantage of the long drop was that it was based on scientific principles. A mathematical formula, predicated on the height and body weight of the condemned, was used to calculate the distance of the drop after the trap was opened. The aim was to get the person falling quickly enough to provide a striking force (or drop energy) of between 840 and 1,260 foot-pounds. The placement of the knot of the noose just under the left ear was also a critical element in the process of dislocation or separation of the upper vertebrae. If everything went smoothly, it all made for a much quicker and presumably more humane death than strangulation.

  Just in case the finer details of mathematical calculation left puzzled hangmen scratching their heads, British authorities published (and occasionally revised) an official table of drops, which was adopted in Canada as well.

  But there was another crucial factor required to ensure a decent hanging: experience. To illustrate this point, Albert Pierrepoint, pre-emin
ent British hangman in the first half of the twentieth century, quoted in his autobiography Executioner: Pierrepoint the words of his first instructor: “Now you’ve got your table, Home Office issue, table of drops, executioners, for the use of. Use it, but use your own judgement too. Remember it’s only a guide, and you’ve got to vary it according to your experience.… An executioner has to use his own judgement. That only comes by experience.”

  So instead of the previous one-size-fits -all approach, you had a new and humane method of calculating the drop, tailored to the individual. In addition, the hangman was a professional, a craftsman who could fall back on his training and experience to fine-tune his calculations.

  Science plus art. What could possibly go wrong?

  As it turns out, quite a lot.

  Your executioner, for example, might miscalculate the drop, making it too short. On December 15, 1870, the Morning Chronicle reported on the double hanging at the Frontenac County Gaol in Kingston, Ontario, of Daniel Mann, convicted for the murder of a prison guard at the Kingston Penitentiary, and John Deacon, convicted of poisoning his wife with a cup of arsenic-laced tea. There were two masked hangmen on duty that day, neither of them able to prevent what happened when the signal was given: “The drop fell with a great noise, the men falling about 5 feet; the fall was not sufficient to break either of their necks, so they died of strangulation.… It was ascertained from the Gaol Surgeon that Mann’s pulse beat for ten minutes, and Deacon’s for fifteen minutes.”

  Another possibility was that your executioner might miscalculate and make the drop too long. François Moreau, a thirty-seven-year -old farmer from St-Anaclet, Quebec, was hanged on January 13, 1882, for the axe murder of his wife, Démérise Roy. According to Le Meutrier de Rimouski (The Murderer of Rimouski ), a report written at the time about the crime, trial, and execution of François Moreau, the drop was nine feet; death was instantaneous. Moreau’s neck was broken, but his head was virtually separated from his body. It was a bloody scene, witnessed by the forty or so people who had permits to attend the hanging.

  Or your executioner might try out something new, but not necessarily improved. John Radclive felt that he was making a significant contribution to the science of hanging with the development of his reverse hanging technique, which was also sometimes referred to as the “jerk ’em up” gallows. The difference from the traditional method was that the victim was launched into the air instead of being dropped through a trap door. It worked like this: a rope was thrown over the top beam of the scaffold. One end was tied around the neck of the accused and the other attached to a 350-or 400-pound iron weight. When the weight was dropped, the victim was yanked up into the air. A dislocated neck caused instantaneous death. That was the theory, anyway. It did not always work so well in practice.

  As noted by Pfeifer and Leyton-Brown, Radclive employed this technique on a number of occasions in the early 1890s. In June 1890, he used it for one of the first hangings he performed in Canada. With disastrous results. He did not position wife-killer Henry Smith properly on the scaffold in London, Ontario. The man was pulled sideways instead of up into the air when the weight fell, making for a slow and horrifying death, and provoking howls of protest from the public. Despite this setback, Radclive persevered. Six days later, Peter Edwin Davis was executed in Belleville, Ontario, for the murder of his lover’s husband; again, Radclive officiated, and again caused a drawn-out death by strangulation. According to one newspaper report, “the horrible spectacle made strong men turn pale and walk away.” Another debacle was the hanging of Belleville resident James Kane, who murdered his wife in 1891. Kane’s body spun around as it shot into the air, and he choked to death.

  After a few more botched hangings, Radclive used this method for the last time when he hanged Robert Olsen in Dorchester, New Brunswick, in 1892. Olsen made the fatal error of shooting a police officer in the course of a robbery attempt. This execution was a success, but, thereafter, Radclive quietly abandoned reverse hanging and reverted to the traditional trap door method. Another failed experiment.

  An additional problem associated with hangings was equipment malfunction, often something so basic that a splash of lubricating oil could have fixed it. Reuse and recycle are perhaps not such good ideas when you’re dealing with second-hand hanging apparatus. The scaffold brought into service in 1876 when John Young was hanged at Cayuga, Ontario, had last been used twenty years previously. When the deputy sheriff gave the nod for the hangman to pull the lever, the hinge on the trap door stuck fast. Young was forced to wait for three or four minutes, kneeling on the trap door with a white hood over his head while a constable dashed into the jail to fetch a hammer. With a few mighty thwacks, the hangman unjammed the hinge, sending Young to his death. Understandably, as the Toronto Globe reported, “this un­toward accident caused a thrill of horror to pass through the hearts of all those who witnessed it.”

  A common error, especially among less experienced hangmen, was positioning the knot incorrectly, which is what happened in November 1889 when William Harvey was hanged in Guelph, Ontario. Harvey, described as fifty-five or sixty years old with large, cloudy eyes, a grey beard, and a gentlemanly appearance, seemed such an unlikely perpetrator of the terrible crimes he committed. After being fired for embezzling $4,000 from his employer, he bought a revolver and shot his wife and two daughters to save them from the taint of his actions. Only prompt intervention by the police saved his son from the same fate.

  Harvey’s execution, as reported by the Ottawa Daily Citizen , was “a bungle all through.” After the hanging, the distressed doctor on duty said that death had occurred after prolonged strangulation. He showed a reporter what the novice hangman had done. Instead of positioning the noose around the throat, he had placed it on the tip of the chin, with the knot pressing on the cheek, thus causing “unnecessary suffering and criminal torture.” The hangman fled. Jurors at the inquest that followed were highly critical of his performance and recommended that “the government be asked to consider the advisability of employing an official expert executioner.”

  And what would happen if your first choice of executioner were not available? Nor, for that matter, your second choice?

  Take the case of Garry Richard Barrett, who was hanged in July 1909 for the murder of a deputy warden at Edmonton’s Alberta Penitentiary. Sheriff Robertson originally announced that John Radclive would officiate at the hanging, but then changed his story — Jack Holmes, a Regina-based hangman, would be in charge. Newsmen covering the execution were skeptical, as neither Radclive nor Holmes had been spotted in town. Further, according to an Edmonton Journal reporter who attended the hanging, “It is pointed out that although the executioner wore a mask and false moustache, he strongly resembled one of the guards as near as could be determined from a partial facial view.”

  The masked man’s shoes, though, were in full view, and they were a dead giveaway: solid, brown, regulation-issue prison guard’s shoes.

  This was the second time that Barrett, a man with a long history of rage and other serious psychological problems, had flirted with the noose. The first time was in October 1907 when he attempted to shoot his common-law wife. His ten-year-old stepson hurled himself in front of his mother and took the bullet instead. Some argued that it was the boy’s subsequent medical mistreatment rather than his injury that caused his death. Petitions flew, and Barrett’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison.

  But when Barrett stepped behind Richard Stedman, the deputy warden of the Alberta Penitentiary, in the prison carpentry shop and felled him with a single axe blow (“I wouldn’t have done it if the deputy warden had let me see the doctor”), there was no second chance for him. He was tried three weeks later, and the jury took just five minutes to come back with a guilty verdict.

  The prison guard/hangman, whether by accident or design, disastrously bungled the hanging. He positioned the noose incorrectly and nearly pulled the pin on the trap door too early, which would have sent the p
riest rather than the prisoner tumbling through the hole. Once the trap was sprung, the hangman twice tried to cut Barrett down. And twice the doctor on duty had to intervene, as Barrett was not yet dead. He died slowly of strangulation.

  It happened on at least one more occasion that neither the first nor the second choice of executioner was available, and the third choice was incompetent, or perhaps drunk. To illustrate, look no further than the ghastly comedy of errors that saw Bennie Swim hanged twice in 1922.

  In a classic tale of passion, jealousy, and murder, a young woman dumped her lover and married an older, dashing war hero. (Well, maybe not entirely classic — the woman and her lover were cousins.) The lover, Bennie Swim, traded some clothing and a rifle for a revolver, which he then used to shoot the war veteran, Harvey Trenholme, and then the new bride, Olive Swim Trenholme, in Benton Ridge, New Brunswick.

  Bennie Swim knew he would hang for it, and he did.

  Albion Foster, high sheriff of Carleton County, singled out Canada’s busiest executioner, Arthur Ellis, as his first choice of hangman. But a two-month delay pending the results of Swim’s psychiatric examination meant that Ellis had to withdraw. The sheriff then tried to secure the services of Jack Holmes, but Holmes was sidelined by an accident. Just imagine the sheriff’s panic at this stage. Would he have to do the deed himself? To his relief, the sheriff of Montreal came to the rescue, recommending for the job a man named M.A. Doyle. Just to be safe, Foster hired F.G. Gill as a backup. Both men travelled to Woodstock, New Brunswick, to officiate.

  Swim was hanged just after 5:00 a.m. on October 6, 1922. After a few minutes, he was examined by the three doctors in attendance and the order was given to cut him down. But to the consternation of the doctors and the eighteen others who attended the hanging, Swim had survived. He was breathing, and over the next thirty minutes, his pulse became stronger.