Outside the prison the snow lay thickly on the ground and the wind was biting. Perhaps due to the weather, or to the relative inaccessibility of the gaol, a smaller number of spectators than anticipated had gathered. Most were men, stopping by on their way to work, though there were a few women there, generally sympathetically disposed, hoping that the culprit would yet be reprieved. The size of the crowd grew a little as the minutes passed, but at no time did the numbers exceed two or three hundred. At half past seven the prison gates were opened to admit eight representatives of the press to witness the execution. Once inside the Coach House they were marshalled in single file to within a few yards of the scaffold where they were joined by others concerned with the proceedings. Apart from the hangman, Mr Berry, there was Mr John Hughes, the under-sheriff; Mr W. Rutherford, acting under-sheriff; Mr J.L. Anderson, the governor of the prison; Dr Beamish, the senior surgeon, and Dr Hammond, assistant surgeon. There were also several male and female warders waiting in attendance.
When all were assembled they were informed by the chaplain that the condemned woman had partaken of the Sacrament the previous day at a special service held in the prison chapel, to which she alone had been admitted. Then, a few minutes later, at a quarter to eight, the passing bell commenced to toll, and James Berry left the Coach House to return to the condemned woman’s cell, there to pinion her in preparation for the execution.
‘Now, Mrs Berry,’ he said, facing her once more, ‘I’ve come back. Is there anything I can do for you before you leave the condemned cell?’ At his words she shivered and shrank back. He asked her if she would like a drink of water, but she shook her head. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Time is getting on. Don’t be afraid – I’m not going to hurt you.’
After he had pinioned her arms there appeared outside the cell door the governor, the chaplain, the under-sheriffs, the doctors and warders. Mrs Berry, her preparations complete, was led out to join them, and when all were assembled they formed a procession, and together they began to move towards the exit leading into the yard.
Standing near the gallows, the men of the press had become aware of the various officers going from the shed, and realized that the last moments of the prisoner must be close at hand. Then, just two or three minutes later, as the bell tolled out the hour of eight, they saw the head of the solemn procession come into view, emerging into the prison yard. Two male warders led the way, followed by the chaplain, who walked backwards while reading aloud the Prayers for the Dying to the desperate woman who walked facing him. The procession was brought up by the under-sheriffs, the doctors and the executioner.
From the condemned cell to the scaffold the distance was about sixty yards, the path taking the procession across the yard in the open air. Following the snowfall, sand had been hurriedly sprinkled over the ground to prevent any slips or falls.
Elizabeth Berry appeared to be in a very feeble condition. Wearing the black silk dress that she had worn at her trial, and with no covering on her head, she was supported by two female warders who, with womanly sympathy, were weeping. Keeping her eyes closed, she was led slowly and steadily on, as she walked repeating in a faint voice the responses to the chaplain’s prayers. To the watchers she appeared to be holding herself together until the moment when, entering the Coach House, she opened her eyes and saw before her the great, looming structure of the gallows. In that moment she lost her self-control. With a wailing cry of, ‘Oh, dear!’ she staggered and almost fell. Quickly she was caught by the two female warders while at the same time the executioner rushed to her side and held her.
‘Now, look here, Mrs Berry,’ he said, ‘you remember what you promised me in the cell. You promised me you’d give me no trouble. What d’you call this?’ She gave a groan, and he, afraid that she would collapse, took hold of her again. Shrinking from his touch, she cried out, ‘Let me go, Mr Berry. Let me go, and I’ll go bravely.’
‘All right.’ With his words he released her, and she staggered on a few steps, supported by the warders. Then, looking at the gallows again before her, she halted and, terror-stricken, cried out, ‘Oh, God forbid! God forbid!’ With some difficulty, the warders managed to get her walking once more, while at the same time she tried again to repeat the responses to the chaplain’s prayers. But it was too much, and at the foot of the gallows she gave a moan and fell to the ground. Quickly the warders lifted her, and hoisted her up onto the scaffold, and there they held her erect while Berry completed his arrangements, pinioning her feet and putting the white cap upon her head. Coming out of her swoon she cried out, ‘May the Lord have mercy upon me,’ and then, ‘Into His hands I commend my spirit.’ The chaplain, much affected by the scene, stepped away from her side. Just before Berry pulled the cap down over her eyes and adjusted the fatal rope, she muttered a few indistinct final words. A moment later Berry was pulling the lever, and in the next instant she fell.
Said the reporter from the Liverpool Mercury: ‘The passage from life to death was swift. The woman passed out of sight into the well beneath the scaffold. Death must have been instantaneous; not a vibration of the rope was seen.’
A minute or two after the fall, the two doctors, Beamish and Hammond, followed by James Berry, descended by ladder into the well to ascertain that the condemned woman had died. That done, the black flag was hoisted above the prison, and the people assembled outside the prison walls dispersed.
The Rev. Dr Morris was later asked by one of the reporters what had been Elizabeth Berry’s final words while on the scaffold. Had she made a last-moment confession? He replied that she had not. Her last words, he said, were, ‘May God forgive Dr Patterson.’ The chaplain then said that during an interview with her on Sunday night she had again protested her innocence, saying that she attributed the death of her daughter to the creosote mixture prescribed by the doctor.
An inquest on the body of Elizabeth Berry was held before Mr Clarke Aspinall in the prison shortly after two o’clock. Much of it was a formality. But it was the first ever execution to take place there, so for most of those assembled, with the exception of the executioner, the experience would have been a new one.
After all the testimonies had been given, the coroner addressed the jury, asking them to consider whether they were satisfied as to the identity of the body, whether the judgement of death had been duly executed on the offender, and that the execution had taken place within the walls of the prison. The jury, through their foreman, duly stated that they were satisfied on all points. With this the inquest was done.
With his part in the execution behind him, James Berry got the train back to Bradford. He was relieved to get away from the prison, he later wrote, as he was feeling far from well. His indisposition may have been partly psychological. In his account of the proceedings he said: ‘I may say that on no occasion did I ever execute a woman without suffering as severe mental and bodily pains as my victim. It may seem a bold thing to say, but, nevertheless, it is true, and when I have been setting out from my house to carry out my duties I have broken down and turned back. My wife and mother on these occasions used to comfort me as best they could.’
Readers of James Berry’s memoir might find such claims to be a bit rich. To say that he suffered mentally and physically just as much as the executed person is rather gilding the lily, and perhaps somewhat inappropriate as well was the manner in which he claimed to have spoken to Elizabeth Berry in her cell and on the way to the scaffold – rather as if she was putting him out. Also, his telling her not to worry, that he wasn’t going to hurt her, might seem a little odd.
His autobiography reveals that he kept scrapbooks of cuttings about the various murder cases, his ‘victims’ and his work. Not only that, but he also kept mementoes of the different dark events. One such was of his execution of Elizabeth Berry. He tells in his memoir that after her execution he cut two locks from her ‘beautiful chestnut tresses’ to add to his memorabilia collection.
He also wrote that years later he sold everything,
as the possession of it all was causing him stress. Afterwards, he said, he slept better.
The day after Elizabeth Berry’s hanging the newspapers devoted many column inches to accounts of the gruesome happening, and of the terrible crime for which she had been convicted. There was no sympathy shown by the editors. Without exception they showed their approval of the execution of the sentence.
25
Last Words
The drama and horror of the execution was over, and Elizabeth Berry was dead and buried. Her name would continue to crop up in the newspapers occasionally over the days following her burial, but less and less frequently. Her bleak story was told, and soon her name would be largely forgotten and fade into oblivion.
Under George Robinson’s authority, Joseph Whitaker’s application for the dead woman’s effects to be given him in lieu of payment due was eventually granted, and it was announced that they would be sold at auction, this to be held at a shop on Union Street, Oldham, at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday 24 March, ten days after Mrs Berry’s execution.
In securing the venue, however, Mr Whitaker had clearly not foreseen the great interest that the event would foster. Well before 6.30 on the evening of the 24th it became apparent that the premises were much too small. The auctioneer arrived to find the shop packed to the doors while on the pavement outside an eager and curious crowd was gaining in number by the minute. Nevertheless, the auction went ahead, and continued until Mr Whitaker appeared and instructed the auctioneer to halt the sale. With prospective bidders being denied the chance to bid, he could see his much-wanted recompense dwindling before his eyes. His announcement was greeted with derisive cries, but he told the crowd that the sale would be resumed at a different venue, with word of its time and location posted in the next day’s papers. Subsequently, Friday’s early edition of the Chronicle gave out the news that the sale would be resumed that evening at the Temperance Hall on Horsedge Street, a far more spacious venue.
There the proceedings were got under way, and continued until the last of the effects were knocked down. An array of articles was sold, among them an ink stand with bottles of ink, gloves, curling tongs, a workbasket, a pair of cufflinks (gold or not, the auctioneer couldn’t say), pieces of fabric and the bonnet that Edith had worn on her last visit to the workhouse. The pieces that claimed the most attention, however, were the dead woman’s clothes, the prize of all being the dress that she had worn to the workhouse ball the day after Edith’s arrival, the dress of ruby red silk, draped with black lace and ribbons, and with it the black fan, the pink silk gloves, pink silk stockings and dainty, elegant shoes. It went for the great sum of £7 – over £800 in today’s money.
It later transpired that some of Mrs Berry’s clothes went to a buyer from a waxworks museum, and others to a group of theatrical players. These latter would, just two weeks later, put on in Liverpool centre a dramatization of Mrs Berry’s last hours. Complaints about it were made, naturally, and members of the Liverpool Watch Committee were called upon to ban the show and have the city’s Chief Constable prepare a report on the subject for the attention of the Home Secretary. Said the Huddersfield Chronicle:
Not a single detail is omitted which is likely to impart the requisite ghastliness to the performance, and even a number of the articles of clothing worn by Mrs Berry prior to her execution are brought into prominence on each occasion of the mock execution. The chaplain is in attendance reading the prayers, the prison warders are present to witness the carrying out of the death penalty. The result is that a large number of persons are regularly attracted to the hideous exhibition, and watch each performance with manifest delight and satisfaction.
It was reported elsewhere that in the interests of science and medicine Dr Thomas Harris, whose evidence had been so crucial at the trial, put on exhibition at a meeting of the Medical Society the charred gullet of Edith Annie.
As for the waxworks, while Mrs Berry was to receive no pedestal at the famous Madame Tussauds, an effigy of her was on display for many years at the popular Reynolds Waxworks in Lime Street, Liverpool, where she shared her grim surroundings with likenesses of other killers, among them Landru, the French Bluebeard, and Charlie Peace, executed in 1877 for the murder of his neighbour. Mrs Berry’s effigy, which remained on show until the museum closed in 1923, presented her in a tableau with two other murderesses, Margaret Higgins and Catherine Flanagan. Sisters, they were executed in 1884 for poisoning Higgins’s husband, though the unfortunate man was in fact just one of their many victims. Elizabeth Berry, with her superior attitude to those whom she believed to be her inferiors, would have been horrified to be seen with such low-class women, though it can’t be denied that she was, in truth, in good company.
What became of the effigy of Mrs Berry, I doubt we shall ever know. Though perhaps somewhere in some forgotten file or shoe-box there lies a photograph of it, perhaps showing the petite murderess with her Piccadilly fringe, and wearing her ruby-red ball gown or the black silk mourning dress that she wore at her trial.
And what, too, of those photographs of Mrs Berry and Edith that were taken during one of their trips to Blackpool, one of which holidays ended with the death of little Harold – will they, along with others of Mrs Berry’s treasures, surface one day in some forgotten archive?
Today there is almost nothing to remind us of the tragedy and the drama that featured in Elizabeth Berry’s eventful life. The Oldham Workhouse, scene of Edith’s death, has been gone almost thirty years. Demolished in the 1980s, it was replaced by the Oldham Hospital.
What became of the greater part of Elizabeth Berry’s effects after Joseph Whitaker’s auction, we shall never know. On 26 March the solicitor’s clerk, George Robinson, wrote to the Home Office to say that the sale of them was complete, and that after all expenses had been paid – his own and those of the auctioneer – there was a net sum realized of only £18 (a little over £2,100 today). He wrote: ‘I may say that the only creditor is Mr Whitaker, Solicitor for the defence of Mrs Berry, and he will be one for £50 or £60 after deducting the amount paid to him on account by the deceased.’
So Mr Whitaker, for all that he had worked so untiringly on Mrs Berry’s behalf, was left considerably out of pocket. Further, and very sadly, he did not long survive his most infamous client. He died of a brain tumour only two years later, aged just thirty-nine, his young wife Sarah Ellen at his side.
Dr Thomas Patterson, bête noire of the murderess, and responsible for her downfall, did not see old age either, dying at his home in Chadderton in 1894 at the age of forty-four. Although in some ill-informed, lasting myth he is still sometimes blamed for Edith’s death, there surely can be no doubt that, in spite of the calumny heaped upon him from some quarters, he acted most properly and courageously, and that without his tenacity and his brilliant mind, the murderess Mrs Berry might well have gone on to kill again.
The mystery surrounding Elizabeth Berry’s father persists. There is no evidence whatsoever that he left the country and died abroad, and records reveal more than one man living in England at the time who might fit the bill as regards name and age, and who lived through the time of Elizabeth’s execution. This being so, and assuming that one of them was her errant father, it is tempting to believe that he would surely have read about the case in the papers. And had he done so, and read a little of the felon’s history then he must, at some point, have seen a connection, and realized that the callous, murderous woman was his own daughter. If so, he had an even greater reason for keeping his secret safe.
And, lastly, what of Edith Annie, a major player in the drama, whose cruel death brought about her mother’s execution?
With Joseph Whitaker being granted all the proceeds from the sale of Mrs Berry’s goods, his clerk George Robinson was denied any chance of carrying out her wish, that the sale of her effects be used to pay for the erection of a stone for her ‘darling’.
Today, in the windswept Harpurhey Cemetery, it takes careful, diligent search, and help from kind ce
metery assistants, to find little Edith’s last resting place. Her small plot lies in an area of the cemetery where the graves have lain undisturbed for a century and a quarter. Those who once came to mourn her, standing at her graveside that day in the bitter January wind, while her cheap little coffin was lowered into the hard earth, are themselves now long beneath the soil. In this part of the graveyard, nature, unhindered, has come back to take hold and reclaim her own. Here the graves are overgrown with shrubs and weeds, while ivy, long unchecked, climbs and spreads and hides from view the stone angels and the fallen crosses, and mosses and lichens obliterate the names and loving tributes once so painstakingly carved into the marble and the granite.
Edith Annie’s grave has no engraved quotation from Longfellow’s ‘Resignation’, it has no stone, it has not even an empty flower pot. Looking down at the girl’s last resting place one sees nothing at all to indicate who rests in the bare, unkempt, shabby little plot. Untended and forgotten under the bleak winter sky, she lies long forsaken.
Select Bibliography and Sources
Books
Berry, James, My Experiences as an Executioner (David & Charles, 1972).
Doughty, Jack, Come at Once – Annie is Dying (Pentaman Press, 1987).
Evans, Stewart P., Executioner: The Chronicles of a Victorian Hangman (Sutton, 2004).
Flanders, Judith, The Invention of Murder (Harper Press, 2011).
Glaister, John, The Power of Poison (Christopher Johnson, 1954).
Hempel, Sandra, The Inheritor’s Powder (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013).
Knelman, Judith, Twisting in the Wind (University of Toronto Press, 1998).
Rose, Lionel, Massacre of the Innocents (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).
Smith, John, The Register of Death: A History of Executions at Walton Prison, Liverpool (Countyvise, 2007).
There Must Be Evil Page 25