Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders
Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders
Geoffrey Abbott
AMAZING TRUE STORIES OF EXECUTION BLUNDERS
First published as THE EXECUTIONER ALWAYS CHOPS TWICE by Summersdale Publishers Ltd in 2002 Copyright © Geoffrey Abbott 2002 This edition published in 2006 All rights reserved.
The right of Geoffrey Abbott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Condition of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
While every effort has been made to trace copyright in all material in this book, the author apologises if he has inadvertently failed to credit any such ownership, and upon being notified, it will be corrected in future editions.
Summersdale Publishers Ltd 46 West Street Chichester West Sussex PO19 1RP UK
Printed and bound in Great Britain
ISBN: 1 84024 503 4 ISBN 13: 978 1 84024 503 5
With thanks to Christopher Holmes of Christopher Holmes Photography, Kendal, for assistance with the illustrative material.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful thanks are due to all the librarians, curators and custodians of newspaper and similar archives who devoted so much time in helping me delve, dig and discover material for this book. Gratitude is also due to those long-since executed gentlemen and women whose facetious last minute quips leaven these pages; for what is life, or even rapidly approaching death, without humour? I am also greatly indebted to Dr Harold Hillman, formerly Reader in Physiology and Director of Unity Laboratory of Applied Neurobiology at the University of Surrey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Geoffrey Abbott served in the RAF for 35 years before becoming a Yeoman Warder (‘Beefeater’) and living in the Tower of London. He now lives in the Lake District and, when he’s not flying helicopters, acts as a consultant to international film and television companies. By invitation Geoffrey is also a contributor of torture and execution items for the latest edition of
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
Beefeaters of the Tower of London
, Hendon, 1985
Tortures of the Tower of London
, David & Charles, 1986
The Tower of London As It Was
, Hendon, 1988
Ghosts of the Tower of London
, Hendon, 1989
Lords of the Scaffold
, Hale, 1991/ Dobby, 2001
Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers
, Headline, 1993 / Dobby, 2002
The Book of Execution
, Headline, 1994, Hara-Shobo (Japan), published as Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty by Summersdale, 2005
Family of Death:
Six Generations of Executioners, Hale, 1995
Great Escapes from the Tower of London
, Hendon, 1998
Mysteries of the Tower of London
, Hendon, 1998
The Who’s Who of British Beheadings
, Deutsch, 2000
Crowning Disasters: Mishaps at Coronations
, Capall Bann, 2001
Regalia, Robbers and Royal Corpses
, Capall Bann, 2002
Grave Disturbances: The Story of the Bodysnatchers
, Capall Bann, 2003
William Calcraft, Executioner Extraordinaire!
, Dobby, 2003
A Beefeater’s Grisly Guide to the Tower of London,
Hendon, 2003
Lipstick on the Noose
, Summersdale, 2003, published as
Amazing True Stories of Female Executions
, Summersdale, 2006.
FOREWORD
Geoffrey Abbott is an enthusiast, a natural storyteller with a gift for resuscitating dead trifles. With inside information and access to the worst, he revels in shocking and enlightening.
He is an actor on a paperback stage relishing the role of narrator, star and epilogist. He defies you to leave his theatre until you have the player’s last words haunting your mind.
As a visitor to all of Geoffrey’s previous productions I heartily invite you to another triumph. Let the show begin!
Jeremy Beadle March 28
th
2006
Jeremy Beadle has been a keen student of true crime for many years. Before television beckoned he was a hugely successful tourist guide specialising in blood, sex and death. He won Celebrity Mastermind, specialist subject London Capital Murder 1900-1940, bi-annually hosts the international Jack the Ripper Conferences and has amassed one of the finest true crime libraries in Britain.
Dedicated to the memory of my friend the late, great hangman Syd Dernley
CONTENTS
Part One: Methods of Torture and Execution
Part Two: The Unfortunate Victims
INTRODUCTION
In the days when life was short and disease was rife, when existence for the lower classes was a daily struggle to survive and humane consideration for the wrong-doers, as prescribed by the law, was minimal, death on the scaffold, however violent, was accepted by the populace as the norm and, to many, as a regular source of entertainment. No instruction was given to the executioner regarding exactly how he should perform his task and little or no consideration was given to the possible suffering of the victim, for had not he or she attempted to remove or replace the monarch, change the country’s religion or committed some other hideous crime?
So why hone the axe razor-sharp? Why go to all the trouble of training a man to aim it accurately and mercifully? Why allow the victim to die quickly on the rope, or die at all, before disembowelling them with the ripping knife, had they been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered? After all, the victims were there to be punished – and punished they were. Deterrence was the name of the game and as a negative can rarely be proven, the question as to whether it worked or not remains unanswered.
The legal responsibility in England for the execution of criminals, by whatever means, was that of the sheriff, the word derived from ‘shire-reeve’, he being the chief officer of the Crown of each county or shire. That official however, in order to avoid having to do the distasteful job personally, subcontracted it out to anyone who volunteered, and so the task of beheading, hanging, or of drawing and quartering the condemned person, was undertaken by the hangman, the title describing his more usual occupation.
Those who tightened the noose, swung the axe or wielded the ripping knife were men of their times, most of them lacking sensitivity or imagination, many of them brutal and callous. Employed when the occasion demanded rather than as civil (!) servants, few if any records were kept of their names, and anonymity was also essential to avoid retribution wreaked by the supporters of those they had executed. Loathed and abused by the public at large, their services, however repugnant to the society of the day, were essential, for without them all those engaged in administering the law of the land, the judges and lawyers, the court officials and the juries, would have been totally redundant.
Admittedly some of them, Thrift, Sanson, Schmidt and the like, tried to dispatch their victims in a humane manner, but the very presence of the almost invariably hostile crowds inhibited their efforts. By instinct anti-government, those who attended executions generally classified the executioner as a symbol of authority and targeted him accordingly, but he was also traditionally greeted with almost affectionate abuse (akin to the present-day treatment of football referees). And just as today’s soccer fans would not miss a home game for the world, so in the days of public executions the locals seized every opportunity to attend a local hanging or beheading. Should it be the execution of the perpetrator of a particularly horrific crime, residents of nearby towns would pour in by cart, coach and wagon; in the nineteenth century the rail companies would even lay on special excursions with reductions in fares for group-travelling.
These events provided a great day out for the whole family; they would get there early to get a good seat on the specially erected wooden stands, while the more affluent would book rooms overlooking the scaffold and partake of wine and such repasts as cold chicken or pheasant to sustain them through the performance. Piemen and ale-purveyors plied their wares among the spectators, pickpockets thrived, and the ladies of the night worked days for a change.
Crowds of any sort are peculiarly amorphous bodies capable of committing the sort of acts which its individual members would never dream of carrying out. As an integral part of a mob, those around the scaffold never hesitated to direct disparaging remarks towards the executioner, shouting derogatory comments regarding his skill, appearance, doubtful sobriety and parentage; such epithets were sometimes accompanied by easily obtainable missiles such as rotten fruit and vegetables, even the occasional dead cat. Only when a murderer had killed a child or dismembered a female victim did the hangman find any favour with the crowd, and that but rarely.
So it was hardly surprising that when the executioner, exposed and vulnerable as he was in full view of everyone, became distracted and, at times, apprehensive over his personal safety, things went horribly wrong: nooses slipped, wrong levers were pulled, axes and swords wavered off-aim and guillotine blades jammed.
Even in more recent centuries, when executions took place behind prison walls and the executioners themselves were men of conscience and humanity, the scientific advances at their disposal, being more intricate and technical, brought their own problems with them: electrodes dried out, veins eluded the probing syringe, cyanide delivery mechanisms malfunctioned and trapdoors inexplicably failed to fall. Because no system is totally infallible (and executions are operated by human beings with all their failings) blunders were, and still are, inevitable and unavoidable.
Through it all, however, shone the ability of some of the more undaunted victims to retain an almost unbelievable lightheartedness; delivering a blithe quip or wry comment moments before their lives were brought to an abrupt end. Regardless of their crime, one can only admire their courage and wit under such pressure.