Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders (25 page)

The only thing hangman Marwood had in common with Calcraft, whom he succeeded on the scaffold in 1874, was his first name: William. During his whole career, as mentioned earlier, Calcraft persisted in using a rope which permitted the victim a drop of a mere three feet or so, death coming slowly by strangulation. In marked contrast, Marwood perfected the ‘long drop’, the length of rope depending on the victim’s weight and other physical factors, dispatching him or her quickly by severing the spinal cord. Referring scathingly to Calcraft, he commented, ‘He HANGED them – I EXECUTE them!’

James Stone

This case concerns the loss of three heads; one metaphorically, when James Stone attacked his wife, and two actual decapitations, those of Mrs Stone and finally, of the murderer himself.

It happened in Washington, USA, at a time when Stone’s marriage to Alberta, whom he had wedded four years before, ran into difficulties. After several rows in 1878 Alberta left him and went to stay with her sister Lavinia, a woman whom Stone vehemently blamed for the breakdown in the marriage, accusing her of influencing his wife against him, so when Alberta left the marital home, he sought revenge. Arming himself with a razor, the open, long-bladed type used daily by men in that century, he went to his sister-in-law’s house and, being unable to gain entrance, broke the door down. On coming face to face with Lavinia he promptly attacked her with the weapon, inflicting severe cuts to her throat before she managed to escape into the yard. Meanwhile Alberta, who had been in an upper room, heard the commotion and came downstairs, only to find herself the target as Stone, grasping her with one hand and pulling her head back, swept the razor across her throat so violently that her head was almost severed. Dropping the razor on to her blood-soaked corpse he ran out, pursued by neighbours, who eventually caught him and handed him over to the police.

No defence attorney in the world could have persuaded a jury to bring in a verdict other than guilty, and Stone was sentenced to death. In jail his behaviour seemed to fluctuate: at times he appeared to realise his crime and the awful fate awaiting him; at other times he behaved as if it were all a charade.

A Mrs Browne, the wife of one of his previous employers, had given evidence in court, testifying that he was of good character except, she added, that at times he had an uncontrollable temper. Now she visited him in his cell, and promised him that she would ensure he was buried next to the wife he had so brutally murdered.

On 2 April 1880 the
Washington Evening Star
cleared its front page ready for its reporter’s story:

‘Last night the condemned man, after prayers, lay down to sleep between 9 and 10 o’clock, but one of the lights in the rotunda was kept burning in such a direction as to show into his cell and for an hour or two he was unable to go to sleep. About midnight he dozed off and rested until the clock was striking four, when he awoke, but shortly afterwards he fell asleep again and slept until six. At 8.30 he ate his breakfast; pointing to his cup, a quart measure, he said to a visitor who asked sometime later how he had enjoyed his breakfast, ‘Why, I took that full of coffee, with a whole fried chicken and potatoes and other trimmings.’ After this he led off singing a hymn ‘I am Going Home to Jesus Tonight,’ and all the prisoners on the same tier joined in and the singing was very pathetic. They then sang ‘Wash Me and I Shall be Whiter than Snow,’ after which Stone spent some time in walking the floor in meditation and in reading his Bible.

Shortly after 11 o’clock the Revd Dr Rankin, the Revd Grinkle and the Revd Gibbons arrived at the jail and some time was spent in singing, prayer and religious conversation. To one of the officers Stone said that he then felt he preferred that the law be carried out rather than that his sentence be commuted.

The prisoner, dressed in black, walked up the steps of the scaffold with a firm tread and took a position facing north. There was a short service by the attending clergymen, and when they had bid him goodbye, the noose was adjusted, the black cap placed over his face, and at ten minutes after one o’clock the trap fell.

At the moment of the fall of the body, there was a cry of horror in the enclosure, some exclaiming, ‘My God, the rope has broken!’ and there was a rush to see what had occurred, but one look at the ghastly scene was enough for most, for, horrible to relate, the head was totally jerked off by the fall and the body had fallen to the earth.

For a moment the head was seen to cling to the noose and then dropped, spattering the beams with gore, and then fell, to land three or four feet from the body. Blood spurted from the neck in a stream. Some of the physicians immediately went to the body, and while the blood was spurting from the neck, they felt for the pulsations of the heart, and then stated that there was still a muscular movement for about two minutes.

Dr Crook picked up the head, the black cap having fallen off, and as he did so he noticed that the lips moved and the features appeared calm.

Among the physicians the opinion was expressed that the work had been too well done. As one explained it, the condemned man was so fat [he weighed 200 lbs. and was 5’8” tall] that the muscular tissues had become weakened, and the slipping rope, having once broken the skin, the fat accelerated its further progress until it reached and broke the spinal column. Some of those present seemed to think that this was a more humane execution than when the victim is choked to death.

Mr and Mrs Browne arranged for the remains to be placed in a vault for a month prior to being interred in a grave beside his wife. There is an impression in the community that the bodies of persons hanged are preferred by the medical schools for dissecting purposes, and the friends of the deceased took this precaution of placing the remains in the vault so that it could not be used for that purpose [after a month in the vault, putrefaction would have set in, thereby rendering the cadaver useless as a surgical specimen].’

Found guilty of plotting against Charles II, William, Lord Russell was condemned to death. On his last night in the Tower he saw the rain through his cell window. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘Such rain tomorrow will spoil a good show.’

Next morning he asked how much it was customary to give the executioner. When told ten guineas he said wryly, ‘A pretty thing to have to give a fee to have one’s head cut off!’

Ellen Thompson

Some eternal triangles end in having one corner removed, the resultant geometric shape being converted into a straight line: that of a rope having the gallows beam at one end and the victim’s neck at the other. This was certainly the case where Ellen Thompson was concerned, the other angles of the triangle being her husband Billy, and her lover John Harrison.

In 1885 the Thompsons lived on a farm in North Queensland, Australia; an incompatible couple, Billy was an unyielding though not ungenerous man, Ellen strong-willed and ruthlessly determined to achieve whatever she set out to do. So strained was their relationship, so violent their frequent quarrels, that Ellen lived in the family home while Billy occupied a small cottage about a hundred yards away, but despite their estranged circumstances Billy, mindful of the future welfare of his wife and their children, on making his will, bequeathed all his money and belongings to Ellen, a decision which was to sentence him to death.

Harvest time the following year meant increased work on the farm and the employment of casual labour, one man taken on being John Harrison, an ex-British Army soldier. Whether he and Ellen genuinely fell in love, or whether she decided to use him as a means of ridding herself of her husband but not of his wealth, was never established; suffice it to say that John, a weak-minded and easily manipulated man, became completely dominated by her.

As time went by the two lovers cunningly set the scene for the murder they had planned by casually spreading rumours regarding the instability both of Billy Thompson’s business affairs and his mind, insinuating further that his desperation might even lead to suicide. Then late at night on 2 October 1886, they acted. On seeing the lights of the cottage extinguished, the two lovers crept up to the door. Ellen waited outside, John, with the loaded shotgun, entered and, pointing the weapon at the sleeping man’s forehead, pulled the trigger. Then throwing the gun down on the bed, he and Ellen fled, he to his sleeping quarters, she to summon help for her husband who, she claimed, had just committed suicide.

After subsequent investigation, the local police discounted the suicide theory, it being considered difficult, if not impossible, to aim a long barrelled shotgun at one’s own forehead, then pull the trigger. Nor had the deceased used one of his toes to fire the gun, for the blankets were still drawn up over his body. And following reports of the couple’s intimate relationship, they were charged with murder.

The trial took place in May 1887 in the Supreme Court at Townsville, Queensland, an event which gave newspaper editors more than adequate copy, for Ellen Thompson’s hysterical outbursts were virtually non-stop. Her claims of victimisation were interspersed with foul insults directed at witnesses, and on the final day of the trial she harangued the judge for three quarters of an hour on the subject of her own innocence and her devotion to her ‘suicidal’ husband. But it was to no avail; both were found guilty and, after being sentenced to death, were later put on board a steamer bound for Brisbane and its scaffold.

On the fateful day, 13 June 1887, both were led out to face the vast crowds who eagerly awaited the condemned woman’s latest outburst, but during her incarceration, Ellen had evidently sought forgiveness in the Bible and now appeared on the scaffold holding a crucifix, her lips moving in prayer. But, her defiant spirit reasserting itself once more, she looked scornfully down on the spectators and shouted, ‘Ah, soon I’ll be in a land where people won’t be able to tell lies about me! I will die like an angel!’ Positioned on the drop, she stood still as Blackbeard, the executioner, drew the white cap down over her face and placed the noose around her neck. Stepping back, he pulled the lever; the trapdoors parted with a crash but the noise was instantly drowned by the screams and shouts from the onlookers as it became hideously obvious that the hangman had overestimated the length of rope needed. In falling too far, the noose had torn through the flesh, and now the victim’s blood flowed copiously across the boards and into the pit! Nor was that all, for within minutes Harrison was similarly pinioned and noosed, his end coming in the same disastrous manner.

Before the official post-mortem took place, Professor Blumenthal, the phrenological expert, carefully measured the various curvatures and contours of the victims’ skulls and then gave his considered analysis of their separate natures based on his findings. He declared that the woman showed every sign of being very combative and destructive, with extreme selfish and animal characteristics; her lover, John Harrison, although similarly combative, was incapable of being anything other than subservient to her.

Even without the learned professor’s conclusions it was obvious that it was Ellen’s greed and John’s supine nature which led to their downfall – through the trapdoors.

In 1864 a gang attacked and murdered some American ranchers, five of the killers later being captured and sentenced to be hanged. They were escorted on to the scaffold and after they had been noosed, a spectator asked the executioner, ‘Did you feel for the poor man when you put the rope around his neck?’

The hangman, one of whose friends had been killed by members of the gang, looked quizzically at his questioner. ‘Yes,’ he replied drily. ‘I felt for his left ear.’

Jackie Whiston

An Aborigine, Jackie Whiston had committed a truly heinous crime, that of dragging 15-year-old Henrietta Reis into nearby bushes on 6 December 1869, and brutally assaulting her. He was subsequently arrested by the Toowoomba police and on 31 January 1870 was charged with rape. After a trial lasting only two hours, he was found guilty of that crime, one for which capital punishment was mandatory.

On 7 March 1870 the condemned man was escorted on to the makeshift scaffold which had been erected for the occasion. The weather was appalling, with heavy rain and strong winds which rocked the flimsy structure, and Jackie presented a miserable cowering spectacle as he mounted the steps. Blackbeard, the executioner, wet and impatient, quickly thrust his victim on to the drop and pinioned the man’s arms and ankles.

Dropping the cap over Whiston’s head, followed by the noose, he pulled the lever – only to see the man’s feet somehow swing to one side, crashing into the crossbeam supports of the scaffold and become securely wedged there. The rope was taut, tightening the noose relentlessly about the man’s throat, slowly strangling him. The crowd of spectators waited, listening in horror as at least four times during the next half hour they heard the sheriff ask whether life was finally extinct, then watched, aghast, as the two doctors present pressed their ears against the victim’s chest

– then shook their heads. Not until forty-five minutes passed was death eventually confirmed, the corpse then being cut down and buried in the Toowoomba Cemetery.

Falsely accused of treason by Titus Oates, William Howard, Viscount Stafford, mounted the scaffold on Tower Hill on 29 December 1680. He was loudly abused and jeered at by the rabble but when he appealed to the officials present, Sheriff Bethel, with brutal humour, replied, ‘Sir, we have orders to stop nobody’s breath but yours.’

Charles Thomas White

Why Charles White, a prosperous 23-year-old bookseller with an apparently thriving business in Holborn, London, would want to burn down his shop in order to defraud the insurance company was a complete mystery, but he did. And although the year of the Great Fire, 1660, was long gone, nevertheless in 1839 arson was still a capital offence, one which carried the death sentence.