Amazing True Stories of Execution Blunders

by Abbott, Geoffrey

  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 Abo
rigine, 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.

  After judgement had been passed on him and he was transferred to the condemned cell, his nerve broke; pacing up and down he constantly bewailed his fate and proclaimed his innocence. He made abortive attempts at escaping, all frustrated by his vigilant jailers. It was transparently obvious that on execution day, 2 January 1840, James Foxen, the hangman, and his assistant Thomas Cheshire, known with derisive affection to the scaffold crowd as Old Cheesy, were going to have a lot to contend with – and so it proved.

  Pelham’s Chronicles of Crime, published in 1886, made little effort to conceal the lurid details from the general public:

  ‘he was escorted from his cell, and at length the procession moved on to the scaffold, where the wretched man mounted the platform at twenty minutes past eight, with a faltering and unsteady step. On the executioner and his assistant now approaching him in such a way as to convince him of their firmness, he became frightfully agitated, and he raised his arms and extended his chest, as if desirous of bursting the bonds which secured him. In the attempt he loosened the bandages around his wrists, and on the cap being drawn over his face, his terror seemed to increase. No sooner had Foxen left him, than he suddenly raised his arms and, by a violent motion, pushed off the cap; and accompanying this act with a motion of the body, he made a strong effort to liberate his neck from the halter.

  Two assistant executioners were now called and, having approached the unhappy man, they held him while the cap was again placed over his face and tied there with a handkerchief. The miserable wretch during the whole of this time was struggling with the most determined violence, and the scene excited the strongest expressions of horror among the crowd. Upon his being left again, he advanced from the spot on which he had been placed, until he had got his feet nearly off the drop, and had rested them on the firm part of the platform; and almost at the same time he succeeded in tearing the handkerchief from his eyes.

  The outraged feelings of the assembled populace were still to be excited by a more frightful exhibition than any they had yet witnessed; the accustomed signal having been given, the drop sunk; but the wretched man, instead of falling with it, suddenly jumped upon the platform and, seizing the rope around his throat with his hands, which he had sufficiently loosened by the violence of his struggles, he made an effort to prolong that life to which he seemed so strongly attached.

  At this moment the spectacle was horrifying in the extreme. The convict was partly suspended, and partly resting on the platform. During his exertions his tongue had been forced from his mouth, and the convulsions of his body and the contortions of his face were truly appalling. The cries from the crowd were of a frightful description, and they continued until Foxen had forced the wretched man’s hand from the rope, and, having roughly removed White’s feet from the platform, had now caused all the man’s weight to be sustained by the rope. The distortions of his countenance could even now be seen by the crowd, and as he remained suspended with his face uncovered, the spectacle was terrific. The hangman at length terminated his sufferings by hanging to his legs, and the unhappy wretch was seen to struggle no more.’

  In 1793, on hearing that the practice of transporting felons from Newgate Prison to the Tyburn scaffold through City streets lined with crowds of eager onlookers would cease, the executions thereafter taking place outside the prison itself, the famous writer and lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson exclaimed vehemently, ‘The age is running mad after innovation! They object that the old method drew together a large number of spectators – Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators; if they do not draw spectators they don’t answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?’

  John Young

  The practice of including the time at which the condemned person should be hanged in Scottish death sentences led to misunderstandings, some victims assuming that their execution, if not completed by the specified time, would not be legal. One such misguided man, John Young of Edinburgh, a sergeant condemned to death in 1750 for passing forged banknotes, was sentenced to die between two and four o’clock, and so he made up his mind to delay matters until after that time when, he believed, he would be reprieved.

  When, at two o’clock precisely, the magistrates and officials appeared at his cell door, he made the excuse that he wanted a few minutes alone with the minister. Somehow he persuaded the worthy clergyman to leave the cell for a moment, then he bolted the iron door and refused to open it again. Desperate attempts were made to force an entry and as the time passed towards four o’clock, the magistrates ordered all the clocks in the vicinity to be stopped! Meanwhile the onslaught on the cell continued, success finally being achieved when soldiers smashed their way in through the ceiling from the cell above. Young put up a frenzied resistance and after being knocked unconscious, was dragged headfirst down the stairs and carried out to the scaffold. There, he recovered consciousness and, it then being 4.15, he protested that they could not legally hang him, to which the executioner retorted that they could, even if it were nine o’clock at night! At that he continued his frantic struggles, proclaiming that ‘he would not be an accessory to his own murder’, his vehement objections continuing until the noose tightened relentlessly around his neck.

  On 24 May 1725 Jonathan Wild, gangleader par excellence, was taken to Tyburn to be hanged. On the way, true to his principles, he picked the pocket of the chaplain accompanying him. Characteristic of the intemperate habits of Newgate Prison chaplains at that time, the item was a corkscrew, and Wild ‘died with that eloquent trophy in his hand.’

  Lethal Injection

  James Autry

  Even though many executions by this method have been carried out, it still is far from being fault-free. Execution by the firing squad, the
rope, even the guillotine, is mainly dependent on the mechanical devices involved, i.e. the rifle, the trapdoor and the release of the blade, but in the lethal injection method difficulties arise in the insertion of tubes into the arm; the patient may not cooperate; there could be phlebitis if the patient has a history of taking drugs or if there have been previous attempts to insert the tubes. So even a method accepted as ‘merciful’ is not necessarily infallible.

  In the 1980s, during the early days of lethal injection, teething troubles were bound to be encountered, and this was certainly the case during the execution of James Autry. Drunk, he had entered a store and picked up some cans of beer; on being asked to pay for them, he had produced a gun and shot the female assistant, killing her instantly. On fleeing from the shop he saw two men who might just have witnessed the murder, so he opened fire again, killing one and severely injuring the other. When captured and put on trial he denied all knowledge of the massacre, but the evidence, together with his criminal record, left the court no alternative but to sentence him to death by lethal injection.