by Nicola Upson
Josephine nodded and pushed the typescript over to Celia, marvelling at how easy it was to slip back into the old teacher-pupil relationship. She looked on as the older woman read slowly through the pages, and thought back to the first time she had ever heard the names Amelia Sach and Annie Walters. It was during the summer of her final year at Anstey, shortly before the end-of-term examinations, when evenings were long and tempers short. The pressure of achievement—and, for the older girls, the urgency of securing a position in the world outside—weighed heavily on the whole college, and the common room was unusually silent as half a dozen of the seniors made the most of every last second of prep time. Usually, Celia Bannerman’s tall, authoritative figure could command a room from the moment she entered it, but that night she must have been there for some time before anyone noticed her: when Josephine glanced up, she was already standing over by the window, gazing at the girls in her care with an immense sadness in her eyes. One by one, they looked up and saw her and, when she had their full attention, she spoke, calmly but gravely. Elizabeth Price, a first-year student, had been found dead in the gymnasium; the body was hanging from one of the ropes and there was no question that the girl had committed suicide—a note had been discovered in her room. Miss Bannerman went on to explain that Elizabeth’s real surname was Sach, and that she was the daughter of a woman who had been hanged for the terrible crime of baby farming. She was adopted as a young child and, until recently, had no idea of her true identity. Somehow, though, she had found out the truth, and her note made it clear that it was more than she could bear. The teacher normally moved with the grace of a dancer but, as she left the room that night, her steps were slow and heavy. Only later did Josephine learn that she blamed herself for Elizabeth Price’s death.
Celia took her time in reading Josephine’s manuscript and, when she had finished, she went back to check a couple of passages. Eventually, she put the papers down on the table and reached for her drink. ‘You don’t have to be kind,’ Josephine said, annoyed with herself for feeling the need to break the silence. ‘I can take criticism these days.’
Celia smiled. ‘Kindness doesn’t come into it. It’s very powerfully done. A little too powerfully for my taste, perhaps—reading that brings it all back. No one can really know what it’s like to live through an execution unless he or she has been there—but this is close. Can I make a couple of comments?’ Josephine nodded. ‘It’s up to you, of course, and it depends how far you’re prepared to let truth stand in the way of a good story, but those last few hours would never be that peaceful. I can see that you want to highlight the relationship between the prisoner and the warder but, if you’ll excuse a rather tasteless pun, it was actually like Finchley Central in that cell. The world and his wife passes through on the morning of an execution: first the governor, and then the chaplain. I can’t speak for Walters, of course, but the chaplain was with Sach for some time. Oh, and the governor always asks the prisoner if she wishes to make any final statement.’
‘And did she?’
‘No.’
‘No last-minute confession, then?’
‘No. Neither Sach nor Walters ever made any sort of confession. Somebody once told me that Walters said she didn’t mind dying as long as Sach did, too, but I don’t know if that’s true. There was a great deal of bitterness between them at the end. Walters felt betrayed by Sach, who did everything she could to save her own skin; and Sach by the justice system, because she genuinely believed she was innocent. It was Walters who did the actual killing, you see, and Sach was careful never to get blood on her own hands. She was always very keen that we understood that, me and the other women who looked after her.’
‘Isn’t that worse? Getting someone else to do your dirty work?’
‘She certainly didn’t see it like that. In fact, I was surprised that her defence didn’t argue more strongly along those lines during the trial.’
‘So how exactly did Sach and Walters work things between them? The newspapers only tell half a story, and I’d rather hear it from someone who knew them.’
‘Well, Sach ran a nursing home and took in young women for the period of their confinement. Most of them were unmarried mothers, desperate to hide their shame and willing to go along with anything that would get them off the hook. Apparently, Sach told them she knew lots of women who were keen to adopt a child and offered to find their baby a good home.’
‘For a small fee, I suppose.’
‘Not so small. Most of them paid around thirty pounds, which was a lot of money then, especially for women of their class.’
‘So they handed over the money and never saw their baby again?’
‘Exactly. They all believed the children were going for adoption—or so they said, although I think some of them were too desperate to care what really happened—but in fact Walters took them and disposed of them. She was found carrying a dead child one day, and wasted no time in leading the police straight to Sach. Sach denied all knowledge of the killings, but no one believed her.’
‘Do you think she was guilty?’
‘You can’t think about innocence and guilt when you’re in that position—it’s not your job, and the only way you can do what you’re asked to do is by placing your faith in the system. Looking back, I think it was the right verdict, although both women felt very hard done by. They didn’t set eyes on each other from the moment of sentencing until the morning of the execution, but they were in adjoining cells and you could often hear them banging on the walls and accusing each other of being the guilty party.’
‘Was it your first execution?’
‘First and last, thank God. It was three years since a woman had been hanged in this country. Much was made at the time of its being the first female execution under the new king, as if a change of reign were somehow going to make a difference. And it was the very first hanging at the new Holloway. I suppose you could say they were trying it out.’ The bitterness in her voice was unmistakeable, and Josephine wasn’t surprised: hanging was a terrible death, and the fact that it was organised was scarcely likely to remove any of its horror. ‘None of us had ever assisted at anything like that before, and the fact that it was a double execution made it unbearably grim. To tell the truth, we were all hoping for a reprieve so that we didn’t have to go ahead with it. Even the hangman was dreading it, apparently.’
‘That was Billington?’
‘Yes, with two assistants—his younger brother and one of the Pierrepoints.’
‘It must affect you very deeply, being that close to a prisoner,’ Josephine said quietly, aware that she was stating the obvious but keen to get a better understanding of how Celia had really felt. ‘It’s a very strange relationship.’
‘I suppose it takes people in different ways. Some of the older warders were hardened to it by the time I met them. I’m sure they’d spent years trying to shake off the emotional impulses that are so instinctive to most of us. Some were so terrified by it that they had to leave the prison service altogether. But you’re right—no one was immune to it. It was destructive to us all in some way.’
‘And I dare say one or two enjoyed the notoriety. I can see that the more sadistically minded could dine out on it for years.’
‘I think you’re confusing us with crime writers.’
Celia smiled, but the sharpness of the rebuke was not lost on Josephine. ‘You don’t approve?’
‘Of your writing about this for pleasure? It depends how you do it, I suppose, but I do question why someone would choose to put herself through those emotions if she doesn’t have to—and why somebody would read about it to be entertained. Can I ask why you’re doing it?’
Josephine thought carefully before she answered. ‘I’ve never forgotten that night at Anstey,’ she said eventually. ‘When you broke the news to us, it was such a shock. We didn’t see anything, of course, and you saved us from the details of how Elizabeth must have suffered, but that made her death all the more powerful in ou
r imaginations. You know how fanciful girls of that age can be and we were at a vulnerable time in our lives, worrying about our futures—I suppose we all felt the poignancy of how easily that future could be snuffed out. I remember being intrigued by what her mother must have been like and what drove her to do what she did. It wasn’t that long ago, and yet it seemed like a crime from a different age, something that Dickens would write about but not something we could reach out and touch in our own memories.’
Celia nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it must have felt very alien to a group of modern young women.’
‘And of course we never found out who discovered Elizabeth’s secret and taunted her with the past, so there was a mystery there, something that we could speculate about for hours even though it was never likely to be solved. I spent days afterwards trying to put myself in that poor girl’s position, wondering about my own past and what I would find too terrible to live with.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t think shame would make me do it, if I’m honest, but I can understand how terrible it must be if you suspect you might be disposed to that sort of violence somewhere in your genes. Perhaps she thought there was a deep-seated cruelty in her which made her afraid of her own future—the sins of the mothers, and all that. It could be why she chose to end her life in that way—she thought her mother’s fate might one day be hers, so she took the punishment into her own hands.’ She smiled defensively. ‘Or perhaps that’s still the imagination of an eighteen-year-old talking.’
‘No, I think there’s something in that,’ Celia said seriously. ‘You know, Sach worried about her daughter all the time she was in prison. It’s ironic when you think about how callously she dealt with other people’s children, and I suppose it shows how far she was able to distance herself from what she was doing, but she was forever fretting about whether her husband would remember to save for the child’s new boots or what she’d be told about her mother when she was older. And she was right to worry—the child’s father washed his hands of everything the minute the trial was over. During those last few days, she begged me to make sure that Elizabeth was looked after and it seemed such a small thing to promise at the time. I never dreamt that I’d let them both down so badly.’
‘You can’t keep blaming yourself,’ Josephine said gently. ‘We were all at fault to some extent. Elizabeth was a hard girl to like—she could be sly and manipulative—but if we’d tried harder to make her feel at home, then perhaps she’d have felt able to cope with what she found out about her mother. She needed a friend, and that wasn’t your fault.’
‘Perhaps,’ Celia said, unconvinced.
‘Had you kept in touch with her regularly while she was growing up?’
‘Not her directly, but I contacted her adoptive parents from time to time and kept an eye on her education—she was a bright girl, for all her faults. And I arranged for her to come to Anstey, of course. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that—apart from anything else, it wasn’t fair on all of you who worked so hard to earn a place in the proper way. But I honestly believed it would be the making of her.’
‘And perhaps it would have been if she’d had time to make the most of the opportunity. But someone else denied her that, not you.’
‘Even so, I should at least have got to the bottom of who drove her to it.’
‘What good would that really have done? It wouldn’t have changed anything for Elizabeth, and I’m sure whoever it was never meant things to go that far—she’s had to live with that, and it’s probably worse than any punishment you could have dished out. Look, I shouldn’t even be asking you about this,’ Josephine added, genuinely sorry. ‘It’s insensitive of me to rake over the past and expect you to fill in the gaps for the sake of curiosity and entertainment.’
‘It’s painful, certainly, and I do still feel guilty. Not just about Elizabeth, but about her mother. That execution changed my life for the better, and it seems so wrong to profit by someone’s death.’
‘Profit in what way?’
‘It’s hard to explain, but the thing that really stands out for me about that terrible morning was the moment when we got to the execution chamber. You’re absolutely right in your description of Sach’s mental state—she was so frightened that she could barely stand, but the prison doctor was waiting at the door and that seemed to give her strength. She recovered for a moment—only very briefly, but long enough to thank him for the kindness he’d shown her. I’ll never forget it. Sach and Walters both called themselves nurses—certainly Sach was a qualified midwife—and yet they took the lives of those innocent babies in the most cold-blooded way imaginable, and made capital out of desperate women who came to them for help because society drove them to it. That doctor was a fine medical man, and those two women had made a mockery of his profession. He could have been forgiven for refusing them any humanity at all, but he didn’t. He put his hand on her shoulder and told her to be strong, and that struck me as such a remarkably compassionate thing to do.’ She laughed nervously, and Josephine got the impression that she was embarrassed at having dropped her guard quite so readily. ‘I suppose I’ve been trying to live up to it ever since.’
‘Did that make you decide to take up nursing?’
‘To go back to it, yes. I’d already done some training before I went into the prison service, and I spent some time on the hospital ward before I left. Believe me—if you ever need a salutary reminder to stay on the right side of the law, that’s the place to be. Those women have no shred of privacy: they’re always under the eagle eye of a nurse, and the more infamous ones are subjected to intolerable scrutiny from other prisoners. You can imagine the sort of atmosphere that’s created when women like that are forced together.’
‘Do I have to imagine it?’ Josephine asked drily, looking around at the other tables.
Celia laughed. ‘Trust me—the food’s better here. Seriously though—we’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but sometimes I wonder. How can anyone prepare for an ordeal in court under those circumstances?’
‘Is there anyone else from the prison who might be willing to talk to me? What about the doctor?’
‘He died in the war, I believe,’ Celia said, ‘and I can’t think of anyone else off the top of my head. I kept in touch with Ethel Stuke—the other warder—for a while, but she was killed in a Zeppelin raid in 1915. Billington might be about still, I suppose, but God knows where—he was only hangman for a few more years. I’ve no idea what happened to the chaplain, but he was an elderly man even then. The best I can offer you is Mary Size—do you know her?’
‘No.’
‘She’s the present deputy governor, and she’s done some remarkable things for Holloway and for prisons in general. She’s also a member here, so I’d be happy to introduce you. Sach and Walters were long before her time, but she could talk to you generally about prison life if that would help.’
‘I’m sure it would—thank you. What about their families, though? You mentioned Sach’s husband?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know how you’d find him—assuming he’s still alive of course.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Walters had two nieces—they came to visit her several times, but I can’t remember what their names were and I’m not sure how much they could tell you, even if you traced them. She didn’t strike me as a family woman.’
‘And the trial? There must have been witnesses?’
‘Again, that’s something you’d have to look up. It’s all so long ago now, Josephine, and I start to feel like a very old woman when I think about everything that’s happened in between. It’s hard to look back at the beginning of your career when you find yourself too near the end—you’ll understand that one day.’
Feeling a little patronised, Josephine made a note of Walters’s nieces and finished her drink. ‘I’ve got a lot more newspaper reports to look at,’ she said, gathering up her papers. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll call in a few favours from the police.’ Celia rai
sed an eyebrow questioningly. ‘One of my closest friends is an inspector at the Yard, and God knows I’ve helped him often enough. No point in having police connections if you don’t use them.’
‘Make it up, Josephine—isn’t that what you do best? Truth isn’t always stranger than fiction, you know. I’m not trying to tell you what to do—I stopped that twenty years ago—but for my own peace of mind I must say this: what happened back then wasn’t mysterious or fascinating, it was squalid and depressing. Sach and Walters weren’t anything special—their crime was ten-a-penny and they weren’t even particularly good at it. If you want to write about baby farming, look at Amelia Dyer—she managed four hundred before they hanged her. Don’t make these women into something they weren’t. There was nothing noble or heroic about the way they lived or died.’
‘It’s not the killing that interests me,’ Josephine said, irritated at being lectured to and all the more annoyed because she knew in her heart that Celia was right. ‘It’s the relationship between two women who commit a crime, and the story of how trust breaks down when it all goes wrong. That’s what struck me when we talked about it last week—the acrimony between them when they went to their deaths.’ She sensed now that she really had overstepped the mark: to Celia, her interest in something that had clearly been traumatic must make her akin to those who crowded to the scaffold before legitimised killing became a private affair. ‘I’ll bear in mind what you’ve said, though.’
