Pierrepoint by Steven Fielding Page B

without a word of thanks, set off back to the asylum.

    On New Year’s Day 1907, Harry’s long-time assistant John Ellis finally got to act as a chief executioner when heperformed an execution at Warwick. It had been a long time coming for Ellis, whose only previous offer as a number one, when Harry was engaged elsewhere, had come to nothing after the condemned man was reprieved.
    One warm summer’s afternoon in July 1906, three holiday-makers walking at St Saviour’s on the island of Jersey had stumbled across the body of a partly dressed man in a field. He was identified as a young married man who lived close by and investigations led police to arrest his wife and her brother, 29-year-old Thomas Connan, for the crime. At Connan’s trial it was alleged that his sister had persuaded him to murder her bullying husband, from whom he then stole items of jewellery. She was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment while her brother was sentenced to death.
    It was to be the first execution in Jersey for over thirty years, and the first to be held in private. Harry received the offer to hang the condemned man, with the execution date being set for Tuesday, 19 February, one month to the day from sentence being passed. Over five thousand people signed the petition for a reprieve, which, although Harry had received a wire to say the execution was to go ahead as scheduled, was still being considered when he boarded a boat from Southampton and set sail for Jersey.
    A large crowd had gathered on the quayside as the boat docked, but any hopes they had of seeing the executioner were dashed when the chief warder from the gaol pulled up at the foot of the disembarkation ramp and herded Harry into a closed carriage and away to the prison. Several more daring men raced alongside on bicycles trying to peep through the windows, but the execution party reached the safety of the prison without an incident.
    Following a breakfast and a chance to relax, Harry was shown the newly constructed gallows, and at once expressedconcern at the flight of steps the condemned man was expected to climb to reach the drop. The chief engineer, who had constructed the gallows, had also made an exact replica model, a foot high, which Harry throughout his stay at the gaol tried in vain to get him to part with.
    Connan spent his last night on earth praying and singing hymns, and met his fate bravely on the following morning. Harry had been surprised when he went in to pinion the prisoner to find that over half a dozen other dignitaries entered the cell at the same time, one of whom read out the death warrant to the stunned prisoner. It was less than fifty paces to the scaffold and in no time Connan was on the drop, noosed and hooded. He muttered, ‘Lord have mercy on my soul,’ as Harry pulled the lever.
    Later that night Harry was entertained at a civic reception where his health was toasted, and after spending a further night in the prison he caught the 8 a.m. boat to sail back to Southampton. The ship was tossed around on gale-force seas, and Harry found himself reflecting that this was the kind of travel and adventure he had longed for when he left home as a teenager.
    On 26 March, with Willis as his assistant, Harry executed Joseph Jones at Stafford for the murder of his son-in-law. He had three offers of work in London that spring, all of which came to nothing, and it wasn’t until mid-July that he travelled down to Derby where he met up with Ellis. Together they rigged a drop of 7 foot 6 inches for William Slack, a Chesterfield painter who had attacked a barmaid with an axe as she pushed a pram down the street. (He was thought to have been the father of the child she was pushing and was wheeling the pram away when arrested.) He was abusive to the judge when sentence of death was passed, but showed no fear on the morning of his execution and almost ran to the drop.
    Harry was engaged on three executions in seven days in August. The first was at Liverpool’s