My Experiences as an Executioner

You must be sure to pray to God to gide you all you life through and you must pray for your Brothers and Sisters i do pray to God to gard you all you life through. So my dear Daughter you must think of what i have told you. you must always tell the truth & when you are tempted to do wrong you must pray to God for his help and he will hear you. Always remember that my Dear Children, and you must tell the others the same, you that is your brothers and sisters God has promised to be a father to you all ways, remember that he sees all you do and all you think, then if you do his will while here on earth he will receive you to his throne in glory where all is peace and rest. So my Dear Children you will be able to meat all your brothers and sisters and your poore dear Mother in heaven, and by the help of God i shall meat you there to… may God help you all and bless you and keep you all your lifes through. He will do it if you pray to him and ask him. You no you must take every think to God in prayer for you no you will have no one els to help you now. so no more from your loving father, George Horton. May God bless you all. Kisses for you all.

Edward Pritchard

was an instance of how “evil communications corrupt good manners,” and a striking example of the unfortunate uselessness of our reformatory system. At twelve years of age he was convicted for being an “associate of thieves,” and sentenced to two years in a reformatory. For three years after leaving the reformatory he managed to keep out of prison, but when seventeen he was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for shop-breaking, and after this he was frequently in gaol. About a year before the murder he appeared to have reformed, attended Sunday-school and chapel, and took an active part in religious work right up to the time of committing the murder. He murdered a small boy of fourteen who was in the habit of regularly fetching money from the bank to pay the wages at a large factory, and stole from him the wages money, amounting to over £200. The evidence of the deed was absolutely conclusive and overwhelming, and Pritchard had no hope of reprieve. A day or two after his conviction he wrote a letter to one of his Sunday-school teachers, in which he professed to have seen the error of his ways, urged all his companions to shun bad company, drinking and smoking, spoke of the delight with which he remembered some of the Sunday-school hymns, and anticipated the pleasure of soon singing them “up there.” All through his life there seems to have been a struggle between good and evil, with an unfortunate balance of power on the side of evil. It is difficult to believe that he would have devoted his spare time for a year to religious work if he had not felt strong aspirations for the higher life. After conviction he said but little about himself, and made no formal statement or confession, but a letter which he wrote to the father of the murdered boy will throw some light upon his mental state. In this letter Pritchard distinctly affirms that he was led to commit the crime by the instigation of a companion, and though the statements of a convicted murderer must always be received with caution, it is possible that there was some ground for this assertion. If the crime was really suggested and the criminal encouraged by the influence of another, and probably a stronger mind, we may well ask ourselves how much of the moral blame attaches to the instigator, and how much to the weak tool. The letter was as follows: —

    Her Majesty’s Prison,
    Monday, Feb. 14th.

Sir,

I write these lines to you to express my deep sorrow for the dreadful crime I have done to you and to your master. I write to ask you if you and your wife will forgive me for killing your boy, and please ask the master if he will forgive me for taking his money from him. It would not have happened if I had not been incited to do it, and it was by no other person than – , who was a witness against me. He persuaded me to do it, and said he might do it himself if I did not; so I done the unhappy affair. I am very sorry I ever met with – at all, but it cannot be called back now. I have cried to God for mercy; I must still cry, and I hope I shall gain a better home. I have asked Him to forgive me and blot out all my sins, and wash me in my Saviour’s precious blood; and I think and feel He will do it. I’m going to receive the Holy Communion on Wednesday, and I should like to hear from you by Wednesday, before I go to be partaker of that holy feast. If you will forgive me, I shall be more at peace.

I am very, very sorry indeed, for what I have done. There is nothing that can save me from my doom, which will be on Thursday, but I can ask God to have mercy on my poor soul.

I have no more to say at present, only that I was a great friend of poor Harry, and I went nearly mad about it the first few nights, and could not sleep; but now I find comfort in Jesus. Good-bye, Sir. Please send me an answer by return of post, and I hope we shall meet in Heaven.

From Edward Pritchard

Gloucester County Gaol,

Gloucestershire

A few particulars of Pritchard’s last moments are given in “How Murderers Die,” p. 78 (#Page_78).

Alfred Scandrett,

another young man – only just twenty-one years old – was another example of the result of bad influences. His father deserted the home when Alfred was about ten years old. His mother was a hard-working woman who contrived to support her family by mangling and by selling papers in the streets, in which latter work she was assisted by Alfred and several other children. The lad was fond of hanging round street corners and public-houses, and his mother found it impossible to keep him at home like the other children. He continually made resolutions, but again and again he was led away by his companions, and at twelve years of age he was convicted for stealing cigars from a shop, but discharged with a caution. A month later he was charged with another offence and sentenced to 21 days. Other imprisonments followed, then five years in a reformatory, but punishment was no cure. His love for his mother was his one redeeming feature, and if she had not been forced by grinding poverty to work almost day and night at her mangling and paper-hawking she might have succeeded in saving him from himself. He tried to break away from his evil associations, and at one time begged his mother to find money to take him to Canada, but she was utterly unable to scrape together enough to pay the passage. A youth called Jones, who was hanged with Scandrett, was his companion in his final crime – a burglary, ending in murder. Although attached to his mother, who said he had always been “a good lad” to her, Scandrett could not bear the idea of living at home when he was engaged in crime, so that almost the whole of the last eight years of his life was spent, when out of gaol, in common lodging-houses. After his conviction for murder and sentence to death, his great anxiety was for his mother. And well might he be anxious, for the poor woman suffered sadly for his sin. As soon as it was known that she was “the mother of a murderer,” her customers – to their eternal disgrace be it said – withdrew their patronage to such an extent that her mangling earnings dropped from 12s. or 14s. to 2s. a week, and her newspaper trade fell away to nothing. She was even “hunted” and insulted in the streets when she went to her accustomed corner to sell the papers. To get from her home in Birmingham to Hereford Gaol for a last interview with her son, she was obliged to pawn her dress, and even that only raised enough money to pay the fare one way, so that she had to trust to chance for the means of getting back again. Some of the prison officials, more humane than her “friends” at home, subscribed enough money to pay the return fare. The last meeting was a very affecting one. Scandrett comforted his mother by assuring her that they would meet in heaven, and said, “Pray daily and hourly, mother, as I have done, and then we shall meet in heaven.”

Arthur Delaney

The number of men who are driven to crime through drink is something terrible, and I should think that no temperance worker could read the real histories of the murderers who have come under my hands without redoubling his efforts to save men from the curse of drink. A case in point was Arthur Delaney, executed at Chesterfield on August 10th, 1888. It may be said that he was naturally a bad, violent man, but surely he would never have become a murderer if he had not consistently made himself worse and worse by hard drinking. His victim was his wife, to whom he had been married four years, and who was spoken of as a respectable, hard-working woman. Not very long after the marriage, in a drunken fit, he violently assaulted her, for which action the magistrates imposed a fine and granted a separation order. His wife, however, forgave him, and in spite of his bad behaviour continued to live with him. A few days before the murder he was unusually violent, and treated his wife so brutally that she was obliged to again appeal to the magistrates, who again imposed a fine. This raised Delaney’s anger to such an extent that the next time he got drunk he battered his wife so violently that she had to be removed to the hospital, where she died. Like many other culprits, Delaney saw the cause of the mischief when it was done; and a letter written after his sentence, has a ring of simple earnestness about it that makes it worth preserving. It was written to some Good Templars who had tried to reform him.

    H.M. Prison, Derby,
    August 8th, 1888.

My Dear Friends,

I write you farewell on this earth, but hope with gods great mercy to meet you all there, were there will be no more sorrow or temptation. I do sincerely thank you for your kindness to me, and hope that my fall will be the means of, with god’s help of lifting others up from a drunkard’s grave. Had I followed your advise my poor wife would been alive now, and we should have been happy, for she was a faithful and good wife to me. God knows that I should not have done such a dreadful crime if I had kept my pledge, but hope it will be a warning to those that play with the devil in solution. Will you tell – to give his heart to god, and he will be safe from his great curse, the drink. Bid him and his wife farewell for me, and tell him to put all his powers to work to help the Noble work of Temperance onward, for it is God’s work. Oh! do implore them that is playing with the drink to abstain from it, for it is a national curse. Now farewell to you all, and may God prosper your noble work.

    From your unfortunate friend,
    Arthur T. Delaney.

What proportion of murders is directly traceable to drink it would be very difficult to say, but time after time we find that murderers who write to their friends state that drink, and drink only, has caused their ruin.

Elizabeth Berry

Although I am endeavouring in this chapter to give a few ideas of the motives for murder as seen by the murderers themselves, I am not by any means condoning their crimes. My main object is to induce people to look more into the pre-disposing causes of crime. I want them to consider whether in many cases prevention is not better than cure, and whether more can not be done to remove the causes. Undoubtedly drink has to answer for the largest number of such crimes. After drink comes lust and jealousy, though these almost invariably reach the murder climax through drink. The other main motive is the love of money, which has led to many of the most heartless, inhuman deeds that it has been my lot to avenge. I have given one or two instances of parents who murdered their own children for the sake of a few pounds of insurance money, and such instances could be multiplied. In fact, so apparent did the motive become a year or two back, that the Government was obliged to pass a law regulating the insurance of the lives of infants. If such an act, or even a further-reaching one, had been in existence earlier, Elizabeth Berry might have been alive now instead of lying in a felon’s grave. Mrs. Berry poisoned her daughter, aged 11. At the time of the murder the child’s life was insured for £10, for which Mrs. Berry was paying a premium of 1d. per week. The murderess had also made a proposal for a mutual insurance on her own life and the child’s by which £100 should be paid, on the death of either, to the survivor. She was under the impression that the policy was completed, but as a matter of fact, it was not. It seems almost impossible that a woman should murder a child for the sake of gaining even the full sum of £110; and we might be justified in believing that there must be some other motive if it were not for the fact that infanticide has been committed again and again for much smaller sums. From the point of view of the murderers of children it would seem that a few pounds in money appears a sufficient inducement to soil their hands with the blood of a fellow-creature. It is well, therefore, for the sake of child-life that the temptation should be removed.

CHAPTER X

On Capital Punishment

One of the questions which is most frequently put to me is, whether I consider capital punishment is a right and proper thing. To this I can truly answer that I do. For my own part I attach much weight to the Scripture injunction, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” and I think that the abolition of capital punishment would be a defiance of the divine command. Therefore I would not abolish capital punishment altogether, but, as I shall explain later, I would greatly alter the conditions under which it is imposed.

Perhaps many of my readers will say that the Scriptural command should have no weight, and others will say that it was a command given under the “dispensation of Law,” while we live under the “dispensation of Grace.” Therefore I would argue that, quite apart from any consideration of a religious nature, capital punishment is absolutely necessary for the checking of the greatest criminals.

In the discharge of my duties as a policeman, both in the Nottingham, in the Bradford, and in the West Riding Police force, I have had many chances of studying the ways of life and thought of the criminal classes, and I have paid a great deal of attention to the subject. As the result of my experience I can safely say that capital punishment, and “the cat,” are the only legal penalties that possess any real terrors for the hardened criminal, for the man who might be called a “professional” as distinguished from an “amateur” ruffian. Such a man does what he can to keep out of prison, because he dislikes restraint, and routine, and sobriety, but this dislike is not strong enough to deter him from any crime which offers even a chance of escaping scot-free; and I do not think that the fear of imprisonment ever occurs to him when he has once got criminal work actually in hand. Penal servitude, even for life, has no very acute terrifying influence, partly because no criminal ever believes that it will be a reality in his case, as he feels sure that he will get a commutation of sentence; and partly because, even if he were sure that the imprisonment were actually for life, he knows that prison life is not such a dreadful fate, after all – when one gets used to it. But when it comes to a question of a death sentence it is quite another matter. Death is a horrible mystery, and a death on the scaffold, a cold-blooded, pre-determined, and ignominious death is especially horrible to the criminal mind. As a rule the most desperate criminals are those who are most terrified by the thought of death at the hands of the executioner, possibly, because the most desperate men spring from the most superstitious class of the community, and have the greatest dread of that “something” after death which they cannot define.

The criminal classes do not neglect their newspapers, but keep themselves pretty well posted, either by reading or conversation, upon the subjects that are of most direct interest to them, and follow all the details of the most important criminal trials. In this way they always keep more or less before them the thought of the nature of capital punishment, and I believe that it will be found that the number of capital crimes in any given period is inversely proportionate to the number of capital punishments in the immediately preceding period. Whenever there is a series of executions, without reprieves, the number of murders decreases, and on the other hand, after a period in which several persons have been tried for murder and acquitted, or reprieved after sentence, the number of crimes appears to increase. I do not think that this rule can be demonstrated forcibly and convincingly by a reference to the mere numbers of murders, convictions, reprieves, and executions during the past few years, because there are many considerations which bear upon the significance of an execution or reprieve; but I think that anyone who has given attention to the subject will bear me out in my contention.

Undoubtedly the fear of death is a great deterring power amongst abandoned men, and the fear is most powerful when the death seems most certain and the hope of reprieve most remote. This consideration leads me to think that the deterrent value of the death sentence would be greatly increased if it could be made absolutely irrevocable. Considering capital punishment as a moral power for frightening criminals still at large, I think it would be much better, if in all cases where there is the slightest possible chance of reprieve, the sentence were suspended for a time.

I advocate that the sentence of death, once passed, should be a sentence which the doomed man, as well as his friends and sympathisers who are still at liberty, should regard as quite irrevocable. At the same time I do not advocate an increase in the number of executions – just the reverse. As the best means to this end I think we ought to have a considerable alteration in our criminal law as it relates to murder cases. I think that the jury should have more power over the sentence, and for this purpose I think that they ought to have the choice of five classes of verdict, namely: —

Not guilty.

Not proven.

Murder in the third degree.

Murder in the second degree.

Murder in the first degree.

In the case of a verdict of “Not Guilty” the prisoner would, of course, be acquitted, and would be a free man as he is with such a verdict at present.

In the case of the verdict of “Not Proven” it should be within the power of the judge to remand the prisoner, pending the further investigation of any clues that might seem likely to throw light upon the case; or to release him, either with or without bail or police supervision.

A verdict of “Murder in the third degree” would be brought in in cases where there was undoubted proof of the crime being committed by the prisoner, but in which the circumstances were such as to make it extremely unlikely that the prisoner would ever again commit a violent crime. This would cover the cases of people who shoot their friends and then plead that they “did not think it was loaded,” and would be a much better verdict than the “accidental death” which is generally returned at present. When the jury find this verdict of murder in the third degree it should rest with the judge to impose a term of imprisonment, long or short, according to the circumstances.

“Murder in the second degree” would embrace cases in which the murder was fully proved but in which there was not premeditation or intent to murder. Under this head would come a number of deaths resulting from rows, brawls, and assaults without intent to kill. The judge would have the power to pass a sentence of death or of penal servitude for life.

“Murder in the first degree,” in which both intent and result had been murder, would be a verdict leaving the judge no option but to impose the death penalty.

Another question which ought to be considered in this connection is the question of appeals. At present appeals are made to the Home Secretary. He is really assisted by a number of other gentlemen, who examine most thoroughly into the original evidence, and any additional evidence that may have turned up, but this is a tribunal not legally appointed, and the public notion is that in cases of appeal the reversal of the sentence lies in the hands of one man. I do not think that even the most abandoned wretches would impute any unfairness to the English Home Secretary, but I know that in many quarters there is an idea that the Home Secretary is “a very kind gentleman,” who will “let ’em off” if he possibly can, and such an idea seems to be a very mischievous one. A court of appeal would appear less personal, and would be far less likely to be suspected of leniency if it consisted of three judges, one of whom should be the judge who had originally tried the case. To such a bench of judges I would allow appeals to be made, and would give them power to re-open cases, refer them back to the juries, or to modify sentences, but not to reverse a jury’s verdict. This would mean that in the case of a verdict of “murder in the first degree,” the only way in which the execution could be prevented would be by referring the case back to the jury, and this should only be done on the production of new evidence pointing to a miscarriage of justice. In the extreme case of evidence turning up at the last moment, the Home Secretary should have power to grant a stay of execution for such length of time as would allow the bench of judges to re-open the case.

The drawing up and presentation of petitions by people who are in no way connected with the case, would to a great extent be done away with under such a system as I have outlined, but in order to provide for cases where the system might not have this effect, I would make it a punishable offence to attempt to influence the decision of the judges or jurymen, by an appeal to any consideration other than the evidence. This advice I give because in so many, nay, in most cases, the appeals contained in petitions are based upon considerations other than the justice of the case. If the condemned person is an interesting character, or if there is any sort of excuse upon which an appeal can be based, there are always a great number of people who have no special knowledge of the case, and who, perhaps, have not even read the newspaper reports, who are ready to get up petitions, collect signatures, and stir up a lot of sympathy for one who too often deserves nothing but execration and contempt. Such agitations lead to much misrepresentation of facts, and often to sweeping condemnations of the judge and jury. They tend to infuse, in the minds of young people especially, an incorrect notion that the administration of the law is uncertain and ineffectual, even if it is not unjust and corrupt.

The mere fact of the extent to which the consideration of loathsome crimes and their punishment is brought under the notice of children by this system of petitions, is in my mind sufficient argument for its complete suppression. One case I might instance, in which the masters of two public schools led the whole of the children under their charge through an ante-room in which a petition was lying, and made them all sign it in turn. This kind of thing occurs whenever a petition praying for a sentence of death to be reversed or commuted is in the course of signature, and surely such a thing should not be possible.

In many cases the people who draw up these petitions are people who object on principle to all capital punishment, but unfortunately the principle is entirely lost to sight when dealing with individual cases. The fact of big petitions being presented in one case, while no effort is made in another case with similar features, naturally leads uneducated people to think that there is uncertainty and injustice about the whole affair.

There is still one other respect in which I think that our law with reference to murder and the death penalty ought to be altered, and that is with regard to the length of time allowed to elapse between sentence and execution. In the interests of all concerned I would reduce the time from three clear weeks, as at present, to one week only. No doubt many readers will cry out against this as an unnecessary cruelty to the condemned, but I say that I would do it in the interests of all after full consideration and an unusually full knowledge of the ideas of the condemned upon the subject. It is not a shorter time that would be a cruelty – the present long time is where the real cruelty comes in.

So far as I know, the three weeks’ “grace” given to the condemned man is intended as a time for repentance and for attending to the affairs of the soul. Therefore, the question of allowing a long or short time is to a great extent a religious one, and dangerous for me to tackle, so I will confine my remarks as far as possible to matters of fact and mere common-sense considerations. If the only purpose of the time allowed between sentence and execution is to admit of conversion and a preparation for heaven, it is fair to ask of anyone who wishes to continue the present system, whether it serves the purpose. If not, there would seem to be no valid argument in favour of its continuance. Personally, I am convinced by long experience, that the hope of regeneration during three weeks in the case of murderers is absolutely vain. There are many instances in which the criminal becomes “penitent,” as it is sometimes termed, and these penitents may be divided into two classes. Firstly, there is the class of those who have committed murder without intent or premeditation. In a fit of frenzy or under peculiar circumstances they have killed a human being. It may be a half-starved mother who has killed the baby she could not feed, or a man who in a whirlwind of temper has killed the unfaithful and miserable wife whose conduct has made his life a hell upon earth for years. It may be many another similar case which under the scheme of five possible verdicts, propounded above, would be returned as murder in the second or third degree. Under such a law the extreme penalty would not be imposed; but while we are under our present law, and supposing that these persons are condemned, without chance of reprieve, we may fairly ask whether the three weeks’ grace is an advantage to them. Such criminals are truly repentant, or rather, remorseful. As a rule, the enormity of the crime bursts upon them in the first calm moment after its commission. They recoil in horror from the deed they have done and would gladly sacrifice anything, even life itself, to undo that deed again. There is true repentance, which I take it is the key to forgiveness, even before their apprehension and condemnation. Everything that can be done on earth by or for such poor souls, can be done in a week, and they would not ask for more. Their repentance is sincere, their horror of their crime is greater than their dread of death, which they welcome as a means of expiation. Is any good purpose served by keeping such people for three weeks in agony?

The second class of “penitents” consists of a horrible section of humanity – the cowardly desperadoes. These are usually men whose crimes have shown a refinement of cruelty and callousness that is positively revolting. They are the “hardened” or professional criminals whose hearts are devoid of pity or remorse, and equally devoid of the least spark of courage. They are the miserable men whose lives have been spent in defying and blaspheming God, but who, when they see death before them, whine and howl, and beg for the intercession of the chaplain or any other godly person they may meet with, not because they repent of their sins, but because they are frightened almost to death by the thought of a fiery hell, which has been painted before their imaginations in glowing colours. To such men as these I am sure that the shortening of the waiting time would be the greatest possible mercy, for the longer time only gives them opportunity to work themselves into an almost demented state. At the end of three weeks they are often so broken down and hysterical as to be incapable of correctly understanding anything, and their only remaining feeling is a wild, frantic dread of the scaffold.