Justice and Punishment in Executioners’ Life-Writing

Ebury, Katherine

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-52750-1_4

Katherine Ebury³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights ((PSLCHR))

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Abstract

This chapter considers how after the end of public execution in 1868 the executioner gradually becomes not merely the agent of punishment but a privileged interpreter of it. It argues that the consumption of life-writing by executioners was a key means by which readers sought to access sensational direct knowledge of the death penalty. Case studies are given of a range of executioners’ memoirs including James Berry, John Ellis, Robert Elliott, Syd Dernley and Albert Pierrepoint. These memoirs are first considered as testimony, emerging from each executioner’s practice of diary-keeping and personal reflection after each execution, and this section explores how they think through their responsibility for the death of the condemned man. Two further sections focus on the use of life-writing to represent embodied experience within modern executions: the first section focused on the condemned man and the final section on the executioner.

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Notes

1.
James Berry, My Experiences as an Executioner, ed. by H. Snowden Ward, London: Percy Lund, 1892, 66.
2.
John Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, London: Forum Press, 1996, 9.
3.
Robert G. Elliott and Albert R. Beatty, Agent of Death: The Memoirs of an Executioner, London: John Long, 1940, 93.
4.
Berry, My Experiences as an Executioner, 9.
5.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 77.
6.
Albert Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, Random Acres: Eric Dobby Press, 2005, 52–53.
7.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale: Memoirs of A Public Executioner, London: Robert Hale, 1989, 195.
8.
The diary, together with other personal items, sold for £17,200 to Mike James of the ‘True Crime Library’ publishing house (‘Hangman’s effects auctioned’, Manchester Evening News, 18th April 2010 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/hangmans-effects-auctioned-972869 [Accessed 13th May 2018]).
9.
See, for example, in history, Ian O’Donnell and David Doyle use Pierrepoint’s autobiography to give serious consideration to the ramifications of the work in Ireland of Henry and Albert Pierrepoint between 1923 and 1954 in ‘A Family Affair: English Hangmen and a Dublin Jail, 1923–54’, New Hibernia Review, Vol. 18, No. 8. (2014): 101–118 and, in philosophy, Christopher Bennett, ‘Considering Capital Punishment as a Human Interaction’, Criminal Law and Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2013): 367–382.
10.
Anthony Rowland, ‘The Oasis Poets: Perpetrators, Victims, and Soldier Testimony’, Poetry as Testimony: Witnessing and Memory in Twentieth-century Poems, New York and London: Routledge, 2014: 41–69 (41–42).
11.
Rowland, ‘Oasis Poets’, 41.
12.
Rowland, ‘Oasis Poets’, 42.
13.
This is in direct contrast to, say, the French system or some colonial systems, where the executioner was an official salaried employee.
14.
Albert Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 77.
15.
E. S. Burt, ‘The Autobiographical Subject and the Death Penalty’, The Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2013): 165–187 (180).
16.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 17.
17.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 111.
18.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 73.
19.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 12.
20.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 208.
21.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 204.
22.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 158.
23.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 93.
24.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 46–47.
25.
Berry, My Experiences, 30.
26.
Berry, My Experiences, 30.
27.
Berry, My Experiences, 33.
28.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 17 and 232.
29.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 34.
30.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 200.
31.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 117. Pierrepoint’s choice of Saint Joan as inspiration for his work as an executioner is interesting as Alison Garden has explored Shaw’s inspiration for the play in the Casement case: it is ironic because we would not expect identification with the executioner in a play like this one (Garden, The Literary Afterlives of Roger Casement, 1899–2016, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020, 108–115). In the historical narrative, the executioner is reported to have claimed that he ‘greatly feared to be damned for he had burned a holy woman’ (Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc by Herself and Her Witnesses, Lanham: Scarborough House, 1994, 233), while in Shaw’s play he is the subject of a dark comedy.
32.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 13.
33.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 24.
34.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 181 and 209.
35.
Gill Plain, Twentieth-century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001, 30.
36.
Plain, Twentieth-century Crime Fiction, 31.
37.
For recent critical work on this topic, see, for example, Rex Ferguson, ‘Personal Impressions: Fingerprints, Freud and Conrad’, New Formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics, Vol. 79 (2013): 43–62 and Alyce von Rothkirch, ‘“His face was livid, dreadful, with a foam at the corners of his mouth”: a typology of the villains in Detective Fiction’, Modern Language Review, Vol. 108 (2013): 1042–1063.
38.
Harry Potter, Hanging in judgement: religion and the death penalty in England from the bloody code to abolition, London: SCM Press, 1993, 103.
39.
F. Tennyson Jesse, A Pin to See the Peepshow, London: Virago, 1988, 392–393.
40.
Jesse, A Pin to See the Peepshow, 370.
41.
Orlo Williams, ‘A Pin to See the Peepshow’, The Times Literary Supplement, 11th October 1934, 692.
42.
Gerald Gould, ‘New Novels: A ROUND DOZEN’, The Observer, 21st October 1934, 6.
43.
Anon. ‘New Novels: A PIN TO SEE THE PEEPSHOW’, The Times, 9th October 1934, 8.
44.
Theatrical adaptations of Jesse’s novel were repeatedly censored: see, for example, ‘To-night’s Censored Play’, The Daily Telegraph, 8th May 1951, 4.
45.
See Pierrepoint’s evidence to the Gowers Commission, Minutes of Evidence, The National Archives, PCOM 9/1773, 8420–8425.
46.
Berry, My Experiences, 32.
47.
‘Appendix to Pierrepoint’s Evidence: Coroner’s Report’, Minutes of Evidence, The National Archives, PCOM9/1773.
48.
Berry, My Experiences, 25.
49.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 85.
50.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 147.
51.
Pierrepoint, ‘Ellis’, The National Archives, PCOM 9/1773, 1–11.
52.
Pierrepoint, ‘Heath’, The National Archives, PCOM 9/1773, 1–8.
53.
Pierrepoint, ‘Heath’, 3.
54.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 101.
55.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 106–107.
56.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 59 and 101.
57.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 99.
58.
Austin Sarat et al., Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014, 155.
59.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 73.
60.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 99.
61.
See Pierrepoint evidence to the Gowers Commission, Minutes of Evidence, The National Archives, PCOM 9/1773, 8403.
62.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 108.
63.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 52–53.
64.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 132–133.
65.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 132–133.
66.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 183.
67.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 183.
68.
Pierrepoint says in his evidence to the Gowers Commission that he has seen three faints ‘at the last minute’ during executions, but this is not substantially discussed in his memoirs (Minutes of Evidence, The National Archives, PCOM 9/1773). Elliott describes several cases where condemned prisoners became hysterical before or during their execution, as well as the execution of Mary Creighton who was executed while unconscious (Agent of Death, 146–149).
69.
Suicide cases, where a great deal of medical attention was required to spare the life of the person so they could undergo trial and execution, are presented without apparent sense of irony as a particular challenge to the executioner’s skill. See, for example, Ellis (192 and 230–231); Dernley (90); Elliott (111–112).
70.
Pierrepoint , Executioner: Pierrepoint, 105 and 183. In his career Elliott executed a man whose heart was on the wrong side as well as several one-legged men, while he also reflects on several others who because of fear or illness had to be assisted during what he euphemistically calls ‘their last mile’ (Agent of Death, 101–102 and 118).
71.
See, for example, Ellis’s reflections on the controversial execution of Edith Thompson who was unconscious when she was hanged (Diary of a Hangman, 27–28). Documents held at the National Archive prepared for a parliamentary answer on this execution show Thompson was given hyoscine and morphine, as well as brandy, before her execution against normal practice. It was noted as a medical error to give both stimulants and depressants at the same time (The National Archives, PCOM 9/1983).
72.
See, for example, Ellis’s recollections of William Palmer who shouted ‘I’m not going to allow myself to be murdered without putting up a fight’: it took ten warders as well as the executioner and assistant to restrain him enough to facilitate the execution (144). Pierrepoint also includes an account of his execution of a German spy after a trial in-camera: ‘Schmidt fought me, fought everybody’ (Executioner: Pierrepoint, 140). Elliott writes that he considered quitting his training after the execution of Frank White, who kicked and fought while being placed in the chair and who had to be given six separate electric shocks before he died. This execution was so traumatic for those involved that one of the doctors fainted part way through (Agent of Death, 48–49).
73.
Berry notes of the execution of Robert Goodale in 1885 that, as a result of a miscalculation, ‘the jerk had severed the head entirely from the body, and both had fallen together to the bottom of the pit’ (My Experiences, 64–65). The execution which ended his career occurred in 1891, that of John Conway at Kirkdale Gaol as a result of a disagreement between Berry and the medical officer: ‘The result, everyone knows. The drop was not so long as to absolutely pull off the victim’s head, but it ruptured the principal blood-vessels of the neck’ (My Experiences, 33). This failed execution brought in standard procedures for executions and led the Home Office to take much more direct control of the process of execution from local prisons (Seán McConville, English Local Prisons 1860–1990, London and New York: Routledge, 1995, 392).
74.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 97.
75.
Elliot, Agent of Death, 101–102.
76.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 49.
77.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 150.
78.
Berry’s account of the execution of John Lee in 1885 notes that the trapdoors failed to fall on two occasions and the man’s sentence was eventually commuted (My Experiences, 59–64).
79.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 105.
80.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 168.
81.
Despite government papers that suggest prison officers would receive an extra fee of 5 shillings for handling the body, this is a frequent feature of British executioners’ memoirs suggesting prison officers generally declined to do this work (see The National Archives, HO 45/25843).
82.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 133.
83.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 28.
84.
Ellis, Diary of a Hangman, 9.
85.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 164–165.
86.
Syd Dernley The Hangman’s Tale, 81.
87.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 99.
88.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 186–187.
89.
Doyle and O’Donnell, ‘A Family Affair: English Hangmen and a Dublin Jail, 1923–54’, New Hibernia Review, Vol. 18, No. 8 (2014), 101–118 (104–105).
90.
Doyle and O’Donnell, ‘A Family Affair’, 105.
91.
Doyle and O’Donnell, ‘A Family Affair’, 106 and 109.
92.
For example, their records on James Berry include witness accounts of his drunkenness just before the 1891 decapitation incident described above (The National Archives, PCOM 8/191). Henry Pierrepoint’s retirement (a formative experience for Albert) is more explicable given files held in the National Archives describing an incident at Chelmsford Prison in 1910 when he arrived drunk and proceeded to assault Ellis, his assistant (The National Archives, PCOM 8/196).
93.
Doyle and O’Donnell, ‘A Family Affair’, 117.
94.
Doyle and O’Donnell, ‘A Family Affair’, 117.
95.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 35.
96.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 11.
97.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 48.
98.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 47.
99.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 47.
100.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 40.
101.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 40.
102.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 40.
103.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 201.
104.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 56–57.
105.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 57.
106.
Anon. ‘Haunted by Ghosts of Men He Hanged’, San Francisco Call, 86.145. 23rd October 1899, 2; ‘The Slow Passing of Amos Lunt’ Sausalito News, Vol. 17, No. 31, 31st August 1901, 5; ‘The Haunting of Amos Lunt’, San Francisco Call, Vol. 87, No. 107, 15th September 1901, 5.
107.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 69 and 88.
108.
Henry Sanson, Memoirs of the Sansons (1688–1847), London: Chatto and Windus, 1881. The specific edition I am referring to is held at Western Bank Library, University of Sheffield, with the shelf mark 3B 343.25 (S).
109.
The National Archives, PCOM 9/1983. For a legal reading of what the rumours of Thompson’s execution meant for the death penalty then and today, see Roseanne Kennedy, ‘The Media and the Death Penalty: The Limits of Sentimentality, the Power of Abjection’, Humanities Research Journal Series, ‘Pain and Death: Politics, Aesthetics, Legalities’, Vol. XIV, No. 2 (2007): 29–47.
110.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 30.
111.
Carl R. Lovitt, ‘The Rhetoric of Murderers’ Confessional Narratives: The Model of Pierre Riviere’s Memoir’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 22, No. 1, 1992: 23–34 (26).
112.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 218.
113.
Pierrepoint, Executioner: Pierrepoint, 211.
114.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 199.
115.
Elliott, Agent of Death, 224.
116.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 198.
117.
Dernley, The Hangman’s Tale, 198–199.
118.
Burt, ‘The Autobiographical Subject and the Death Penalty’, 168.
119.
Burt, ‘The Autobiographical Subject and the Death Penalty’, 168.

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School of English, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Katherine Ebury

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Ebury, K. (2021). Justice and Punishment in Executioners’ Life-Writing. In: Modern Literature and the Death Penalty, 1890-1950. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52750-1_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52750-1_4
Published: 11 February 2021
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52750-1
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