Pierrepoint by Steven Fielding Page B

coroner after their persistent questioning caused him to lose his temper. Another juryman then gave voice to the inquest stating that the rumour was that the hangman was a local man.
    ‘We refuse to deliver a verdict until we know the name of the hangman,’ the foreman then announced. However, eventually, and reluctantly, the jury recorded a verdict thatthe cause of death had been dislocation of the neck caused by judicial hanging.
    In November, again assisted by his brother, Harry carried out the execution of James Phipps at Knutsford. Phipps had lost an eye and wore a scarf across his face to hide the disfigurement. On 12 October he had asked a young girl to run an errand for him and when she had returned he had asked her to show him where the local lamplighter lived. They had set off together, but a short time later she was found dead. She had been sexually assaulted and had died from drowning after her face was held down in a pool of muddy water.
    The 21-year-old Phipps was identified as the man seen with her prior to her death and he was arrested on suspicion of murder. He pleaded insanity at his trial, which took place just a week after he had committed the murder. The jury took only seven minutes to find him guilty and he was hanged one month to the day from carrying out the dreadful crime.
    December was to be another busy month for Harry Pierrepoint, with five executions in all parts of the country. On 2 December he travelled to Norwich, where he hanged James Nicholls, a Norfolk labourer who had murdered an old woman at her home in Fertwell. He was assisted by his brother. They then travelled back to Yorkshire, where they were engaged to execute a disgruntled former Bradford clerk who had battered to death a cashier with a poker.
    A passer-by had seen a red-faced man standing in the doorway of a Bradford office building. Asked what the matter was, the man replied he was ‘having a bit of bother’ in the office. He then went back inside, returning minutes later with blood on his hands. When he later heard of the terrible murder that had taken place, the passer-by was able to give police an excellent description of the man he had seen. John William Ellwood was a former employee at the office but hadleft after a disagreement with a director. Knowing the routine of the offices, he was aware that the cashier paid a visit to the bank each Friday, often with large quantities of cash.
    Following Ellwood’s conviction, local interest in the case became huge. Harry had to run the gauntlet of curious townsfolk asking if he was to be the hangman who ‘topped’ Ellwood. He kept tight-lipped about his appointments, and rumour spread that he had refused the job because it meant hanging someone from his hometown. Large crowds milled around the entrance to Armley Gaol, many from Bradford, and Harry saw several people in the crowd he recognised as his inquisitors in the previous weeks. Besides the curious crowds who recognised the hangman, Ellwood had also boasted to his guards that he knew Harry Pierrepoint well, and that he was going to cause him as much trouble as possible in the morning.
    Harry spied him in the cell, but had no recollection of ever having set eyes on the condemned man before. A new permanent scaffold had been constructed in the garage where the prison van was stored. After calculating the drop the hangmen made their way back to their quarters in the prison hospital, where they passed two prison officers busy digging a grave in the small plot of land used to bury hanged murderers.
    Back in their cell Harry and Tom pondered the threat made by Ellwood. Although many had boasted to their guards that they would kick up a fuss on the morning of their executions, when the time came, more often than not fear took over and they usually submitted placidly. Trouble on the drop was a rarity, but was always planned for. Harry talked through a drill whereby he got two of the escort guards to stand on wooden planks flanking