SIX IN ONE MORNING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 181, 2 August 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

SIX IN ONE MORNING.

A HANGMAN'S, MEMORIES. LAST HOURS OF FAMOUS CRIMINALS. Details of the last hours of a few of the 200 murderers he had put to death were given by John Ellis, the famous British hangman, to a friend. Mr. Ellis was for 25 years assistant and senior hangman. We have all preconceived notions. I imagined a hangman must be a man with steely eyes and sinister cast of countenance. When I met John Ellis, shortly after his resignation, I experienced a shock. I found him to be a man with mild brown eyes, a soft drooping moustache, also brown, and with a generally benevolent air. He was the best-known hairdresser in Rochdale, where his father carried on the same business, and his one regret in life seemed to be that he was •barred from being a Freemason because he was a hangman. What memories of last hours of murderers this quiet little man had! But they did not weigh morbidly upon him.

I asked him if it was true the execution of Edith Thompson was the cause of his resignation. " No," he said emphatically. "I know there was much gossip about this. _' Nor do I disguise her execution was a pitiful, nerve wracking episode. She collapsed at the last moment, and was carried practically insensible to the scaffold by my two assistants and two warders who had been brought to Holloway from Pcntonville." He went on to lift the veil of an incident that has never been made public. "After hanging Roger Casement in Pcntonville I received an order to go to Dublin to hang six Sinn Fein rebels. It was a nightmare task. It was said openly I should never escape with my life. Hangman in a Destroyer. " I was escorted by armed guards to Fishguard from Rochdale. There I was smuggled on a destroyer, and we slipped over to Queenstown. In silence and secrecy the train journey was made to Dublin. And at last I was in the prison, which was guarded like a fortress." His task was a nerve-testing fene. Six young men were to be hanged between seven and nine o'clock. " Each was attended to the scaffold by a priest. Outside the gaol there was wailing and lamentations from a big crowd of women. "I hanged those rebels one after the other. Six of them. But the strain was very great. And when I at last got back to Rochdale for weeks I had three detectives quartered in my house. " I have no hesitation in telling you that this experience told upon my nerves. And a hangman needs a nervous system perfectly intact." Armstrong's Amazing Whisper. A. hangman who has executed judgment of death upoD upwards of two hundred murderers can draw upon recollections that are bizarre, pathetic, and unexpected. " I have often wondered," he said, " what was in the mind of Major Herbert Piowse Armstrong when he faced the end. He walked to the gallows like a little soldier. While I was drawing the white cap over his face he whispered, ' I am coming, Katie!' "Ho was referring to the trusting woman he had murdered by poison. Yet his last thoughts seemed to be a yearning for her." A halo of almost nobility is thrown over the prison conduct of " Dr." Crippcn and his last ordeal. " Much as one might loathe his crime, he was a little gentleman in his last hours, and the warders were honestly touched to part with him. I was at the gallows waiting for him; I saw him come along with his chin in the air and a smile on his face. What was the meaning of that inscrutable smile? " Playing Cricket.

An execut.'on that touched the heartstrings of" the hangman was that of Jacoby, the pantryboy who killed Lady White. " On going down to Pentonville to hang him I was taken to a room in the hospital overlooking the prison yard. To my amazement I saw a boy, indeed a child, playing cricket! He had a door for a wicket, an old piece of wood for a bat, and a warder was bowling. " This condemned murderer with a child's mind died bravely. Shall I ever forget his speech to the Governor thanking him for his kindness, and the splendid way he marched to the scaffold. And two clays later I received a letter at my home in Rochdale, saying Eonald True was reprieved." » What a gallery of criminals is recalled by a «igbt of the notebook kept by the hangman for twenty-three years of professional work! Ho executed Dougal, the destroyer of Miss Camile Holland, who found a secret grave at the lonely, Moat Farm. The scene on the gallows was tense enough. .Just as the hand of Ellis tightened on the lever, the chaplain electrified him by crying " Stop! " Three times the chaplain interrogated Dougal as to his guilt; on the third occasion the white-hooded head slowly moved in affirmation. Jesting With Death. It would be difficult to parallel a more distressing illustration of hardened impenitence than that presented by Frederick Holt. " This man, who callously murdered Mrs. Breaks for the sake of obtaining insurance money, died without confession, scoffing at religion. Though his relatives spent thousands in his defence, he treated them with indifference, and was with difficulty persuaded to see his heartbroken father. " Another destroyer of women, George Smith, died with a lie on his lips. He protested his innocence when all earthly hope was at an end. And more extraordinary, perhaps, was the amazing attitude of Seddon, in the face of death. He haggled over the price raised by the sale of his furniture; drew up his memorial card; and asserted he died ' a martyr to judicial injustice.'" Dickman, the murderer of Mr. Nesbit in a Newcastle train, insisted on being hanged in his shirt sleeves. At the last execution in Old Newgate Gaol, the condemned man ran to the scaffold, outpacing even Ellis.

Other murderers have slept so soundly on the last night they have been awakened with difficulty.. One knelt on the scaffold and poured forth a torrent of penitential prayers and sang a hymn.