This version attempts to mimic Datas' book. The paging and text follows
the book's layout as far as possible.
CHAPTER VIII
FURTHER TALES OF THE SCAFFOLD
AFTER Billington's death, the two sons took on
the job. They were the most callous fellows I
ever met, but took the same pride in their job as
their father had done. They also had a sense of
humour, for I have been in their barber's shop
on several occasions----have been shaved by them,
too----and more than once I have heard them say
to a customer with his neck well exposed in the
position of shaving: "You've got a lovely neck
sir." They had a text in the shop which I shall
always remember. A relic of the elder Billing-
ton's Sunday School days, I suppose.
" Swear not at all," said the text, but the two
boys observed it in the breach rather than any
other way. On a Sunday morning one of their
favourite recreations was ratting, and I have
known them to have a good morning with the
rats, return to their favourite "pub" and then
indulge in the pleasant pastime of wagering
137
138 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
against other men in the bar as to how many
heads of the live rats they could bite off in a given
time. To do this sort of thing for a few pints of
beer, never appealed much to me, but maybe I
am rather fastidious in my sporting instincts.
Tom once told me how he nearly officiated at
his own execution. "It was when I was coming
back from doing a job at Bedford where I put
a man named Chambers down for the murder
of his wife," he said, "I'd had one or two more
than was good for me after the execution, and
got into the wrong train. When I found out my
mistake, I tried to jump out of the train at Luton,
turned a so-and-so somersault on one ear, and
pretty nearly finished up with an execution all
on my own."
The "Brothers Billington" officiated at the
execution of some of the most notorious mur-
derers who ever perished on the scaffold. They
hung Chapman the publican at Wandsworth for
the murder of Maude Marsh. A book has been
written recently trying to show that Chapman
and Jack the Ripper were one and the same man.
They also sent Samuel Herbert Dougal to his
doom at Chelmsford Gaol for the Moat Farm
murder as it was called, and they also executed
Joseph Fee the man who was thrice tried for his
life, the jury disagreeing on two occasions.
FURTHER TALES 139
One of the most interesting recollections of
the brothers was in connection with the double
execution of Emily Swan and John Gallagher.
Gallagher was a lodger in the house of the
woman who lived with her husband. The lodger
commenced to pay attentions to the woman who
reciprocated them with the result that she pre-
vailed upon her young lover to murder her hus-
band. One night the woman went over to a
public-house leaving her lover to carry out their
joint intention. Later on he came into the bar
where she was "standing treat" to a number of
people.
She took him on one side. "Have you finished
him off?" she asked and the man wiping the
sweat from his brow replied: "Not yet."
"Well, go and give him another," the wife
urged him, and he did.
"I shall never forget that couple," said Tom
Billington when relating the story of the execu-
tion to me. "When I went to fix the woman up
she said: `How's Jack?' I told her that I had not
seen him yet. My brother was pinioning him.
`Give him my love,' she told me, `and tell him
we shall meet in the next world.'
"A few seconds afterwards she was standing
on the trap beside her man, and before I drew
the cap over her head, she turned to him, and
140 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
said: `Good-bye, love.' The next moment they
had gone."
It was Bill who "fixed up" Wilfred Hancocks,
a one-armed sheriff's officer, and a bigamist who
murdered his daughter. When Bill entered the
condemned cell he was just finishing a letter to
his bigamous wife. He also sent one to his real
wife at the same time, both of them most loving '
effusions. That was on August 9th, 1908.
Another double execution at which the
Brothers Billington ministered to their "clients"
----they always used to call them that for some
reason or other----was that of Samuel Holden,
and Thomas Kay. This was at Birmingham, and
Peter Wall, an ex-warder, who was present at
this execution, told me how Bill gave Holden a
cigar just before he went to the scaffold, the
doomed man smoking it up till the last moment
when the cap was drawn over his head, and the
noose adjusted. That was on the 16th August,
1904.
There was a touch of romance to the hanging
of Henry Mack in December 1902, for some
little time before young Bill, the executioner,
had become enamoured of a pretty girl named
Elisabeth Bedford. In an unfortunate moment
for all concerned, as it happened, he "introduced
his donah to a pal"----who was none other than
FURTHER TALES 141
Henry Mack with whom Billington had been
friendly for years. Naturally when he realised
that he had been ousted in the lady's affections
young Bill waxed wrath, and at a subsequent
meeting with Mack remarked: "All right you
so-and-so----so-and-so, I'll have you for that."
I don't suppose even Bill attached great
importance to the threat at the time, or realised
how literally it was to come true. The fact is,
however, that Mack, tiring of his sweetheart,
murdered her, and----in due course he was exe-
cuted at Oldham. "I felt pretty rotten when it
came to strapping him up," Bill confessed to me
when telling me the story, "but Harry simply
grinned. `Anyhow, you won't get her,' he told
me, and then when I was slipping the noose over
his head, he said: `Cheerio, old 'un. You said
you'd have me, and by God you have'."
He told me that the most craven-hearted hound
he had ever had to deal with w as the man Chap-
man. "He was a white-livered cur, and it did
me good to jerk him off," was how he described
his impression of this murderous Pole.
The last of the Billingtons died on October
28th, 1908, and thereafter my friend Ellis, who
had assisted them during the latter years of their
office, became the hangman. He, too, executed
a number of notorious murderers, the most
142 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
notorious of all, perhaps, being Crippen. Very
different to the Billingtons is Mr. Ellis, a quite
charming man, who would seldom if ever talk
of his unpleasant business. I have often been
shaved by him, and I remember once cracking a
joke when he asked the usual barber's question :
"Razor all right?"
"You don't expect me to nod, do you ?" I
asked.
He always says that Crippen was one of the
bravest men he ever hung, and that he needed
no assistance as so many of them do. When he
went into the doomed man's cell to pinion
him, Crippen handed him his collar stud :
"That is all I can give you as a memento," he
murmured.
Ellis hung the first man to be executed in the
reign of our present King. This was a man
named Thomas Jessope, who was sentenced to
death for the murder of John Healey, a stage
carpenter at the Camberwell Empire. I had fre-
quently appeared there myself, and knew Healey
well. We used to call him Liverpool Jack. He
used to play super parts whenever he was
required. Jessope was a fireman at the same
theatre, and got it into his head that Healey was
trying to oust him out of his job. One day he
shot Healey when the latter was at the back of
FURTHER TALES 143
the stalls, and for this he perished on the
gallows.
John Dickman was another man whom Ellis
ushered into the Great Beyond for the murder
of John Nisbet, a cashier, whom he killed whilst
travelling by train. He also executed Richard
Brinkley, the Croydon poisoner, who slew
Richard and Elizabeth Beck by giving them
prussic acid.
William Willis is another executioner whom
I have met on several occasions. He assisted Ellis
at a number of executions, and whilst he was
carrying out sentence of death upon Frederick
Bywaters at Pentonville, Ellis was at Holloway
Gaol, merely a stone's throw away, sending Mrs.
Thompson to her doom. Willis is a bluff, genial
fellow, and he told me that one of his busiest
mornings was when he despatched six men at
Mountjoy Gaol.
At 6 a.m. he executed Patrick Moran, and
Thomas Whelan, at 7 a.m. he executed Patrick
Doyle and Bernard Ryan, and at 8 a.m. he hung
Thomas Bryan and Frank Flood.
The last time I saw Ellis and Willis was when
I was engaged at Madame Tussaud's a year or
two back. I had been given the job of correcting
the various dates in connection with the different
notabilities and notorieties, and I also used to
144 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
take parties around this wonderful exhibition
explaining the various exhibits, and giving a
short description of the times in which they
lived, and the prominence they had attained.
One day I was taking round a party of about
seventy, and as they followed me from place to
place, I noticed that there were two bishops
amongst the crowd. "And now, ladies and
gentlemen," I said, "we will pass on to the
Chamber of Horrors.
"Over here we have Harvey Hawley Crippen,
the infamous murderer of his wife, Belle
Elmore." I went on to give a brief outline of
the story, and then: "Crippen was born in
Detroit on the "
"Oh, gee----" piped a young voice from the
crowd in broadest American twang. "Let me
have a good look, he comes from my home
town."
I turned to see from whom the voice came,
and behold it was young Jackie Coogan, who
was visiting the exhibition with his father. I
went on to "do my stuff" so to speak, and still
followed by the admiring Jackie, the bishops, and
the rest of the crowd, I passed on to another.
`Here you have that unfortunate woman who
came to the gallows through love----Mrs. Thomp-
son, and over there is her partner in crime,
FURTHER TALES 145
Frederick Bywaters." I went on to give details
of the date of the murder, the dates of the
arrests, the trial, sentence and----execution."
And then again another voice: "You seem to
know more about them than we do, and we
stitched them up," it said, and turning round I
beheld friend Willis, the ex-hangman, with
Ellis, who had also retired. They had come up
to see Mr. Tussaud about some relics, and had
just dropped into the Chamber of Horrors to
renew acquaintance with some of their old
"clients".
Of course I knew them, and not long after-
wards the two bishops sidled up to me and in a
whisper asked me who the two men were.
"They are Mr. Willis and Mr. Ellis, at one time
public executioners over here, but now retired ",
I informed them.
"I wonder if you would introduce us," they
asked, and I carried out that little mission.
Jackie Coogan and his father were also inter-
ested, and in the end the two bishops, the two
ex-hangmen, Jackie, his father and myself, all
sat down at one table to lunch together, and
when the two Colonial bishops went away, they
took with them the autographed cards of the
two ex-hangmen.
But apart from hangmen I have met, there
146 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
are one or two remarkable stories in connection
with executions which I have come across in my
researches, for you will realise that I have to be
prepared for all sorts of questions, and people,
when they know I am appearing, seek out any-
thing they think likely to floor me.
"When was a hangman hanged ?" is one of
them, and to this I would reply: "On May 17th
1719, when John Price was executed by his one
time assistant at Bunhill Fields. For many years
he had been the executioner at old Tyburn,
receiving the sum of seven shillings and six-
pence for each hanging. That was in the days
when the condemned were hanged, drawn and
quartered, a small sum extra being paid for the
drawing and quartering. One morning Price
despatched six men, and on returning home in
a somewhat drunken state, he handed over six
seven and sixpences to his shrew of a wife. That
good lady counted it up very carefully, and then
demanded to know what he had done with the
money he received for drawing and quartering
them. Price hedged as long as he could, and
then in a moment of defiance admitted that he
had spent the rest of the money on beer. His
wife nagged and upbraided him to such an
extent that he lost his temper, struck her on the
head and killed her. For this he was hung,
FURTHER TALES 147
drawn and quartered on his own scaffold, his
old friend and assistant carrying out the execu-
tion, and drawing the blood money."
The last man executed in public was Michael
Barrett, the Fenia who was hung outside the
Old Bailey on the 26th May, 1868, for the
Clerkenwell explosion. The first man executed
in private after the abolition of public execu-
tions was T. Wells, a young railway porter on the
old London, Chatham and Dover Railway, at
Dover Priory Station. This was on the 13th
August, 1868. Wells had been reprimanded by
the station-master, a man named Walsh, for
shooting at sparrows under the glass roof of the
station, and when he persisted in going on with
the shooting, and the station-master again spoke
to him he lost his temper, and said: "If you
don't go away, I'll shoot you, too." He was as
good as his word, and was eventually hung at
Maidstone. He went to the gallows wearing a
white chrysanthemum in his buttonhole, and
from his cell to the scaffold he sang hymns.
His father kept a whelk stall on the Dover front.
When was a clergyman hung for murder? I
wonder how many people have ever heard of
the case of the Reverend James Hackmann. Very
few, I will wager, yet it is one of the epic murder
stories of all time. In his earlier days Hackmann
148 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
was an officer in the 68th Regiment of Foot, a
handsome, dashing fellow. A man of excellent
birth, he was a friend of the fourth Earl of Sand-
wich, who had a most beautiful mistress by the
name of Margaret Reay. The Earl was First
Lord at the Admiralty, and it was at his official
residence that his lovely mistress lived with him,
being the mother of several children.
Hackmann visiting the Earl saw Miss Reay,
fell in love with her at first sight, and laid hot
siege to her heart. The Earl was getting on in
years by this time, but a sense of loyalty held
Miss Reay to him, although the most passionate
correspondence passed between her and Hack-
mann. The latter in the meantime, realising
that his lieutenancy in the Army was not suff-
ciently remunerative to keep his love, should she
come to him, was ordained a deacon in the Church
of England, and four days later made a priest, be-
ing immediately appointed by a friend to the liv-
ing of Wiveton. In high hopes he wrote the most
love crazed epistles to his beloved, and then sud-
denly learned from another woman that Miss
Reay had determined never to leave the Earl.
Hackmann went suddenly mad. He wrote to
friends announcing his coming suicide, and then
made his way to London. On April 7th, I779,
Margaret Reay went to Covent Garden Theatre
FURTHER TALES 149
to see "Love in a Village". Hackmann chanced
to see her as she left the Admiralty and followed
her there. He hung about all the evening until
his love came out, and then shot her dead on the
steps of the theatre. Brought to trial the case
aroused the greatest interest far and wide. Jus-
tice Blackstone was the judge. James Boswell,
the famous biographer of Johnson, and himself
a man of letters, was present at the trial, being
an old friend of Hackmann, and, when at length
the latter was driven to Tyburn, there to pay
the penalty of his crime of passion, Boswell sat
by his side.
Another clergyman was put on trial----but
escaped the gallows. This was the Rev. George
Dyson, a Wesleyan minister, who was placed in
the dock beside Adelaide Bartlett when she stood
charged with the poisoning of her husband. No
evidence was offered against Dyson after they
were arraigned, but he went into the witness box
to tell as remarkable a story as has ever been told
during any murder trial. Bartlett had married
a young and beautiful Frenchwoman many years
his junior. He sent her to school in this country
to finish off her education. She would stay week-
ends with him, and come home for holidays.
When at length she took up her permanent abode
with him, there was one singular arrangement
150 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
upon which her husband insisted. There were
to be no marital relations. That they were happy
together was admitted by all who knew them.
Bartlett must have been a peculiar sort of man,
for whilst he did not like his wife to cultivate
women friends, he actually encouraged her to
attract the attentions of other men, amongst
whom was the young and handsome Dyson.
The wife and the clergyman became mutually
attracted to each other, and when Dyson frankly
told Bartlett that it would be better if his
association with his wife should cease, Bartlett
laughed him to scorn, and even insisted on him
kissing the wife whenever they met.
Then Bartlett became ill, and his wife nursed
him with unceasing devotion. He began to get
well again, and then one night, or rather in the
early hours of the morning, he died. Just before
this Mrs. Bartlett had got Dyson to obtain from
three separate chemists large quantities of chloro-
form. The contents of the three bottles had
been poured into one large one, and Dyson had
got rid of the other bottles by casting them away
on Wimbledon Common on his way to Church
one Sunday morning.
Mrs. Bartlett declared that she awoke one
night to find her husband icy cold, and immed-
iately raised the alarm. The doctor was sent
FURTHER TALES 151
for, but----no cause of death could he observe.
There was nothing for it but a post-mortem,
and----it was the wife who insisted that the post-
mortem should take place at once. That was a
strong point in her favour as was amply dealt
with by that grand old man of the Bar, Sir
Edward Clarke. He was then just plain "Mr."
Before the trial, when it was proved that
Bartlett had died from administration of chloro-
form, the wife had explained to the doctor that
of late her husband had been demanding the
usual relations between married people, and she
had expostulated with him that as for years he
had practised abstinence in this respect, even
encouraging Dyson's lovemaking with her, it
was against all sense of decency now to ask her
to be anything to him, and she had used the
chloroform to make him sleepy on these occa-
sions when he became insistent.
The trial lasted six days and then on the 17th
April, 1886, amidst frantic cheering, the jury
found her Not Guilty.
And now I come to the "case" of Frederick
Deeming, one of the blackest-hearted murderers
who ever lived. I had previously been out to
Southern Cross where Deeming was working in
the gold refineries of Frazer Brothers when he
was arrested. Naturally, I had been asked all
152 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
sorts of questions relating to this murderer, and
I was simply chock full of dates, but following
my usual custom I was anxious to get as much ·
local colour as possible so that I could give fuller
details from the stage. It makes all the difference
in the world if in addition to the dates asked for,
one can give a brief history of the whole event,
whatever it may happen to be. I had gone out
to the place at Sydney from which one, Mrs.
Williams, and her two children had mysteriously
vanished, and underneath the hearth of one of
the rooms. their dead bodies had been found
buried in cement, and I had visited the house
which he had taken furnished in 1891 near Mel-
bourne, where but a month or two before his
arrest he had done to death a second "Mrs.
Williams", his bride of a few months only, whose
murder it was that eventually brought him to the
gallows. Like Smith in the "Brides in the Bath
Case", he had got away with it so often that he
overlooked one little detail which resulted in his
capture.
Deeming was foolish enough to assume the
name of Williams as a disguise on two occasions,
and it was this fact together with the fact that
two Mrs. Williams' had mysteriously disappeared
which aroused the suspicions which led to his
end.
FURTHER TALES 153
I had also visited the little villa at Rainhill,
near Liverpool, in England, where he met and
wooed his last unhappy victim, and where he held
a joyous party to celebrate his engagement to
Miss Mather, while the bodies of his wife and
four children whom he had callously murdered
were lying beneath the floorboards there.
A ne'er do well and criminal from his earliest
days, he had travelled the world almost, even-
tually landing in Antwerp, having deserted his
wife and children. In Antwerp he posed as
"Lord Dunn" until it got too hot for him when
he came to England; declaring himself to hold a
very important position as Inspector of Regi-
ments. It was in this guise whilst trying to find
a suitable house for his friend "Baron Brook"
that he met Miss Mather, and went to live in a
villa which the latter's mother, who was a local
estate agent, had offered him. He took the villa
pending the arrival of his fictitious Baron friend,
and paid ardent court to Miss Mather. The
romance proceeded very nicely until his real wife
turned up at the villa and insisted on staying
there. It was an awkward position, but Deeming
gave it out that she was his sister. Both she and the
children suddenly disappeared one day and were
not heard of until after his arrest in Australia.
Then, in view of what had happened over
154 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
there, excavations were made at Dinham Villa as
it was called, and the whole ghastly tragedy re-
vealed. Meanwhile he had married Miss Mather,
taken her out to Australia, where she was des-
tined to suffer a similar fate to that which his
other victims had suffered.
It was following her sudden departure for
some unknown destination, as Deeming ex-
plained to his landlord, that Deeming himself
went off, and then on account of certain circum-
stances the owner of the house felt constrained
to dig up the floors in one of the rooms. The
police were called in, and there wrapped up in
a table-cloth was the body of Deeming's latest
bride.
The police recognised the similarity of names,
and then were struck by the fact that the other
Mrs. Williams had also disappeared. Investinga-
tions proved that she had been murdered in the
same way, and her body and those of the
children had also been buried in cement after
having been wrapped in a table-cloth. It was
too great a coincidence. More inquiries were set
afoot in Liverpool, and there was no difficulty
in connecting Mr. Williams with the man whose
"sister" had visited him at the villa. Further
excavations took place, and----the doom of
Frederick Deeming was sealed.
FURTHER TALES 155
He was brought to trial on the 8th May, 1897,
and sentenced to death. He heard the sentence
without a flicker of emotion, but when I reached
Bondi, a place near Sydney, and looked up the
executioner, "Nosey Bob"----so called because
his nose had been eaten away by some disease,
and he was consequently absolutely nose-less----
I heard fuller details which showed that towards
the end Deeming became a craven-hearted cur
afraid to die.
"Nosey" was one of the most amazing charac-
ters you could ever meet. He had executed some
of the most notorious characters who ever
plagued Australia.
"Deeming," he said when I mentioned his
name, "do I remember him ? The dirty hound
----I should think I do. I gave him the last cigar
he ever smoked, and although he walked out
on to the scaffold all right, I want to tell you that
it took two of us to pinion him before he finally
got there, and then when the Chaplain began to
say his few words, he started to blubber, and
almost collapsed. All along he had bragged
about his fearlessness, but when it came to it,
he was the most cowardly swine I ever dropped."
Such was the hangman's opinion of Deeming,
and he once told me that some people thought
that Deeming was Jack the Ripper. "You can
155 DATAS: THE MEMORY MAN
take it from me," he said, "that he would never
have had the pluck to do a really masterly job
like that. Killing them while they were asleep,
slicing them over the head with a hammer, and
then wrapping them up nice and tidy at his
leisure, was all Deeming could do. As an honest
to God murderer, he was a stinking failure. Now
give me Jack the Ripper. He was an artist, he
was. Slicing them up with the cops all around.
Wonderful. It would have been a sin to stitch
a fellow like him up."
And believe me there was genuine admiration
in his voice as he spoke. One craftsman of
another, I suppose. He had "stitched up" a few
in his time, and on one occasion hung a whole
gang one after the other. This was the Mount
Rennie Boys gang, who were sentenced to death
for the rape and attempted murder of a young
girl. They took her out in a cab, and she was
found later in a terrible condition. The Rennie
boys were rounded up, and after a long trial
during which public opinion ran very high,
Justice Windier sentenced them to death. This
may sound strange in this country, where the
death penalty only applies to a charge of murder.
But in Australia sentence of death or else im-
prisonment for thirty three years working on
the roads could be exacted for the above
FURTHER TALES 157
related offence, and death was, I should imagine,
much more preferable. The Rennie boys were
executed by Nosey in 1888.
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