The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-08-22 00:00:00

TUE FIRST EXECUTION IN PRIVATE,

The following graphic account of the execution of Thomas
It elLs is from the special reporter of the Norm ng Star:—
The first execution within the prison walls, and in
presence only of a limited number of spectators, in ac-
ordance with the new Act of Parliament for the
I.etter regulation of capital punishment, took place on
'Thursday morning at Maidstone Gaol It will be
tim with the greater interest, on account of its
ls•Urg a narrative of the first private execution in
The curious in such matters will note as an odd
coincidence, the fact that Maidstone -a town so noto-
f oils for its anti-capital punishment feeling, that
I.,wyers will tell you it is most difficult to get a jury to
t-liirn an adverse verdict against a prisoner on trial
f • r his life- should have been the first place in which
the :irrangements of the death sentence under the new
Ikw should have been carriekl out. Whether in pur-
suance of this feeling the inhabitants wilfully ignored
the tragedy which was about to be enacted in the im-
mediate outskirts of their town, or whether they were
itoliiierent to it, or whether the exact period of the
Xeelltil rn hail been hidden from them, it is impossible
to say; but it is certain that, amongst the people
freely scattered about the broad and handsome streets
in Wednesday evening, there was not the slightest in-
dication that anything unusual was to take place
among them on the following day. A travelling
menagerie, which had pitched its tent close by the
li niers of the canal, was thronged with delighted
vszers, among whom the private-soldier element was
strongly represented. The local volunteers, headed
I.v their band, were attended in their march by many
the youthful population, and a still larger gathering
followed the band of the militia regiment, and grouped
joniol them as they played in front of their head-
colartsrs, the "Mitre" Rohs]. But in none of thaerowda,

composed as they were of townspeople—old and young,
male and female—did one hear the least allusion, either
in earnestness or ribaldry, to the criminal who was
spending his last hours within a few hundred yards of
the place where this gaiety was being carried on, and
to whose ears, deafen them how he might, abstract his
senses how he would, the clangour of toe trumpets and
the boom of the drunismust have been painf ally audible.
Nor was there any remarkable difference on Thursday
morning. It had been expected that a large majority
of the shops would remain closed until after the execu-
tion, which was fixed to take place at half-past ten,
but the shutters were taken down at the usual hour
men proceeded, totheir usual avocations, and there was
not the smallest sign—not even that most ordinary
sign of men and women conversing in knots and groups
—of anything unusual being about to happen, until one
reached the immediate neighbourhood of the gaol, and
there, on the far side of the broad road running round
by the court-house, was a thin fringe of humanity,
some fifty persons in all, in one long line, looking to-
wards the great gate of the gaol, and talking among
themselves. Emphatically a "had lot" this, tramps
out on hopping excursions, beggars, a female gipsy
or
two—men and women, too, the lowest scum of the
population, and a dozen eager-eyed, wolfish, cunning.
looking blackguard boys. They gape and stare, though
there is nothing for them to look at as yet ; the gaol.
gate is closed, and there is no one in the immediate
neighbourhood, so they take stock of the flagstaff, on
which, in accordance with official injunctions, the
'black flag" is to be run up at the moment of the
execution, and find matter for comment in the exit
from the gaol of certain stonemasons who have been at
work inside the prison walls.
At half-past nine exactly a four-wheeled cab drives
rapidly up the street, and pulls up at the door of the
"New I on,"immediatelyoppositetheCourt-house. The
cab door and the inn door open simultaneously ; from
the former descends a man, who enters the inn, the
door of which is again immediately closed upon him,
while the cab drives off. In two minutes this mar.
emerges from the inn and makes for the gaol. He is an
elderly man, with white hair and white beard, broad
and thick-set, is dressed in black, with a peculiar tall
hat, and carries a small carpet-bag in his hand. Thie
is Caimmer, the hangman. As it were intuitively the
little crowd becomes aware of this, a whisper runs
round among it that the bag contains his "tackle" of
pinioning straps, ste., and the blackguard boys, excited
beyond bearing, spring to their feet and start in
pursuit. The man, taking no notice and looking
doggedly before him, crosses the road, and getting close
to the gaol railings, half slinks, half shambles along
until he reaches the gate, which opens at his approach
and closes behind him. Five minutes afterwards,
another man issues from the inn and makes for the
gaol—a tall, thin, wiry man, with a keen eye, with his
cheeks and part of his forehead closely shaved, dressed
in a velveteen shooting coat, loose trousers, and
billycock hat, and looking like an acrobat who had
donned his private clothes over his professional
costume. The little crowd does not know this man,
though he is almost as notorious as the other. He is
SMITH, of Dudley, the hangman of the Birmingham
district, who hanged Palmer, and who occasionally
assists Calcraft on great occasions.
At ten o'clock the representatives of the press, who
have been provided by the authorities with proper
credentials, are admitted into the prison, and are first
ushered into the round-house, a building in the debtors'
division, where the tunikeys on duty pacts the night.
It is fitted with a desk and benches, is glazed on all
sides, and overlooks the front court and several of the
exercise yards. Several of the warders are here, and
from them one learns that the prisoner has passed a
quiet night, sleeping from half-past ten till half-past
four, but that the extiaordinary equanimity which he
has hitherto displayed is failing him now, and that he
is beginning to "break down." This conversation
is carried on in a low whisper; the silence of the
place is singularly oppressive; and this, combined
with the knowledge of what one is about immediately
to witness, renders this period one of most painful sus-
pense. There are five hundred prisoners within the
gaol, but one might as well be in the City of the
Dead for all one hears of them, the only sound, the
jingling of the warders' keys, grating on the ear. A
little excitement is caused by the hurried entrance of
a warder front the direction in which the prisoner is
known to be, and his equally hurried disappearance
bearing some brandy in a tumbler, but the silence sets
in afresh, and one is reduced to watching two little
knots in the fore court. One of these consists of the
under-sheriff (who is deeply affected), the medical
officer, and a none/Went person in a wideawake hat, who
is said to be the governor, but who takes no part in the
proesedings, and who is poking up the ground with his
walking-stick in a very drgage manner. The other knot
is formed of Caleraft, his assistant, and two of the
warders who are chatting together. At twenty-five
minutes past ten the party—consisting of four reporters
from the London journals, six from various local
papers, and a carpenter who is in attendance lest his
services should be required in connection with the ar-
rangements of the drop, and a warder in plain clothes
who has been sitting up all night with the prisoner—
is summoned from the round-house and ushered into
a narrow vaulted ante-room, whence, after five minutes'
delay, they are led through a narrow passage into the
presence of the gallows.
There it stands, erected under a shed at the further
end of a small yard some thirty feet square, the old
square gallows formed of two uprights and one cross-
beam, and whose form has been familiar to us from
woodcuts and description for years, only in this in-
stance it is painted buff instead of the ordinary dead
black. The uprights across have iron supports fixed
into the wall, and in the crossbeam there is a hook.
immediately under which stand Thomas Wells,
with the rope round his neck. There is no built
scaffold; the drop on which the prisoner stands is
flush with the ground, and the public (if the little
representative party can be so called) is placed behind
a barrier breast-high, yet so close to the prisoner that
they can see every movement of his face, and hear
every word he utters. He looks a mere youth, short,
yet strongly-built. He is dressed in his railway
porter's uniform of velveteen, with the company's
initials in red. on the collar, and in his wai,tcoat, just
above his pinioned hands, wears a small flower. He
evidently knows little if anything of what is going on
around him. He is absorbed in prayer— his face, of a
livid hue, is upturned, and ha eyes are looking up-
wards. Standing by him, the chaplain, the Rev. W.
C. F. Sugden Fraser, reads, in a voice broken
with emotion, the burial service. Suddenly the pris
Boner begins, in a low, thick, trembling voice,
to sing a hymn—one, as we afterwards learn,
which he has been recently repeating in his cell—and
continues to sing it after Calcraft has pulled the cap
over his face, and the chaplain has shaken hands with
him—is singing it when, at a signal from his superior,
Smith pulls the bolt, and then, with a sickening
rattle, the drop falls, Calcraft standing behind, and,
as it were, guiding the falling figure. In our belief,
life was not wholly extinct for three or four minutes
after the falling of the drop. It is usual on these oc-
casions to speak of the movements of the limbs as
being "merely muscular." In this instance there was
scarcely any muscular contortion, hut there were un-
doubtedly deep respirations and other undeniable evi-
dence that asphyxia did not immediately happen.
Such is the history of the first private execution in
England. Anticipated with just horror by those who
were compelled to be present, it was carried out with
every decency and all decorum, in a manner calculated
to give the least pain to those whose duty it was to
witness it. The presence of the representatives of the
press at a private execution is a guarantee to the
public, whose delegates they are, that the sen-
tence of the law which has been passed upon a
certain criminal is duly carried out. But there is no
occasion to inflict upon them, as was the case at New-
gate, the horror of witnessing the pinioning, the
procession, and all the awful details of the scaffold.
These, thanks to the visiting justices and to the under'
sheriff of Kent, Mr. Furley, of Ashford, they were
spared at Maidstone, and will, it is to be hoped, be
spared in future. Meanwhile, so far as this one instance
affords means of judging, is the execution under the
new law more impressive than under the old? We
answer, decidedly, in the affirmative. The. applause
or censure of the mob, the desire to "die game'
before his friends, had, it is acknowledged, the worst
influence on the prisoner, and the solemn stillness of
the little yard, with its handful of spectators, must
have been impressive in the most awful degree, while
a peaceful provincial town is left to its usual avoca-
tions, entirely free from the influx of pestilent black-
guardism, drunkenness, and obscenity which always
attended a public hanging