The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-26
T Tender-Heorted Hangn1an
 Fails In Suicide Effort
John Ellis, Executioner Of 200 Men And
 Women, Is Able To Only Wound Himself

land that Ellis last job was the most nerve-wracking of his career.
 Mrs. Thompson had led comfortable life and when she was faced with the stark reality of the gallows that had been erected outside her cell window her spirit began tObreak.
 Bywaters met his death like the sailor that he was, but when his com panion in murder emerged from the prison into the yard and saw the rude structure through which she was to drop to death she lost control of her self and alternately swooning and ray- ing gave Ellis as bad ten minutes as any hsympathetie hangman ever ex- perienced.
 It was. part of Ellis boast that he never had caused unnecessary suffering in taking a life and that his knots broke necks with dispatch unequal led elsewhere. His struggle with Mrs. Thompson properly to adjust the moose so that her death would be sudden was the immediate cause of his decision to retire. He turned the job and its perquisites over to a nephew whom he had trained to an approximation of his own skill.
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 Ellis often has said that he suffered no remorse or bangs of conscience be- cause of the strange duties he was called upon to perform. the courts took the life, he believed, and the hang man merely obeyed orders as humanely as possible.
 Among the murderers hanged by Ellis was Dr. Crippen, the middle wad E1aarl c1a thx-eyf yfnio tvuk1 m Nad Scotland yard detectives after the mur- der of his wife and was about to step off transatlantic Liner at Canadian port when his nephew" who was. accompanying him was dis covered to be a girl who later was identified as Crippen's office assist ant. Both were returned to England where the girl was exonerated and Crippen sentenced to die. A war ef- figy of the doctor stands in Madame Taussaud's chamber of horrors in Lon don along with a score of others who have worn Ellis exclusive neckwear.
 One of the few persons other than murderers hanged by Ellis was Sir Roger Basement, the Irish leader, who was sentenced to death for high trea-- son after an English court had been convinced What the baronet in 1913 has plotted with the Germans to wrest Ireland from English rule.
 English hangmen no longer have the remunerative and popular positions they once held. During the heyday of Tyburn tree as a slaughter ground for English criminals and until well into the nineteenth century, English hangmen received fat fees from public house owners in all parts of England to frequent their bars and recount their ghastly deeds. Hangings were public shows then and though the popu- lace could and did turn out to see each and every neck broken, there often were arguments regarding the last. words or the extent of the nervousness of some famous highwayman or petty thief. In such cases the authority of the hangman who had adjusted the moose and bound the trembling arms was unquestionable and the bar busi- ness flourished when such a one leaned his arm on the wood and told his stories.
 It is to prevent his practice that the state now gives hangmen a Hsilence
 Whether the shades of some of his victims came back to poster Ellis with complaints that his technique was faulty or whether they merely visited him in friendly way to express ap- preciation of his gentleness is not known. It may be that they didn't come back at all. But, for some reason the man who had sent 202 persons to death through the trap of a gibbet lies in his own home suffering from the wound of lethal weapon he did not-understand