Pierrepoint by Steven Fielding Read Free Book Online

friends. They parted at the end of her street, but when she failed to arrive home her parents contacted the police. A search soon located her body in nearby woods: she had been brutally murdered, her hands and feet were tied and her throat had been cut.
    Bloodstains were found in a neighbour’s backyard and when the house was searched a bloodstained razor was found on a kitchen shelf. James Henry Clarkson lived at the house with his sister and his father, and while they both had alibis for the night of the murder James was unable to account for his movements. When bloodstains were found on his clothes too, he was formally charged with murder.
    Throughout his trial he maintained his innocence, but the jury took just half an hour to find him guilty. On the night prior to his execution he repeatedly cried out: ‘What made me do it?’ He was hanged two days before his twentieth birthday. He weighed just 126 pounds and was given a long drop of 8 feet.
    Harry’s next job was to assist in the execution of two men at Liverpool’s Walton Gaol on 31 May. William Kirwan, a 39-year-old sailor, had shot his sister-in-law dead during a quarrel; he believed she and his wife were using his house for immoral purposes and sleeping with other men while he was at sea. Kirwan had been under arrest and was taken outside the house after he had shot at, and slightly injured, his wife. When his sister-in-law came outside to berate him as he was being led away, he struggled from the policeman’s grip, pulledout his gun and fatally wounded her. Sharing the gallows was Pong Lun, a 43-year-old Chinaman, who had shot dead his friend John Go Hing, following a quarrel over a bet on a game of dominoes. Harry and William Billington travelled to Liverpool together and as they made the short walk to the prison from Preston Road station they were recognised by the small crowd milling around outside the prison gates. Harry felt that in the glorious sunshine the prison looked like an old castle, and though he had been there before he still marvelled at the beautifully tended flowerbeds that flanked the path from the gatehouse to the governor’s office.
    They were billeted in the old hospital wing – no longer used, but conveniently close to the scaffold. After rigging the drops – 6 feet 3 inches for Kirwan, 6 feet 2 inches for the Chinaman – they took the opportunity to view the condemned men at exercise. Kirwan was sullen and morose, trundling around the exercise yard with his head bowed, while Lun was the opposite, smiling and content as he spent his last hour in the sunshine.
    The two hangmen retired to bed that night, but Harry was soon woken by a noise and, striking a match, he saw the room was overrun with mice. Looking across at Billington he saw eight or nine of the rodents scurrying across the bedclothes and climbing up the bed frame. ‘Get up Billy, you’re being worried by mice,’ he called out, startling the sleeping hangman. Despite the lack of sleep the hangman were up and ready for the duties on the following morning. It was decided to bring the two prisoners to holding cells in the old hospital wing directly below where the hangmen had slept. Kirwan was the first to be pinioned; he seemed resigned to his fate and more cheerful than he had been on the previous afternoon. Pong Lun was then taken from his cell and strapped in the corridor behind where Kirwan waited. ‘Come on Ping Pong,’Billington called as the procession to the scaffold began. The prisoner bristled at this and replied tersely: ‘My name not Ping Pong, my name Pong Lun.’ As they took their place on the scaffold, the Chinaman looked up at the noose hanging down and began to laugh. Moments later the white cap was placed on his head and as the chaplain recited the litany the floor opened and both men dropped to an instant death.
    Around this time Harry left the job with his sister at her Manchester furniture store and moved back to Bradford, settling at 14 Cowgill,