A new age dawns. (Author’s collection)
Even the family barber business was failing and in 1904 the doors were closed on the Great Moor Street hairdressers for the last time.
During 1905 John executed a total of eight men, including Albert and Alfred Stratton. They had been convicted of the murders of Thomas Farrow and his wife, who had been beaten to death after a break-in at their Deptford business. The Stratton brothers made police history as the first arrests made by the use of the new fingerprint technology.
In all but the last of these executions John was assisted by either Ellis or Pierrepoint, but when the date of 15 August was set for the execution of Thomas George Tattersall at Leeds it coincided with the date which had been set for Arthur Deveraux at Pentonville. Pierrepoint had been engaged for the Deveraux execution with Ellis as his assistant. With William no longer on the list there was a shortage of assistants and the decision was made to recall William Warbrick from retirement.
John Billington and William Warbrick arrived at Leeds on 14 August and began preparations for the following morning. A surprisingly good account of the events which followed appears in Warbrick’s memoirs:
Jack [sic] Billington’s accident happened the night before the execution. We were engaged at the time in testing the scaffold and seeing that all was in proper working condition.
Every scaffold is not the same. There are often minor differences of construction, though the essential details are the same. All, for instance, have a pit of some kind beneath the drop, with a flight of steps leading down to it.
These steps at Armley were protected by a trap door, and it was this that caused all the trouble.
Jack Billington and I had almost completed our inspection of the gallows, when he stepped backwards along the floor of the drop. As he did so, I noticed that the door protecting the steps was open.
Immediately I tried to warn him of his danger, for I could see he was quite unconscious of it.
‘Look out, Jack!’ I cried, ‘the door is open.’
It was too late. He had stepped back over the edge.
I at once sprang to the door myself and found Jack had fallen half way down the twelve or fourteen steps leading to the pit. He lay so still that for a moment I wondered if he had broken his neck.
I went down to his assistance, and anxiously raised his head. He moved slightly as I did so.
‘Are you badly hurt, Jack?’ I asked. He sat up and spoke rather feebly in reply. ‘I seem to have hurt some of my ribs.’
After a moment or two he managed to rise, and I got him off to bed. I was afraid he would hardly be fit to carry out the execution in the morning, but he declared his intention of doing the work no matter what happened.
There had been no others present to witness the accident but he and I, and we decided not to tell anyone about it. Sometimes the prison authorities were too much inclined to attach undue importance to things of that nature, and the accident seemed to have ended with no serious consequences, there was no necessity for us to open our mouths about it.
My opinion has always been however, that Jack’s injuries had the deepest consequences. He was not very well before he set off for Leeds, and I am inclined to think that though no bones were broken by his fall, the shock which he sustained gave him practically no chance of recovery from the illness which descended upon him soon afterwards.
He was dead six weeks later.
John died on 27 October at Mill Street, Coppull. His obituary read:
The death occurred on Saturday of John Billington the Assistant Public Executioner, whose demise at his residence in Coppull, Chorley, at the early age of 25 yrs will doubtless occasion some surprise. He had for several weeks suffered from ‘Dropsy’ and for the benefit of his health removed from Bolton to Coppull some months ago, but the end came rather unexpectedly after a very short illness. The deceased man occasionally assisted his elder brother William in the gruesome work, and has conducted executions himself in cases of emergency, he was, along with William, a Hairdresser by trade but their business in Great Moor St, was abandoned about 12 months ago. He leaves a wife and one young child. The body will be conveyed from Coppull to Bolton where the funeral will be tomorrow at Heaton Cemetery.
The coincidence of Warbrick’s earlier fall into the pit ‘at the hands of James Billington’ and John falling while in the presence of a bitter Warbrick led to persistent rumours that John had been the victim of a deliberate act. During his career as Assistant Executioner, William Warbrick was present at the executions of twenty-one prisoners, and on all but the last two of these he assisted James Billington. There was clearly never any official blame attributed to Warbrick for John Billington’s death as he was called out of retirement once more in 1910. His final appearance was to assist Thomas Pierrepoint with the execution of John Coulson at Leeds.
One month after John’s death, William Billington made a final attempt to be reinstated, writing to the Under Secretary of State, Whitehall, from an address in Belgrave Street, Leeds:
No doubt you will have heard of my brother’s death, I was away from home at the time owing to family troubles, which was no fault of my own, hoping I still hold the position as executioner as I have always done my work clean and straight forward, hoping this will meet with your favour.
I remain yours obediently William Billington.
In response, a terse note was attached: ‘William Billington’s name was struck off the list … So inform him.’ This is the last official reference to William Billington as executioner in any of the official documents which have so far been released, although it appears that there will be more information made available to the public in the coming years.
On 8 February 1906 the William Billington court case was reviewed, Billington had paid nothing and his family remained in the workhouse. William failed to appear in court but was given another sentence in his absence. He never served this and disappeared, not only from public view, but also from his family for a number of years.
The publication of the 1911 census may also shed light on William’s whereabouts in that missing period.
The Billington family had notched up a total of 235 executions across a twenty-one year period. They were a memorable cog in the legal machine of the day but ultimately paid a high personal price for the fame and limited fortune that came with the position.
William was eventually reunited with his wife and lived a relatively quiet life thereafter, although his name also appeared in the Daily Mirror on 28 May 1936 under the headline, ‘Won’t Be Shaved by Ex-Hangman’. It was a short piece that centered around William’s assertion that ‘there are people who won’t employ me because I am Billington, the ex-hangman.’ He claimed that he had been refused work in Manchester simply because of his surname and that during the previous thirty years he had travelled throughout the country in search of employment. ‘There is little to do for an ex-hangman,’ he said.