Signature of Henry Dainton. (Courtesy of the Dainton family)
In the 1891 census return James Billington was recorded as being a widower. His profession was listed as barber. His eldest son Thomas had married Alice Platt in September 1890 and was working for his father and living in Market Street, Farnworth above the family business. William was sixteen years old and an apprentice blacksmith. He lived with James as did the other four children and James’ thirteen-year-old niece, Mary Slater.
Running a home, a business and travelling away from home would have presented James with difficulties best solved by remarrying at the earliest opportunity. He wasted no time and married Alice Fletcher on 7 July 1891. Their marriage certificate shows that they were living together at the time of the wedding so it is possible that she moved back to her parents’ home on census day for the sake of propriety. Alice’s father was a coal miner and she worked at the local cotton mill until she married Billington. Alice and James had just one child together; May was born in 1900 when Alice was forty years old. Interestingly, her age at the time of her marriage was recorded as thirty-five, but exactly ten years later on the 1901 census as forty-one. In light of her giving birth in 1900 it seems more likely that she was born in 1860 than 1856.
On 15 December 1891, and with his home life settled once again, James Billington made his first visit to Shepton Mallet Gaol. His engagement was the execution of thirty-five-year-old Henry Dainton.
Dainton and his wife Hannah lived in Avon Street, Bath with their six children, Alfred, Charles, George, Elizabeth, Edward and Ellen. Alfred and Hannah’s relationship had always been tempestuous; he had been fined for assaulting her in April 1891, briefly sent to prison for the same offence in August and released again on 3 September. On 8 September Dainton became enraged when, according to The Times, he found his wife drinking with another woman. In fact official records show that Hannah was in bed with that other woman. He hit her, then several hours later they were seen struggling with each other on the banks of the river. They both fell into the water, where Hannah drowned. He was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to death. One of the witnesses was Hannah’s lover, Simmons. There were recommendations that this sentence should be commuted due to the ‘provocative conduct of his wife’.
Hannah had not been the best of mothers; police reports stated that she frequently pawned the children’s clothes in order to buy alcohol. After the death of their parents the children suffered further trauma when they were separated. The boys were taken into the Dr Barnardo’s Homes and sent to Canada. Ellen was sent to an orphanage in Bristol whilst Elizabeth, who had been blind since birth, was placed with Bath’s Blind, Deaf and Dumb School. She died in 1894 at just ten years of age.
The chaplain of Shepton Mallet, Revd D. Grenville Lewis, was a strict disciplinarian and in 1895 his views appeared in print. They were no doubt coloured by the cross-section of prisoners he encountered, but also by the seemingly unending stream of terrible crimes that flooded the newspapers; crimes often driven by drink, poverty and despair, typified by the cases that resulted in Billington’s four subsequent executions.
John Johnson was executed on 22 December 1891 after shooting his girlfriend Mary Addison when she rejected his marriage proposal. The following day, in Hereford, Charles Saunders was hanged for the murder of two-year-old Walter Frederick Steers. Saunders had acquired Walter as a tool to help him beg and travelled with him and his girlfriend Elizabeth Caldwell. Saunders was very violent towards both his companions and on 1 May, when Walter wouldn’t stop crying, Saunders beat him to death and hid the body. Although Caldwell was initially arrested as an accomplice, charges were dropped when it was accepted that she had only kept quiet about the crime because she lived in terror of Saunders. It was Elizabeth Caldwell’s testimony that secured Saunders’ conviction.
Catherine Dennis, known locally as Kate, was sixteen when the landlady of the Ivy Hotel, Linchwaite near Huddersfield, left her to mind the bar. One customer, James Stockwell, was already in the pub and over the next couple of hours three more came and left.
At just after 4 p.m. Kate’s body was discovered, she had died from a stab wound to her neck. The other three customers were questioned and their innocence was proved, but James Stockwell disappeared, living rough for several days before surrendering. He confessed in a statement which included this admission, ‘It is all through drink. I was lying down on the seat and she kept pulling my hair.’ James Stockwell was hanged at Armley Gaol on 5 January 1891.
According to The Times, Kate’s mother was another victim of this crime, the article reporting his execution stated, ‘One shocking result of the murder is that the mind of the mother of the deceased girl gave way. She was removed to an asylum where she died a few days ago.’
James Muir was hanged at Newgate on 1 March 1892. Muir, a thirty-nine-year-old shoemaker, and Abigail Sullivan rowed when they drank and one of these fights led to the end of their relationship. She pursued him even after he moved in with another woman, and, despite his complaints, she still persisted. Finally, on 16 December 1891 he paid a visit to her house. A young woman named Selina Lewis was there and testified that Abigail threatened him, first with a table, then raised her hands as if to strike him. He lunged forward and seemed to punch Abigail. He paused only to tell Selina, ‘I’m going to have a drink’ and left immediately. Selina soon realised that Abigail had not been punched but had received a single stab wound to the chest.
Revd D. Grenville Lewis graduated from Durham University in 1884 with an MA in theology. His first position was as a curate in Leeds, then he became senior curate at St Mark’s, Old Street, London before taking up the position of prison chaplain at Shepton Mallet Gaol. During his time there he met Billington, who was charged with the responsibility of the executions of Henry Dainton in 1891 and Charles Squires in 1893.
In 1895, Revd Lewis was given a brief leave of absence from his position and undertook a tour of several prisons abroad, including St Giles in Belgium and several in the United States and Canada. He accomplished his transatlantic trip by working as ship’s chaplain on the Labrador on the outward leg, and returning aboard the Vancouver.
While in America, he launched a scathing attack on the American prison system which appeared in the New York Times under the headline ‘PRISON DISCIPLINE LAX’. The article is interesting in terms of its comparisons between British, European and US prisons, but also gives a snapshot of Billington in the early days of his career as England’s number one hangman:
New York Times - May 19, 1895, Wednesday
The general impression which he has received about prisons in the United States is that discipline is much too lax, that the power entrusted to each individual prison warden in this country is much too great, and that the prisoners as a rule are far too comfortable in their confinement to make their punishment serve as a deterrent against future criminal acts.
‘When I saw the Eastern Penitentiary, in Philadelphia,’ said Mr Lewis, ‘I could not help saying to myself, “What a grand home for the unemployed!” The prisoner’s cells are decorated with clocks and pictures, and even with carpets, if my recollection is correct. Many of the cells had shelves fitted up and rows of books upon them.
‘The prisoners in this penitentiary are allowed to communicate with each other without hindrance. In many cases two prisoners occupied the same cell, something which is never permitted in an English prison. I, a perfect stranger, was allowed to talk freely with prisoners. If this treatment were adopted in England, the prisons would soon be overcrowded.’
Mr Lewis then described the discipline maintained under the English prison system. Prisoners sentenced to two years hard labor or less had to sleep for the first month on a plank bed. During the second month they had a mattress, three or four nights a week, and it was not until the third month that they could enjoy the uninterrupted nightly luxury of even a prison bed.
It was an offence for a prisoner to speak to anyone except the Governor of the jail, the prison chaplain, the visiting Justices, or the Government Inspector. Both the Governor and the chaplain paid separate visits to each prisoner every day, the one to hear complaints and the other to give religious instruction. The Governor had no power to allow visitors into the prison except on receipt of a written order from his superiors.
The chaplain had power to give the prisoner religious books such as sermons, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ or ‘The Saints’ Rest,’ during the first month, and after that time books of instruction or recreation. In Shepton Mallet a religious service was held every morning at 8:45, to which all prisoners might come.
There were three forms of punishment for refractory or disorderly prisoners. The first was a diet of bread and water on alternate days for any period not exceeding fourteen days, the second was the dark cell for any period not exceeding forty eight hours, the third was flogging with the cat o’ nine tails, which was inflicted only after a private trial before the visiting Justices and for no offense less gross than striking a prison guard or another prisoner.
The hard labor punishments were oakum picking, breaking stones, turning the crank, and working the treadmill. There is no stated quantity of work given to prisoners at hard labor, each getting what he is capable of accomplishing without laziness. Old offenders who have become experts always get a share proportionate to their skill.
Shortly after Mr Lewis was appointed a prison chaplain, he said, there was a hanging in the jail, and he made the acquaintance of Billington, the public executioner. ‘He was a short, thick set man,’ said Mr Lewis, ‘and very agreeable in conversation. I understand he now lives a very correct life, teaching in Sunday school when not otherwise engaged. He follows the trade of a barber. He told me that he never had a dream in his life or a toothache. He must always sleep in a prison the night before an execution takes place, in order that the Governor of the jail may be sure that he has not indulged in intoxicants.’
According to English law, a condemned prisoner must have three clear Sundays between the date of his execution, but the time between sentence and execution must never exceed one calendar month.
Most of the guards in English prisons are men who have served in the army or navy. The Governor is also usually a retired army officer, so that discipline is practiced with the regularity of clockwork. Mr Lewis said that the ill treatment of prisoners was a very rare occurrence in his experience. One wholesome check was the coroner’s jury on every death between the prison walls, no matter what its cause. The jurors in such cases being taken from the neighborhood, had the right to ask any questions they thought fit, and, if any rumours of harsh measures with the prisoners had got abroad, the questions put were generally searching.
Speaking of his hurried tour through prisons on this side of the Atlantic, Mr Lewis said:
The Ontario State Prison, in Toronto is like a small world’s fair. It is filled with machinery adapted for making toys, tennis rackets, baseball bats, and other implements for outdoor games. The prison itself is scrupulously clean. I saw the lock-step there for the first time, and I consider it a great humbug. When one prisoner places his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him he can communicate with him in a whisper without detection. Cook County Jail reminded me more of a dirty stable than anything else. It was very dirty, and the discipline seemed to be very lax. I heard the warden call for one of the guards half a dozen times before he answered. If the Governor of an English jail had to call a turnkey twice, he would either fine him or have him dismissed.
The Tombs, in this city, was much cleaner than the Chicago prison, but the discipline did not seem much better. I saw prisoners walking about together, some of them with their coats off, and many of them spitting lavishly on the floors. Under our system, a man who spat on the floor after being warned that it was an offence against cleanliness would get three days’ bread and water forthwith.
It also surprised me very much to see a man with a basket of cakes in the Tombs, selling his wares to prisoners. We take all the money which even untried prisoners have about them, and no prisoner, tried or untried, is allowed to smoke under any circumstances.
The finest prison I have ever seen is that of St Giles, in Brussels. Its exterior is more imposing than that of the King’s palace, near at hand. The officers are a fine looking set of men and wear fine uniforms, which set them off and give them dignity. The prison chapel is arranged with a separate box for each prisoner, so that they can all see the chaplain, but cannot see each other, I asked if many of the prisoners were there as the result of drunkenness. The Governor told me that this cause of crime was very rare in his experience, and prisoners sent there on account of it were nearly always Englishmen or Americans.
Poaching was a common phenomenon at the time, often the poachers were seeking nothing more than food for their families but in many cases the men who turned to poaching were not afraid of using violence when faced with the prospect of arrest.
It was a wet and stormy night when a double murder occurred on Saturday 12 December 1891. Two male bodies were discovered at the Stocks Estate at Aldbury near Aylesbury, just 200 yards inside Buckinghamshire. They were found in woodland behind Stocks House which was occupied by Mrs Bright, widow of Richard Bright, former MP for East Somerset. They had lain for several hours, rain drenched and in pools of blood. Both men had been beaten to death.
The bodies were moved to the Greyhound Inn, Aldbury, which was on the Hertfordshire side of the border. The Hertfordshire Police therefore had responsibility relating to the inquest, while the Buckinghamshire Police had responsibility for the murder enquiry.
The men were immediately identified as William Puddiphatt and Joseph Crawley. Puddiphatt (often appearing in the contemporary press as Puddipant), aged thirty-seven, had been employed as the gamekeeper for fourteen years. He was married with five children. His family came from the village and his father still worked in Aldbury and was the gardener for the widow of the former vicar.
Puddiphatt had a reputation as a highly motivated and resourceful gamekeeper. He was also thought to be one of the toughest men in the village. He’d had previous spats with poachers, including a major battle in the early 1880s, which had resulted in several men receiving prison terms. Crawley, forty-two, had held the position of night watchman for ten months, before that he’d been a farm labourer on a local estate. He left a widow and seven children.
The two bodies were discovered lying about 100 yards apart, William Puddiphatt in the corner of one field and Joseph Crawley closer to Aldbury. William Puddiphatt’s initial injury was a broken arm; this had disabled him after which he’d been beaten to death. Joseph Crawley had been caught as he’d run for assistance and he’d been beaten around the back of the head. The tracks, running away from the murder scene, towards the village of Ivinghoe, were mostly obliterated by the torrential rain, but those which survived appeared to show that there had been three poachers.
Puddiphatt had left home for the nightshift at 9.30 p.m. on Saturday evening. When he and Joseph Crawley failed to return home the alarm was raised. The head keeper, a man named James Double, had last seen the men alive and well at 10.45 p.m. on the Saturday evening. He and his assistant, Charles Willmore, began searching for the men on Sunday. They passed through Howlett’s Wood and as they came out the other side they spotted Crawley’s coat lying in the mud. They hurried on, and after only a few yards found Puddiphatt’s coat too.
Joseph Crawley and William Puddiphatt both carried sticks but were otherwise unarmed. It was not long before Double and Willmore found the bodies of their colleagues. It was immediately clear that the dead men had encountered ruthless and ferocious opposition.
The village policeman, PC Best, was called to the scene, as were Sergeant Page and Dr Edward Le Quesne, both from Tring. The bodies were then removed to the Greyhound Inn for the inquest. Just as the police were quick to identify the victims it did not take them long to identify suspects: three men who had been seen eating bread and cheese and drinking beer at the Bulbourn Arms just hours before the killings.
On Monday the first arrest was made, Walter Smith, a drainage worker, was taken into custody. Warrants were also issued for two habitual poachers, Charles Rayner and Frederick Eggleton (also referred to as Eggleston). Rayner and Eggleton managed to evade the police until Monday 21 December. But their time on the run drew to a close on 20 December when they raised the suspicions of the landlord of a public house in Denham, near Slough. They sold him a knife and used the proceeds to buy a herring to eat.
The landlord noticed that they were studying an account of the murders in a local paper. He too had read the account and realised that the descriptions printed in the paper matched the men in his pub. When Rayner and Eggleton left they hid themselves in nearby Long Farm. They had no idea that the landlord had informed Constable Payne of the Buckinghamshire County Constabulary and when they emerged in the morning they were shocked to find the police waiting to arrest them.
On 1 January 1892, Smith, Rayner and Eggleton appeared at an initial hearing at Ivinghoe Court House. The men had no one to defend them.
Mr Parrott, surgeon, had examined the men after their arrest and found wounds and bruises consistent with a ‘desperate struggle’.
Smith admitted that he had been out poaching with the other two but denied any involvement in the murders.
Rayner and Eggleton both made similar statements, admitting both the poaching and the fight with Puddiphatt and Crawley. Rayner’s read:
On the night of 12 December 1891 I was in my house at about seven o’clock. Frederick Eggleton came to my house and asked me if I was coming out tonight and I answered, ‘I have got no money yet, as I haven’t seen my master.’
He said that he hadn’t but Walter Smith had got enough for a pot along at the Britannia, so I said, ‘I don’t like to go along there without no money.’
‘Never mind about money,’ he said, ‘I can get a drink.’
So we both started and we had a little beer, and didn’t stop long as I wanted to see my master about some money.
When we was going along to my home Eggleton asked me if I was going anywhere that night and I said, ‘It is too wet to go anywhere tonight.’
Eggleton says, ‘If you don’t go I must for I have got neither money nor food at home for my wife and children.’
So I went home and asked my wife if my master had been and she said, ‘No, it won’t matter about him tonight for if you want any money you can have some.’
So I had two shillings off her and she asked me where I was going to and I said, ‘I don’t know’ and we all three of us went down to New Mill public house. We call it the Red House. We had two quarts of beer and some tobacco and we come out of there and then we went to the public at Bulbourn and we had three quarts of beer and two pennyworth of bread and cheese, and we left there at twenty-five minutes to eleven, and then we went along the road until we got to the railroad bridge leading to Ivinghoe and we got over the fence of the field against the bridge and across the fields right up to the end of the wood where we went in.
A little ways in a bough from a tree took the cap from my head so we looked for it, but we could not find it so I went without it. About 100 or 150 yards in we came to the ‘Stricken’ where we saw two pheasants up in the trees. I, Charles Rayner, shot at one and missed it. Frederick Eggleton shot at one and missed it. Walter Smith shot at it and killed it and as soon as his gun went off a keeper showed himself.
But he never spoke.
He began to knock us about with his sticks and called out for ‘Joe’ and he came and there was a fight very quick. I, Charles Rayner, was aloading my gun when I received a blow on my right arm which made me drop my gun and then the keeper picked it up. I had a cut on the head, another on the left which made me unscious [sic] for a little while. When I got round I heard them down the field and I went to go down to them and I kept falling down. I soon got a little better and got down to them and there was a word or two because I had lost the gun.
Eggleton said ‘I have broken mine all to pieces but I have got a piece of the barrel left about 18inches long and we all went back up to the woods again to find our hats and my gun but we could not get neither for it was so dark we could not see.
The next time I seen Eggleton he was coming from the row of trees below the wood and he said ‘I have done for one Charley and I will do it for the other for I know I shall be hung.’
Smith never heard him say that for he was running away and we after him, but I could not catch him. So I lost sight of him and I made my nearest way to the road and Eggleton caught me before I got out of the field and he said ‘I have killed the other. I know for I could put my fingers right into his brains’ and he said ‘I shall be hung and you and Walt will get five years each.’
So we went on until we got to the bridge at Bulbourn where the gun was chucked in. The stock is on the Tring Station side and the barrel is on the other side opposite the public house.
I think this is all that occurred on 12 December 1891, but I am quite sure that I, Charles Rayner and Walt Smith is quite innocent of that horrid crime.
Signer Charles Rayner.
Apart from his claim to have been unconscious during the vital minutes when Puddiphatt and Crawley were killed, Charles Rayner’s statement was an accurate account of the night’s events. Eggleton also claimed to have been knocked out and unaware of who struck the fatal blows. In both statements they agreed that Smith had run away from the fight.
Frederick Philbey, landlord of the Queen’s Arms, New Mill, Tring, admitted lending Eggleton a gun. The gun was for sale and Eggleton had offered him 12s for it, he had refused as he was asking 15s, but he lent it to Eggleton as he had done on two previous occasions. Eggleton was a rat catcher by trade and Philbey claimed that he thought Eggleton would use it for shooting vermin.
Evidence was provided by Dr Le Quesne:
Puddiphatt was lying on his back with his right arm outstretched; he had a large wound across the nose and beyond the left orbit smashing the bones of the upper jaw; the left eye was ruptured; there was a wound 2½ inches above the right eye and a star wound with a small depressed fracture of the skull. Nearly the whole left side of the skull had been smashed by more than one blow. The right arm was also fractured above the wrist. Blows on the head were evidently struck while the body was on the ground. The wounds might have been caused by a gun barrel, a little projection from which might cause the depressed fracture.
The bodies had lain for several hours.
Crawley was lying on his front with his hands covering his face. He had a very large wound on the left base of the skull from which the brain protruded and detached portions of the skull adhered to the scalp. The wounds ran into one another as though from repeated blows. He was probably first knocked down from behind and belaboured. There were no wounds on the face. Two contused wounds were on the fingers of the left hand and there were two other large wounds on the back of the skull.
In the early hours of 13 December, James Bosley, a boatman, saw Rayner and Eggleton throw something in the river at Bulbourn. When the river was dragged on the 16th the stock of Philbey’s gun was recovered.
Rayner and Eggleton were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Smith was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude. They were held at Oxford Castle and the date of their execution was fixed for 17 March 1892. They continued to insist that there had been no intention to commit murder and disquiet grew about the forthcoming execution.
One member of the jury contacted the Home Secretary, Mr Henry Matthews, explaining that several jury members had asked for a verdict of manslaughter but had been over-ruled by the rest of the jury. A petition with 1,500 signatures was delivered to the Home Secretary, then several London newspapers began carrying pleas for mercy. They argued that there had been no premeditation and the deaths had happened after the gamekeepers had attacked first. They cited a recent Aylesbury poaching case where the judge, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, had stated that a gamekeeper had no right to commit assault on poachers and that the poachers therefore had the right to defend themselves. In this circumstance the death of a gamekeeper would be manslaughter and not murder.
Eventually, the matter was raised in the House of Commons where the Home Secretary replied:
No decision against prisoners is irrevocable until the last moment, and I wish to keep my mind open to receive and give weight to any fresh facts brought before me. But after giving the most careful consideration to the depositions and to information received since the trial, the conclusion to which I have been driven is that this was not a case of death unintentionally caused in the course of an affray or of murder only by the construction of the law. It was a frightful violence inflicted with formidable weapons, and with the deliberate purpose of taking life. Both of the victims had their heads battered in by repeated blows after they were felled to the ground and one had attempted to escape and was pursued and killed in his flight.
Given the Home Secretary’s description of the crime it seems surprising that there was so much effort made to secure a reprieve. Some of this was motivated by the plight of the men’s families. Both convicted men had parents living near them and both were married with children, nine between them, ranging in age from a baby to fifteen years old.
Both wives consistently claimed that the men were loving husbands and kind-hearted fathers who had done their best to provide for their families. It was also argued that a reprieve would have spared the children growing up with the ‘gallows stigma’. Smith was also married and with three children. Three wives and twelve children would have placed a huge burden on the parish of Tring and a fund was set up to help support them. Ironically, it did not extend to the widows and orphans of William Puddiphatt and Joseph Crawley.
Billington arrived at Oxford Gaol in the afternoon of Wednesday 16 March. The execution took place the following morning at 8 a.m. with the Under-Sheriff of Buckinghamshire present, as well as the prison chaplain, prison officers and three press representatives. The prisoners walked to the scaffold wearing the same clothes that they’d worn during their trial, including, in Rayner’s case, a deer-stalker hat.
Rayner was given a drop of 7ft and Eggleton one of 6ft 9in. Both died instantly.
A large crowd had gathered outside the gaol, they reacted to the raising of the black flag by falling totally silent.
The following day, a long piece appeared in several newspapers, including The Times, which, in a departure from its usual short notice after an execution, went to great lengths to defend the Home Secretary’s decision to deny the men a reprieve.
On the day before the execution Mr Conybeare, for the opposition, alleged that Matthews, the Home Secretary, would be guilty of ‘judicially murdering’ Rayner if the execution went ahead. Conybeare renewed this line of attack in the afternoon after the men had been executed, but it carried less weight because Rayner had made a last minute confession of guilt.
Conybeare’s stance was a sign of the growing objection to capital punishment. The Times argued that the men’s sentence was fitting and Matthew’s refusal to intervene was the correct decision, although it is worth noting that The Times was considered to be a pro-Government paper at this time.