Shortly before 8.00am on a cloudy, damp Wednesday morning, a little over six weeks after sentence had been passed on Bailey at Aylesbury, the small crowd that had assembled outside Oxford Prison were galvanised by the sight of a white handkerchief waving from the window of the condemned cell, an indication, the newspapers reported, that ‘Bailey was in good spirits in face of the doom he was shortly to meet.’ The handkerchief was waved twice and then disappeared. At 8.07am, three warders came out and posted this sign on the prison doors:

Declaration of Sheriff and others

We the undersigned, hereby declare that Judgement of Death was this day executed on George Arthur Bailey in his Majesty’s Prison of Oxford in our presence.

Dated this 2nd day of March

FH Parrott, Under-Sheriff of Buckinghamshire

Wm Brown, Governor of said Prison

Edward Gearey, Wesleyan Chaplain of said Prison

Cert of Surgeon, RH Sankey MB

Signed off by Henry Galpin, Coroner of Oxford

The final judicial rites in Bailey’s life had effectively begun some 16 hours earlier with the arrival on the Tuesday at the prison of the senior hangman John Ellis at around 4.00pm, as was his usual custom, accompanied, on this occasion, by one of his regular assistants, Edward Taylor. Before retiring for an early night in the quarters assigned to him and Taylor, Ellis had the task of sorting out the actual logistics of the hanging itself, which mainly involved the length of rope that would be required as well as calculating a suitable drop for a man of Bailey’s stature.

The heavier the condemned man, the shorter Ellis made the drop; conversely, the lighter the man (or woman), the longer the drop, to an absolute maximum of 10ft, remembering that the total length of a drop under a trapdoor was usually 12ft. These decisions were absolutely crucial ones because if, as Ellis wrote helpfully in his memoirs, ‘the hangman underestimates the drop, the victim will not die at once of a broken neck, which is the object of modern hanging methods, but will be strangled. If, on the other hand, he overestimates, the resultant jerk can pull the victim’s head off.’

After viewing Bailey discreetly through the inspection hole of the condemned cell as well as having to hand his vital statistics – 5ft 4½in, 143lb (his weight in clothing having been taken for this purpose earlier that day) with, what would be officially documented later, ‘a short, muscular neck’ – Ellis calculated the optimal length of drop at 7ft 1in.

His next task was to inspect the scaffold situated in a chamber, often referred to, rather crassly, as the ‘execution suite’. The room, which was usually formed from two 10ft by 6ft single prison cells, contained the large trapdoor generally double-leaved; in Oxford’s case, it was single-leaved. The wooden beam from which the rope was suspended was usually set into the walls of the chamber above, with a section of the floor removed. Being of an old 19th-century type, the chamber at Oxford had, however, its beam simply set into the walls of the chamber just above head height. Ellis’s habit was to test the scaffold itself by fastening a rope around a sandbag then dropping it; the sandbag would be left dangling until the morning of the execution so as to take the stretch out of the rope.

Ellis would also have carefully noted that HM Prison Oxford also differed from his other more regular haunts – from Leeds to Pentonville, Lancaster Castle to Chelmsford – in another important aspect. With newer chambers, a lobby area of no more than 15ft usually separated the condemned cell from the gallows, significantly reducing the distance the prisoner would have to walk between the two. However, Oxford’s dated set-up meant a longer final walk than usual down a corridor before turning left into the ‘execution suite’.

The following morning, Ellis got up at around 5.30am, had a hot cup of tea and went to the chamber for final arrangements. Then, at approximately 6.40am, he took another look through the inspection hole to check on Bailey in his cell. Back to the scaffold for some last-minute tinkering before one final peep at the condemned man. Bailey, meanwhile, according to the Maidenhead Advertiser, ‘rose early and breakfasted well’. He had also carefully written in pencil on his slate the following:

Men, if life means nothing to you, death means nothing to you, why do you continue to live? If life which is so rough for you at times is still so sweet, and Death, which appears to be such a relief thought of, why do you wish to live? And why do you fear to die?

Brothers, I have been counting the hours, the minutes that separate me from Death. I have passed through Hell, such Hell as I hope and pray God will never come to any of you. The Hell of a tortured mind, of a racked conscience, the Hell of physical fear of Death. I have passed through the Hell, a Hell of fire of ruined chances, of regrets, a Hell of remorse. I have laughed, sneered, scoffed, mocked at God, ridiculed the idea of there being a God.

Chums, read the Psalms for today, the day I pay the supreme penalty for crime committed. You know that deep down in your heart of hearts, a voice cries out to you, Fool! Fool! Old chaps, you may bluff yourself for a time, trying to convince yourself by your arguments that you are Right. But ever remember, comrades, that God is God and never bluffed.

If only I could burn it into your minds, hammer it into your hearts, with a thousand ton hammer that Bluff fails when Death asks its question, are you satisfied with your belief? I have had to answer that question, and I have been worse than you, more pigheaded and puffed up in my arguments, harder than the diamond.

I have had to face God with my hands foul, Black! My people brokenhearted, my little Babs an orphan, my aged mother (a mother in a thousand) crushed by my iniquity. Could I have faced Death, Death with all this stabbing into me, could you? If there was no God, but only your misery, wretchedness and the Devil’s laughter, left to you? It is the Devil that bluffs and I know.

When the Governor, William Brown, visited Bailey for the first time that morning, the prisoner handed him the slate, asking if it could be read to the other inmates when they were all together in chapel. Brown told him he’d read it first and then ‘consider the matter’. Bailey seemed satisfied with that, saying, ‘I will leave the matter entirely in your hands, Governor, and please use your discretion as regards reading it or destroying it.’

Befitting its possible future use in chapel for the spiritual wellbeing of his fellow prisoners, he’d also listed some suitable hymns and readings to accompany his carefully chosen words, beginning with Hymn 608:

Then, he wrote, there should be Hymn 601:

The first of two readings was to be from the First Book of John, Chapter Two, beginning: ‘My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous …’ But he didn’t specify whether it was to be in part or all of the subsequent 28 verses.

Finally, Bailey requested Psalm 14:

In a letter to the Home Office, dated 5 March – three days after the execution – Brown enclosed the wording of Bailey’s peroration, suggesting, ‘I do not think it advisable that such should be read, as suggested, and forward copy to you for your consideration, and instructions, if any.’

The reply came back to him two days after that: ‘Clearly this effusion should not be read to other prisoners.’

At around 7.55am, Ellis and Taylor met up with the rest of the execution party led by the Under-Sheriff, Mr Parrott, and Governor Brown. After brief introductions, Ellis then pushed open Bailey’s cell door, made sure his shirt was open at the neck, patted him on the shoulder and probably muttered a few words of encouragement. Then the group, with Ellis heading swiftly to the front, moved together down the corridor towards the chamber. In the old days, the executioner had always walked behind the condemned man but, from 1910, three years after he had become senior hangman, Ellis instituted a new procedure at the execution of Dr Crippen, who had been similar in height and weight to Bailey. Ellis therefore sped on ahead, leaving the prisoner with the rest of the execution party, so he was waiting at the scaffold when they arrived. Ellis wrote later, ‘Thus time was saved and avoidance of confusion on the scaffold was noticeable.’

A minute or so after 8.00am, Taylor quickly pinioned Bailey’s legs while Ellis slipped a white cap and noose over his head. Taylor sprang clear of the trapdoor and Ellis pulled the lever.

The Maidenhead Advertiser reported that ‘the culprit displayed very great coolness and courage during the short distance that had to be traversed from the condemned cell to the scaffold … Ellis, the executioner, was so expeditious in carrying out his arrangements that but very few seconds elapsed before the drop fell. Death was instantaneous.’ The Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News told its readers that Bailey ‘had shown no emotion. He left no confession but had responded to the ministrations of the Prison Chaplain.’

As the law then demanded, the body was left hanging for one hour. According to prison records: ‘The length of the drop measured after the execution, from the level of the floor of the scaffold to the heels of the suspended culprit [was] 7ft 4in.’ That is, 3in longer than Ellis’s predetermined estimate. The cause of death was, officially, ‘(a) dislocation of [upper cervical] vertebrae; (b) asphyxia’.

Just after 9.00am, Ellis and Taylor took the body down and prepared it for autopsy. Having tidied the gallows and packed the rest of the equipment back into the execution boxes, they were then free to leave the prison.

At 10.00am, Dr Galpin convened an inquest in the prison at which Governor Brown was required to confirm Bailey’s details and that sentence of death had been passed in the manner required by law.

‘And I think I am correct in saying,’ Galpin asked Brown, ‘that the sentence was carried out expeditiously, and to your entire satisfaction?’

‘Yes, and most humanely,’ came the reply.

Dr Sankey, the prison’s Medical Officer, merely corroborated Brown’s evidence, adding ‘skilfully’ to the assessment of Ellis’s methods and ‘instantaneous’ to the moment of Bailey’s death. The jury returned a verdict to the effect that death was carried out in accordance with the law.

The prison records required that there be an official assessment by Brown and Sankey of the work carried out by Ellis and Taylor.

The following day, Mr Parrott, the Under-Sheriff, a respected Aylesbury solicitor by profession, sent a note to the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office: ‘I beg to inform you that George Arthur Bailey was duly executed at HM Prison Oxford yesterday and that John Ellis of 3 Kitchen Lane, Balderstone Fold, Rochdale, who was employed as executioner, carried out his duties satisfactorily.’

Ellis was paid his usual £10 fee, while Taylor received two guineas. Both were also allowed reasonable expenses including third-class rail fares.

By the time the Home Office received official notification of his death, Bailey had been buried, as tradition had it, within the precincts of the prison; he was just short of his 33rd birthday. The current Oxfordshire Archives record Bailey as being consigned to plot 11, between ‘J Rose’, who was interred on 19 February 1919, and ‘HD Seymour’, who was buried on 10 December 1931.

In the month-and-a-half between his trial at Aylesbury and the hangman’s noose, Bailey had spent much of his time in prison writing poetry. These two pieces, with their odd misspellings and even the occasional invented word, might give some indication of his state of mind during those final weeks:

So, finally joined in death barely five months after the dreadful events of late September, the murderer and his victim, husband and wife, also now shared the prospect of eternity in unmarked graves.