Agnes had stood on the steps of the courthouse looking at her son being led in handcuffs in front of a crowd that bayed. She could see women looking down their big long noses at her. A woman vexed by the world. A woman with a son on trial for his mortal life in a country courthouse. It was like Robert to place a mother’s heart in jeopardy. She did not understand why they had such appetite for her son’s death. She did not know which precedent might apply. When you have a heart that is scarred from too much use. Her life was like a story that had been told in the wrong way. Men were a weakness in her that she had to admit. Hers was a life crowned with fault.
Agnes liked to read romances. Mills and Boons and other romantic fiction. This was something she had passed to her son. The desire to read. She could read three romances a week. When she worked in the mill the other girls would laugh and say she’d always got her head stuck in a book.
Most women agreed that Robert was lucky in his mother. That many’s another young girl would have set a child aside into a home if things had been let get that far at all. A visit to Nurse Scour would soon put paid was what the other women said when one of the mill girls got put in the family way.
But Agnes was not like that, for what father would not return for a son if he knew and leave mother and child forsaken to the world? She kept him as token and keepsake of her love and it was no fault of hers that he turned out the way he done. The badness in him was not her doing.
The day before he was hung the Reverend Norman Dugdale came to her door to see if she would visit Robert one last time. He said that we are all condemned persons in the eyes of God. She put on hat and coat there and then and drove to Crumlin Road prison with Reverend Dugdale and they were admitted by the gaol gate. When he saw her Robert started to go on slagging her the way he always did and she had to remind him that they were in the presence of clergy when Robert says clergy my eye this time tomorrow I’ll be in the presence of the man himself or maybe the devil. Then he looked her in the eye and says I never done it Mother you can tell them that, trust him to make such a statement to taunt a mother for the length of her days. Then he took some paper from his pocket and handed it to her. Here Ma, he says, this is what I wrote about myself.
She went home that night and sat blind on the sofa. She did not know what she was doing. She took a box from the back kitchen and set it outside in the black night the way Robert done when he was small, to catch a meteorite he said, but when she went out in the dawn none had fallen. Then she remembered the paper he had given her so she opened it and started to read.
My name is Robert John McGladdery and this is my account. I was born in Tinkers Hill on that very night the neighbours said it was so cold even the stars looked froze fixed to their setting in the night sky so that I never minded cold even in this gaol in the chill midwinter.
I seen the hangman today he came to my cell to measure my neck he was a sad-looking string of a character for all he stretched many’s the man. I tried to get him talking for I am sure he has a tale or two to tell but he kept the mouth shut. He put the tape around my neck and weighed me and made me stand up to measure me and I says it’s like I was joining the fire brigade or the army and he looks at me as if to say I know what army you’re joining the one in the shadows.
I try to keep fit in the prison the governor came to my cell and asked me if there was anything that I needed and I made a suggestion that a gym would be a good idea. Good man he says it’s a pity there’s not more like you in here. Get me a draughtsman pencil and lined quarto and I will draw it for you I said as well as a programme of weights. You want it called after you as well? McCulla the chief warder says. That wouldn’t be bad I thought the Robert McGladdery memorial gym will suit me. I have a daughter McCulla says and I’ve a little plot out the back of this gaol will suit you and some quicklime too.
I thought that if I told my life like a story like the ones you get in Reader’s Digest where someone faces terrible odds and overcomes them etc. My mother Agnes McGladdery what can be said about her she done her best. I wish she’d stayed home nights when I was small the wind was loud in the slates it roared dear God it roared.
I wonder what it will be like the last night do they still hang at dawn I forgot to ask. Does the condemned man get to eat whatever he likes or is there a last cigarette? The condemned man. Sometimes I feel like a ghost to myself a being who wanders at night.
I often put the question to myself did I murder Pearl the mind is a strange place. Did I act unknown to myself? The answer I have to say is no I was in full possession of my faculties at all times. As it is I feel like a character in a tale the murderer McGladdery with a sound like a man blackhearted and dangerous.
The story of my life. I was neither brought up nor let alone. My mother moved from place to place until she settled in the village of Damolly. Her demeanour to me was always one of regret. For example she would say it would have been better if I’d never had you or left you in a bucket. What about my father I asked her she says you don’t have a father did you not notice? She always had a tongue in her head. I seen her strip a grown man to the bone with words.
I knew I was different. From the start I had headaches and seen bright lights during the headaches. How often do these episodes occur the doctor asked me and I says once or twice a month since childhood. The doctor must have told the head warder McCulla for he came to my cell. I hear you get headaches says he well I’ll make sure you get a fucking neckache to go along with it.
I hear them working at night on the scaffold the sound of sawing the sound of hammers. I asked them could I have a look at it but they said no that it would not be good for my morale. I says what sort of morale do you think I have waiting in a cell to be stretched you’re some set of comedians. Mervyn comes to see me but he’s the only one. I would like to see Will to say it’s all right Will you said friends should do anything for each other and that’s what I’m doing.
My mother Agnes McGladdery told me about this mill girl who was looking after me and who dropped me on my head and after that I cried and cried for days and would not take comfort but I’m starting to wonder now was there any mill girl or was she just something my ma had in her mind or maybe she dropped me herself. When I was small I used to dream of a father to take me away a sailor or something with a smell of tobacco on him who would pick me up and swing me around and say here you go son it’s you and me.
The freighters would come up the ship canal to Newry and when you looked you could not see the canal so it looked as if the ships were sailing through the fields. I would say look Ma at the magic ships but she would say there’s no such thing as magic in this world whatever about the next.
I remember dancing with Pearl. I seen her in Foster and Newell’s she was like a china doll and when you danced with her you’d be afraid she’d break. I remember we talked but I can’t remember what we talked about. Mr Brown says that if I want to say I done it and say sorry then it would count towards my clemency but I can’t say I done something when I didn’t especially when that thing is to leave a girl lying bare to the world. Mr Brown looked at me funny when I said that and says he would do his best by me. Strain every sinew was the words he used. Don’t strain every sinew I says a torn sinew is a bad man I know from the bodybuilding but Mr Brown is not a man to get a joke. I says the same thing to Hughes just before they moved me out of his cell into the death cell.I says I can’t say I done it and he looks at me and says either you never done it after all or you’re stone fucking mad either road they shouldn’t hang you. Hear hear to that says I.
The governor asked me if there is anything I’d like special in the cell and I says is there any chance of some barbells and a skipping rope to keep up the cardiovascular system. He looks at me funny as if to say what are you doing keeping fit we’ll be stringing you up in the heel of the hunt you’ll have no need of a cardiovascular system. But a healthy body leads to a healthy mind and a good attitude.
McCulla come to me and said that the prison reform trust had told him to ask if there was anything I needed. As far as he was concerned he says they had built the only thing I needed down the corridor from the death cell but he was obliged by law to ask. McCulla was getting on my nerves so I says to him I would like a bullworker to exercise with. I thought that I’d gone too far and McCulla would do the hangman’s job for him but all he said was he would report my request back to the reform trust and to the governor. When I told Mervyn he said you’ve shot yourself in the foot there why didn’t you keep your big beak shut?
If somebody asked me the happiest things of my life I’d say one would be dancing you’d float around the room. Another would be to be sitting with Mervyn fixing shoes. And the last would be standing on the high board at the baths you could see for miles around you, the ships on the lough, the water and people far below you. Your heart was in your mouth with the fear but your head was clear.
Robert McGladdery was hanged at Crumlin Road prison at 8 a.m. on 20th December 1961. The Met Office reported the city fogbound for several days preceding the execution. The night before Robert’s death the Reverend Norman Dugdale accompanied Agnes McGladdery to the prison to see her son. After his execution the newspapers reported that ‘his last wish was that his confession be made public.’ This was ‘revealed by officials shortly after the execution at 8 o’clock that morning’.
The officials were not named but a letter to the governor of Crumlin Road from the prison chaplain, the Reverend W. Vance, was subsequently released to the press.
Sir
I wish to inform you that prior to the sentence of death being carried out on Robert A. McGladdery he accepted full responsibility for the death of Miss Pearl Gamble. He further informed me that he disposed of the light suit in question by burning it. He also stated that he wished his confession to be made public.
signed
William John Vance
The letter appears to have been conceived for the purpose of removing any doubt that might exist in the public mind regarding the hanging of Robert McGladdery. The language seems to be that of a lawyer rather than a chaplain. The phrase ‘accepted full responsibility’ is strange and appears to be carefully chosen. It is less than a full confession. The reference to the burning of the light suit seems designed to clear up any lingering doubt about a main plank of the prosecution case.
It would be expected that a man in Robert’s position who wished to make his peace on the eve of his execution would express remorse, and perhaps give some insight into what drove him to commit the crime. This is absent. Instead the letter finishes with a justification for making public the preceding assertions.
The six witnesses to the execution included the Reverend Vance and the prison governor. At 7.55 when Robert was led into the execution chamber the observers saw him eyeing the scaffold, turning his head from side to side to look at it. They said afterwards that he appeared agitated. It seemed to confirm his criminality, a gaunt, harried figure in the shadow of the gallows, cowed by its everyday rigours, the nailheads and unplaned planking.
‘Agitated my eye,’ the warder McCulla said, ‘he was looking for the copper wire that he seen on the hangman’s list.’
It was important for Robert to understand things and give them their place in the world. When Allen put the cap on him he wondered why it was called a cap when it was in fact a hood. The only thing he could hear was the voice of the pastor. He remembered Mervyn talking about the parable of the talents and when he asked him what a parable was Mervyn said it was just a story.