n October 1890, at the Middlesex Theatre in London, there was a performance of a piece billed as The Ghost of Bartholomew Binns, with a song to match. It would be one of those popular attractions, much like the Punch and Judy shows or the melodramas about the Red Barn murders, or of Charles Peace: transient but at the time very powerful on the general perceptions of the shadowy figure of the hangman. The subject of this chapter was to prove perhaps the most controversial of them all. He began his career with the rope just before the government started taking an interest in the training of executioners and put forward the first guidelines about training. Partly due to Binns’s mistakes, those suggested reforms took place after the turn of the century.
Bartholomew Binns. Laura Carter
We return to the Phoenix Park murders now. This is because Bartholomew Binns was also involved in the following retributions, and he had a very bad press for it. On 6 May 1882 a teenager called James Murphy, of Thomas Street, Dublin, was walking in Phoenix Park in that city. He told a barrister later that he was alone there a little after seven in the evening and then he saw a strange sight. Here are his own words:
I was coming by the sunk trench in front of the Viceregal Lodge . . . I was proceeding towards the gate in the direction of the town . . . I saw a group of persons there who drew my attention. I thought they were wrestling when I perceived them at first . . . When I came up on the road I saw one body lying on the road and the other on the footway. The one on the roadway first fell . . . I think the car man wore a slouched hat . . .
What the young man’s vague description relates to is one of the formative events in Irish history: the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and his under-secretary, Mr Harry Burke referred to in the previous chapter. The men who had attacked and killed them were brutal in the extreme, as the coroner said, ‘The sight of the dead bodies was sufficiently shocking . . . they seem to have been attacked in front, and they seem to have been unarmed and defenceless, within sight of the habituees of the park . . .’
HMP Lincoln today: scene of an early Billington hanging when the nephew stepped in. The author
The killings were also to make the most significant experience in the life of Dewsbury executioner, Bartholomew Binns, because subse-quently, an informer against the killers, the Irish ‘Invincibles’ as they were known, had been shot and killed in a ship off South Africa. It became Binns’ task to hang the gunman. Marwood had, as we have seen, hanged the first batch, but one killer almost escaped, but being eventually tracked down to that ship, and brought back for trial.
In 1883 the papers were actively promoting discussion and prurient interest into who would succeed Marwood. The Pall Mall Gazette for 2 October in that year had this snippet of information:
The disappointment of the unsuccessful candidates for the late Mr Marwood’s office would (one is afraid) have been heightened had they seen the glowing account which the Figaro had already given of “The Hangman’s First Night.” The actual succession had passed to Mr Bartholomew Binns, a foreman platelayer in the employ of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, and it is satisfactory to learn that he has so far shown a disposition to bear himself modestly and with due reserve. It appears that he arrived at Dewsbury with his fullblown honours fresh upon him on Friday night, but his progress was unofficial and he travelled incognito. A friendly publican was however, in the secret; and this gentleman (perhaps with an eye to business) was not inclined to keep his distinguished visitor too much to himself, and Mr Binns had already held his first reception in the smoke room of the Albion Hotel, Dewsbury. One can only hope that the social duties of his office will be more pressing that the executive . . .
In that lengthy and arch report, we have the beginning of a sensational relationship with the press that was to dog every stage of Binns’ career. There was always a vicarious interest in the profession, of course, and the interesting point is the interest the press had in making sure that the public hangman was ‘modest’ and showed ‘reserve’. Clearly, a public reception in a smoke room was not to be advised.
Binns was carefully monitored as he began as well; the Reynolds Newspaper for November 1883 tells of his first job. This was the execution of Henry Powell at Wandsworth prison. The reporter was impressed, writing that, ‘All accounts agree in saying that he went about his business in a methodical and hangman-like manner. Most men would have evinced considerable nervousness in performing such a ghastly duty for the first time; but Bartholomew Binns seems to have been perfectly self-possessed and unmoved. We do not bring this against him as a charge. On the contrary, it is comforting to know that the Sheriffs of London have hit upon a person so well qualified to do their unpleasant work for them.’ We have to notice here to reference to the fact that Binns was ‘hit upon’, so implying an element of luck. By the 1880s, training for professionals in general was much discussed, and people were beginning to reflect more deeply on exactly how hangmen had been considered qualified for the post in the past. The usual winning factor was a little experience, as with Calcraft; but Marwood had introduced a truly professional element and that had a knock-on effect in the ideologies of the time.
Yet the press were keen to criticize and undermine Binns. The same reporter noted that Binns had applied for the post ‘not for the money it would bring him, but in order to obtain public notoriety’. The general feeling was that Binns had ‘attained that position’. The writer commented that ‘It might be said that Binns is already a household word. But in exchanging the business of platelaying for that of hangman, he will not benefit to any considerable extent in the pecuniary sense.’ The reporter worked out that Binns would average around £130 a year in doing his work, but that was based on £10 per hanging, a figure very low. We have seen that Marwood asked £20. The usual tone of the press writers on Binns was darkly humorous and often scathing, as in these words: ‘We hope of course, when he is called upon to strangle anyone, that he will do it skilfully and expeditiously, but at the same time we honestly wish that he will be unable to make a living at his new business. We would prefer to see him die of starvation than to make money hanging his fellow creatures.’
Binns was a Gateshead man who moved to Dewsbury where he kept a shop. He followed Marwood, the man who had revolutionised the trade of hangman in the 1870s, but he was not to be in office very long, being lead hangman rather than assistant for just a year. The reason for that was that he managed to provide a service which was an uneasy mix of smooth professional work and disastrous botched jobs. He must have had qualities that appealed to the selection board, however, as he was one of a large number of applicants. But it was not only in his professional work that he attracted trouble and disagreement. In January 1884 he was on the wrong side of law himself, appearing in court for travelling without a ticket, on a trip between Huddersfield and Dewsbury. As he and his assistant, Alfred Archer, sat in the refreshment room, they were asked to produce a ticket and could not do so. Binns made an excuse, explaining that his notoriety had attracted attention and caused delays. The Leeds Mercury reported:
Yesterday, the public executioner, Barthlomew Binns, was summoned before the Mayor and other magistrates at the borough court, Dewsbury, along with Alfred Archer, for defrauding the London and North Western Railway Company . . . when travelling between Huddersfield and Dewsbury without having previously paid the fare. He pleaded not guilty . . . the two defendants were at Huddersfield and returned in the evening . . . on alighting, they did not proceed to the ticket-wicket but went to the refreshment room where they remained twenty minutes. They then left, but were both asked for their tickets . . . The defence was that they were unable to obtain tickets at Huddersfield . . .
But it was with the hanging of Patrick O’Donnell, the killer of the ‘grass’ from the Phoenix park business, that Binns reached celebrity for a short time. To his credit, his hanging of O’Donnell went well. The report in The Times for 18 December 1883, has this account of Binns’ participation:
Between a quarter of an hour and ten minutes before the time appointed for the execution, the bell of St Sepulcre’s commenced tolling . . . Immediately afterwards the civic officials, accompanied by Captain Sutton Kirkpatrick, the Governor of Clerkenwell and Newgate, and the Rev. Mr Duffield . . . Proceeded to the condemned cell where Bartholomew Binns, the public executioner, who had arrived at Newgate Friday evening, quickly went through the process of pinioning the convict’s arms in the ordinary manner . . . . The executioner then secured the pinioning straps around his legs and having adjusted the ropes around the culprit’s neck . . . then touching a lever, the body of the unhappy man disappeared from sight.
The reporter was profoundly impressed by Binns’ skill, noting that the death had been so instantaneous because, in the surgeon’s opinion, there could not even have been ‘a twitching of the hands’.
This all counterbalanced the Dutton fiasco in Liverpool, but it certainly made Binns well known. Dutton was responsible for a murder in Athol Street, Liverpool. Just before Christmas 1883, Binns and his assistant arrived in the city and stayed at the Sessions Hotel, near Kirkdale gaol. Binns went to the gaol and inspected the scaffold. What was to follow was horrendous, though the Liverpool Mercury pointed out that Binns had ‘already hanged four men’. The writer said that Binns had been interviewed by the press several times since taking over from Marwood, and Binns told the reporter than he had not seen Dutton at that point; he was described as ‘A tall, spare, close-shaven man more than fifty years of age . . . He was dressed in black, wore a billycock hat and appeared to be a decent person of reserved habits and steadiness of nerve.’
Master Talfourd, an active anti-hanging campaigner at this time. Author’s collection
What followed was sheer terror. Henry Dutton, an ironworker, had killed Hannah Henshaw, his wife’s grandmother, and was due to hang at Kirkdale. There was a special element of drama in the case, as two local journalists were to be present, and also Dutton had asked the chaplain to give the optional condemned sermon on the Sunday before the fatal hour. The sermon was given, covering three warnings which are totally irrelevant, if not insulting, to a condemned man: not to be drunk, not to allow a bad temper to possess you, and not to marry in haste. Unless these were likely to happen in the next world, the whole affair appears to be cruelly ironic. But in the very early hours of his last day on earth, Dutton had something to eat (cocoa, bread and butter) and took sacrament in the prison chapel.
At seven Binns arrived. For some odd reason, the Governor would not allow Binns’ assistant to enter Kirkdale. It was normal practice to have a hangman together with his assistant. But the prison bell began to toll at a quarter to eight and in haste, Dutton was brought to meet Binns and to be pinioned ready for the drop. Then, as the chaplain read some text concerning man’s sins, the ritual walk to the scaffold began. The final walk was in line with regulations: the chief warder led the way, followed by Dutton and two warders; then Binns was behind them, followed in line by a doctor, the under-sheriff and the chaplain. So far so good, but then they reached the scaffold.
The drama came when Dutton was given the rapid final pinioning and strapping ready for the lever to be pulled; the clock for eight had not struck, and Binns walked to look at his victim, causing a rather nervous atmosphere. Dutton asked Lord Jesus to receive his soul. Then the clock struck and the lever was pulled; Dutton dropped, but it was not a quick death.
The doctor looked down at the struggling man on the rope and said, ‘This is poor work. He is not yet dead.’ In a drop of almost seven and a half feet, the body spun around and the man did not die for eight minutes. This was outrageously cruel by any standards. The doctor could see what the problem was: a very thick rope had been used - like a ship’s hawser, the doctor said later - and Dutton was very short, only five feet two inches. The result was what every hangman feared: slow strangulation rather than a snapping of the spinal column with speed, and from a humane intention.
There was an inquest after all this farce, with Mr Barker, the county coroner, in charge. The prison governor, Major Leggett, made a long statement outlining the time taken for the culprit to die, and also added that nothing had been done to ‘hasten the end’ of the unfortunate Dutton. The doctor’s evidence would make difficult reading for anyone concerned about the terrible suffering the man experienced; only a slight separation of two bones in the vertebrae near the point of contact with the rope had happened, rather than any sharp break. In the doctor’s opinion, the noose had been placed at the wrong position near the nape of the neck, rather than under the jaw or the ear. There was, it was stated, a difference of 300 pounds in the drop to weight ratio. The question must have been on everybody’s lips and the coroner asked it - was the executioner sober?
Major Leggett answered that he was not sure. Then an interchange took place that must have ensured Binns’s departure from his post:
Coroner: Has the hangman left the gaol?
Leggett: Yes.
Coroner: I wish he were here.
A juryman asked the Governor’s opinion of the affair. Leggett said, ‘I think it was inefficiently performed - clumsily. I did not like his manner of conducting the execution. He seemed, in adjusting the strap on the man, to do it in a very bungling way, which I did not like at all.’
Catherine Flanagan. Andy Tennick
It was one of the most disgraceful cases of a botched execution in the annals of that grim but necessarily professional task at that period. As Shakespeare said in another context, ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere good it were done well.’ The coroner considered the affair to have been a disaster, referring to the fact that ‘The executioner seemed to be a new hand at the work and that he should have done what the previous man, Calcraft, had done, that is pull on the legs of any man dangling but not swiftly dying.
Oddly, though, Leggett let Binns back into Kirkdale a year later to hang the women poisoners, Catherine Flanagan and Margaret Higgins, who had poisoned several relatives (including children) after taking out life assurance policies on them. This time things went smoothly, as the Leeds Mercury reported: ‘Five reporters were admitted to the execution. Bartholomew Binns was the executioner, but he was assisted on this occasion by an assistant, a fellow-townsman, Charles Heath . . . The two culprits were more composed than was expected . . . The ropes were quickly adjusted round the necks of the two women, the ropes being placed under the neck in each case and within a few seconds of their arrival on the scaffold the bolt was drawn. Death was apparently instantaneous . . .’ It is interesting to note that Leggett was not having any repetition of the Dutton fiasco. The drops for the women were around ten feet, an assistant was allowed, and the placing of the nooses was supervised. Leggett told the press that the execution had been ‘regularly and accurately carried out’. Incidentally, Charles Heath (sometimes recorded as Samuel) was from Wakefield and officiated at three hangings.
A week or so later, Binns was assaulted by a plate-layer called William Taylor, working for Binns’ former employers. The attack was apparently unprovoked, but may have had something to do with his very low reputation, as well as an altercation over an insult by another man, friendly with Taylor, over money paid in court. The attacker was merely fined a fairly small sum, and one has to note the very liberal treatment of the offender. But the aggressive encounter with Taylor brought out an aspect of Binns’ character; he went looking for more trouble at an inn called The Rising Sun and threatened two men. Binns had a garden near the railway property and Taylor Green had been accused by Binns of having stolen something from that garden. At the end of the hearing, the Bench dismissed the case, saying they hoped they had heard the last about Binns and his garden.
There is a story that, before the hanging of O’Donnell, a traveller came into Binns’ shop and tried to sell song sheets about the imminent death of the ‘Invincible’ Fenian. When Binns did not buy one, the man went away, only to return in an aggressive mood with threats of shooting Binns. Help was summoned and the man eventually served a prison term.
Margaret Higgins. Andy Tennick
But the downward spiral in his career, when it came, was speedy. First London removed him from the scene: an announcement in March 1884 stated that ‘Alderman Sir Andrew Lusk MP called the attention of the court to the subject of the appointment of Bartholomew Binns to the office of hangman, and in view of what had recently taken place with reference to him, moved that the 20 guineas honorarium paid to him annually should be withdrawn.’ It was withdrawn; what had happened just before that sacking was that, after another bungled hanging in Liverpool (of McLean) he was relieved of duties in the north. He had arrived at Walton drunk and had had to be helped by a man called Samuel Heath, to complete the job.
The petty troubles and squabbles that filled Binns’ life continued to the end; he had a nasty side to him, as he not only took his mother-in-law to court over alleged theft, but also, so the story went at the time, he tended to hang cats and dogs for some kind of horrible pleasure. Apparently his mother-in-law reported him for that. His final years were pathetically miserable and he even tried to earn a few pounds at fairs and feasts, explaining execution methods. In fact, in 1889, he was in court again, this time at Sheffield County Court, claiming arrears of wages from the showman, Thomas Whitely, totalling £9.2s. Binns was described dismissively in the press as a man who had ‘occasionally acted as hangman’. One report said that he had been travelling around with Whitely, ‘exhibiting himself as public executioner’ showing the public how hangings were done. He failed to get the money but was allowed to sue again. Binns did so, as that was his nature.
The media were not finished with him, though. The Pall Mall Gazette, which had taken against him from the start, noted that matters of hanging in Austria were done with more dash and colour: ‘In the first place, the hangman should be invested with some of the majesty of the law; and just as a judge of the assize has his ermine and his trumpeters, so the minister of the law’s last decree should be attired in a showy uniform, with a cocked hat and jack boots. Mr Bartholomew Binns would, we do not doubt, have no objection to this part of the Austrian system . . .’
It has to be asserted that the Gazette was probably right; for all their tormenting and teasing him in their columns, they had realised early on that Binns loved the rather suspect popularity of his office and they did not want to let him forget how morally questionable that stance was.