The Noose of Samuel Burrows, page 11
Chapter 11
Five Days Racing and a Hanging
The Executions of William Tongue and George Groom New City Gaol, Chester, 1822
FRESH FROM HIS exploits in Ruthin, Burrows returned to Chester. The timing worked out perfectly for him as within days of his return he would be busy preparing for a double execution back in the relative safety of his city. While a double execution also meant a double payday, for someone like Burrows it would also come at one of Chester’s busiest periods.
The double execution would take place just days before the May meeting at the Roodee racecourse. The city was heaving with people from all around the county and further afield as they braced themselves for one of the biggest meetings on the horse racing calendar. Punters, jockeys, trainers and even owners strode around the city in the same way as many others, hoping that the races would bring with them new-found riches from the bookmakers. As always, the city was on high alert and where there was wealth on display, there would also be those looking to steal from those who displayed it.
Pickpockets from all around the surrounding area would also descend on Chester hoping to make some easy money as the city was decorated with decadence and the wealth that went with it. The races were always a perfect opportunity to strike as the inebriated higher classes approached the same paths as the Georgian underworld. The pickpockets were not alone as others also made the most of the race meeting.
Bawdy houses would spring up as if from nowhere and were quickly established for a few days in order to offer sexual favours to the more established middle classes and wealthier clientele. Madams would approach houses in Chester offering extra rent and a small percentage of the takings in exchange for allowing their girls to work there. While some would display their moral outrage at such a proposition, others were more than happy to receive the additional income. There were, of course, repercussions to anyone running a bawdy house if caught but the underworld knew how best to keep quiet about such matters. However, in some cases, those caught could easily face the punishment of twelve months of hard labour, as was the case with Joseph Allames who ran one but was caught in 1824.1 Either way, the deterrent did not outweigh the potential income that quickly came their way.
It was not just prostitution that was in a position to thrive during a week-long race meeting. The hotels and inns were full to the rafters, with some inns opting to host cock fights when the racing was taking place. For the price of 5 shillings, anyone could attend numerous places around Chester to witness the spectacle and, if they wanted to, place a wager or two. The city had become a place of loose morals with a blend of those intoxicated, highly sexed, and easy with their money as the streets became a den of iniquity at every glance. Needless to say, Samuel Burrows loved it.
Knowing that these people were in town for a week made the upcoming execution all the more important for him. With many faces who did know him personally, it gave him the opportunity to wander the streets with even more self-gratification. These were people who would listen to his every word, even as his stories grew even more over-exaggerated than usual. His near-death experience in Ruthin would be undoubtedly one they would all want to hear. Yet Burrows had yet another reason to look forward to the upcoming festivities and prize fighting.
He had heard that Peter Crawley2 was coming to Chester with a prize fight due to take place at the Cockpit near the Newgate. While it was on strictly need-to-know terms in case the yeomanry decided to break up the fight, the locals knew that with everything going on in the city the likelihood of authorities stopping it would be slim as their attention would be elsewhere. However, before the opportunity to witness Crawley in action for himself, Burrows had some work to do.
While Burrows was away in Ruthin, the Assizes had gathered at Chester Castle. The subsequent Assize had condemned two men to hang upon Burrows’ return to Chester. During the trials that took place while Burrows was away, the Assizes had condemned twenty-nine individuals to death. It was a record number for the Chester Assizes and the fact that only two would eventually face the ultimate sanction reminded Burrows of the pitfalls of his profession. Twenty-six had had their sentences reduced to transportation and the appeal of James Lowndes was still being heard. Lowndes was convicted of stealing from a dwelling house and was due to face Burrows, but at the last moment he escaped death and was sentenced to transportation as a life sentence.
That only left William Tongue and George Groom to eventually face Burrows’ noose. Yet another one had slipped through the hangman’s grasp and the situation was becoming all more frustrating for Burrows. However, two men nearly became just one, only this time it would not be the judges who defied Samuel.
The men would spend two weeks in Chester Castle Gaol prior to their execution, which was scheduled to occur just before the start of the race meeting. It gave George Groom some time to plan his escape. Groom was found guilty of the assault and highway robbery of James Kennerley. Kennerley, an old and infirm man, was found severely beaten but alive. Eight pence was stolen from him and while the amount of money stolen did not warrant a death sentence, it was the severity of the assault that did.3 Languishing in his cell, Groom made an extraordinary attempt to escape. Using flags tied around his hands, he aimed to leave the gaol through the horizontal flue that helped to heat the gaol. While he succeeded in entering the flue, the sheer heat that he experienced made him turn back to his cell.4
With his escape plan thwarted, Groom would face Burrows alongside William Tongue, who was convicted of raping Ann Cope, who was only 9 years old at the time of her ordeal. The full details of Tongue’s horrific crime were deemed too sensitive for publication within the Chester newspapers. This in itself was a rare act from the press, who had previously printed cases in full as they were ongoing and at the time of execution. In some cases, the local press were more than happy to publish full details of murder cases and yet they had made the editorial decision to limit what they printed with regards to Tongue.5
Perhaps given the possible hatred towards Tongue and the crime that he committed, the authorities of Chester had opted not to publicly parade the two men through the streets of Chester prior to their execution. Instead, they were moved from Chester Castle Gaol to the New City Gaol at five o’clock in the morning as the city was just beginning to awaken. As usual, they were exchanged at the Gloverstone but this time they were placed in a covered cart before heading on the shortest possible route to their condemned cells at New City Gaol. It was a move that was welcomed by the Chester Courant, which wrote:
We highly approve of the alteration; it is praiseworthy and humane, as it affords to the culprits a few hours of uninterrupted devotion, without having their minds distracted, and their feelings agitated by a public procession through the streets. Let us hope, for the sake of humanity, that the practice will be continued on future similar occasions.
When Burrows arrived at the New City Gaol he swiftly went to work. As the two men were receiving the sacrament, Burrows was preparing in his usual manner. It had been a job and a place that he had become so used to that everything was like second nature to him. As he stood on top of the gaol he saw the crowds begin to swell. Some were confused as the traditional parade of the convicts was abandoned; others, in the city for the first time, were simply following the horde and jostling for position to get a better view. As Burrows looked on he realised just how different everything was from the previous and what felt like a more intimate execution in Ruthin.
Groom died almost instantly as he fell from the gallows. A larger, more stout man than average, the force of gravity pulled him down quicker and in doing so helped to break his neck and severed the jugular. Tongue, on the other hand, struggled and convulsed in front of the multitude. With each convulsion, the crowd below Burrows cheered urging him to struggle even longer. They were cheering for him to suffer. They wanted it as, given his crime and the fact that the press were not telling them everything, they were imagining the worst case they could think of. When he finally remained still after nearly three minutes, the crowd slowly began to disperse back from where they had come.6
For the strangers who found themselves in Chester for a week’s racing and cavorting that was coming their way, it was a grim reminder as to where they were. Yet with a week filled with some more illegal activity in mind, the pickpockets and others within the criminal underworld of the Cestrian streets remained undisturbed.
Receiving his pay for the double execution of Tongue and Groom, Burrows felt flush. It could not have come at a better time. After all, when the races are on and the city is booming, there is plenty to keep a man with some money in his pocket entertained for a week of unrelenting pleasures. How much Mary saw of her husband that particular week would be anyone’s guess as the inns and hotels of Chester continued to fill.
Chapter 12
On the Road Again
The Execution of Lewis Owen Carnarvon Gaol, September 1822
THE CALL HAD come for Samuel Burrows to travel again but the timing could not have been worse for his family. His son, Charles, had been getting into minor trouble around Chester but this time around what he had done was more serious than his previous misdemeanours. Charles was now incarcerated in the cells of Chester Castle, much to Samuel’s embarrassment.1 The son of the hangman was now at the mercy of the Assizes and would remain there until his trial. While Mary begged for Samuel to use his influence as the city’s hangman to try to help their son, Burrows was swiftly called into duty and told to travel to Carnarvon in order to execute Lewis Owen.
As he waited for his coach at the White Lion Hotel just opposite the Exchange, he braced himself for the long journey with a soothing ale. As he stared at his drink he began to think about Charles in his cell at the Castle. For a man who believed in the power of the judiciary of the country, and who indeed profited from the process as being the finisher of the law, he knew that the likelihood of Charles being pardoned was extremely high. Even though he had tried to explain this to Mary on multiple occasions as so many convicts had previously slipped through his fingers, her maternal instincts were heightened with the threat to her youngest son’s well-being.
Burrows began to think that a stint in the Castle was possibly the best thing for Charles. Perhaps it would scare him straight and both Samuel and Mary might start to see a change in his behaviour. His youngest son was arrested for stealing two ducks alongside Robert Evans in the township of Burton, which had all the hallmarks of being some childish prank yet Samuel believed that he would receive some sort of punishment.
With some time remaining, he got himself another drink and began to think about his upcoming trip to Wales. His previous trip across the border had almost killed him due to his drunken antics and with this thought still languishing in his head, Burrows began to ease up on his drinking inside the White Lion. It was probably best to handle this execution with more sobriety than he was used to. Either way, he had plenty to keep his mind occupied on the journey.
Carnarvon had not seen a public execution for almost twenty years as the town geared up to install the gallows. Although Burrows did not know it at the time as his coach arrived, Carnarvon was not in a buoyant mood ahead of his entrance into the town. The execution of Lewis Owen was a fiercely contested moment in the town’s history.
Owen was convicted at the Carnarvon Assizes for the shooting of an excise officer during a robbery in Rhyl. Despite being a capital crime, the local authorities did all that they could to spare him the noose. It was claimed that Owen ‘laboured under “temporary insanity” when committing the crime thanks to a recent blow on the head by a plank’. Claims were also made that the impending execution was not in the public’s interest with it being so long since the town had last witnessed the horror of the gallows. The county’s High Sheriff, William Lloyd Caldecot, even wrote to the Home Secretary with his concerns about the impending execution.
Caldecot informed Henry Addington that: ‘The trial had already created a sensation, equal to its effects, to that generally intended and supposed to be produced by execution ... I cannot endure the thought of having a human being executed during the time that I am in office.’2 Despite the pleas of Caldecot, the Home Secretary declined the petition of mercy. The execution would take place and Samuel Burrows would be summoned to carry it out.
Burrows had got the job purely by default. Given the ill feeling towards the planned execution of Lewis Owen, getting an executioner prepared to complete the task was proving to be a difficult task. With this in mind, and following the successful execution of John Connor in Ruthin, the authorities had to write to Chester in order to gain Burrows’ services. Yet getting an executioner was not the only issue that the authorities of Carnarvon had to endure.
Such was the feeling within the area, carpenters could not be sourced locally to build the gallows. The gallows were therefore built in Pwllheli and transported to Carnarvon, where they were brought to Morfa Seiont in the dead of night. With the gallows built, the authorities received their second blow as no one in the town would erect it. The High Sheriff, who was so vehemently opposed to the execution, had to employ his own servants to erect the gallows.3 Even obtaining a cart to transport Owen to his final destination from gaol was proving elusive. Once again, no one wanted to help for fear of being ostracised within the community. In the end, one was bought from an innkeeper and painted black.
When Burrows finally arrived in Carnarvon he was warned not to reveal the purpose of his visit. The grave situation was explained to him and with thoughts of Ruthin still ingrained in his head, Burrows was certainly not going to argue with anyone given the situation. He retired to his room for the night, where he remained until the morning. Knowing the situation that he found himself in, he was already looking forward to returning back to the relative safety of Chester.
The printers were as always quick to make some much-needed income and they knew the execution of Lewis Owen would bring to them. Unlike the broadsides that detailed every aspect of the crime committed by Owen, the printers in Wales opted for something a little different. A four-page booklet was swiftly prepared for this occasion and told the story of Owen’s fate in poetic verse.
The poet described the crime that Owen had committed in a lyrical manner but was also keen to stress the enormity of the young man’s impending fate. Written in the country’s native tongue, it reveals how Owen shot at Mr Sturdy twice during the robbery and left the supervisor for dead before being captured and imprisoned in Ruthin. Transported to Carnarvon for his trial, Owen would face his accuser, who was alive and well. In court, he would recount his story about the fateful night in question.
The poem reveals the attitude of the court that particular day, and indeed the judge himself, saying that:
And the judge who reported in the name of the three and one,
Saying, through great excitement, the man must be condemned
To suffer death on a gallows between white heaven and floor,
Near the town of Caernarfon, a land of dawn violins.4
It also revealed more about Owen’s character. A man who had previously served in the military who returned from duty a somewhat changed man who had vices and who had turned away from his righteous path towards the path of Satan. A certain level of doubt must be reserved for any form of a recounting of his tale in this manner but in it the booklet claims to report Owen’s final words:
My pleasure in my life was to follow the lusts of the flesh,
And deceive young women to suffer reproach and ridicule:
And my church on Holy Sunday, obediently we will do it
Which is to get drunk in pubs from morning to afternoon.5
A man driven by prostitution and hard liquor who slowly descended into the sins of the world following his return from service. Regardless of which, Burrows would never have known the full reasons for which the condemned stood before him. His sympathy for the condemned never lasted too long, especially when he was so far away from home.
Samuel awoke in the morning with his work firmly away from his mind. He felt powerless to help Charles, who was about to face his own trial in Chester. He gave out a sigh and then stretched his muscles in preparation for what he was about to do. He had heard about Owen’s attempted murder of Mr Sturdy following his robbery the night before and was left with some comfort that his son was not facing the probability of execution himself. But he knew that a life of criminality was a slippery slope and one that he hoped his son could stay away from. When breakfast arrived, Burrows feasted as if he had not been fed for a while. He knew that he needed his strength today and aimed to leave town as soon as the job was done.
As Lewis Owen boarded the black coach he could hear the sobs from his mother as she escorted him towards the gallows. Burrows was also with him as the procession left the gaol and ascended up towards Morfa Seiont. It was unlike anything Burrows had previously experienced as the procession was all but silent. The sombre atmosphere was only broken by the sound of grief as Owen approached the noose that would eventually end his life. Respectfully, Burrows sensed the mood of the crowd and remained dignified in his work as Owen addressed the crowd in Welsh. Not knowing what was being said, Burrows remained solemn, gazing at the crowd’s faces in order to get a sense of the meaning. He then placed the noose over Owen’s now hooded head. More cries were heard as Burrows went about his business before eventually dropping the young man.
Reports stated that Owen’s mother fainted at the moment her son died. Fearing reprisals from the already unhappy multitude of approximately 12,000 that had gathered to watch the execution, William Lloyd Caldecot brought her to his carriage and took her away to grieve in private. Such was the communal feeling towards the execution itself, Burrows opted to get out of town as quickly as he could as he cut down Owen’s lifeless body in haste.6
