The Noose of Samuel Burrows, page 3
When the morning came, Burrows was pacing around his Northgate Street home like a man possessed. Despite his lack of sleep, the excitement had taken its hold in ways he could not fully explain. Mary knew all too well that he sneaked out during the night as the smell of ale and gin escaped from his breath. As it lingered, she didn’t mention anything. Now was not the time to wind him up. Instead, she prepared breakfast as she had done all her married life, only this time she sensed that Sammy was in elevated spirits. For him, the backbreaking days that he had spent as a butcher on the Shambles of Chester were now over. His new job as the city’s executioner would bring in more money than they had ever seen before and if times ever got tough, he had plenty of skills that he could fall back on. She knew that the time had come for a decent payday, telling her two young boys Henry and Charles that soon they would be able to get some nice things.
Burrows had been one of the first in the city to witness the latest in executing technology as he was trained to use it only a few days prior. The ‘drop’ was the latest acquisition to complement the city’s new gaol. It was a trapdoor mechanism where the executioner simply had to pull a lever in order to release the bolt that was maintaining a straight floor. Once the lever was pulled, the bolt would release, causing the trapdoor to open as the condemned plummeted to their inevitable deaths. It was designed to be a part of the scaffold so that after every execution, it could be safely stored away until called on again.3
As Burrows ate his breakfast, he kept repeating the process around his head. Place the condemned over the trapdoor, make sure the noose is attached correctly to the beam, and ensure that a strong rope is used and that the noose is made correctly. Tighten the noose around their necks and then pull the level to let gravity do the rest of the work. It all sounded so simple. What could possibly go wrong?
It had been a long time since the City of Chester last experienced the clamour of a public execution. Prior to the building of the New City Gaol, which was designed with the spectacle of execution in mind, condemned men and women were escorted from the County Gaol in Chester Castle or the dilapidated Northgate Gaol towards Gallows Hill in Boughton. It had been the place of execution for centuries and had witnessed its fair share and different methods used.
It was here where George Marsh was burned at the stake back in 1555 for heresy under the orders of Queen Mary I, but hanging was usually the preferred method of execution in Chester. Gallows Hill had ceased being used since the execution of John Clare in 1801. The unfortunate man pleaded his innocence and while being transported from the Castle to Gallows Hill turned his escape plan into action. Travelling along the River Dee on the back of a cart, he seized his opportunity, jumping off the cart with the aim of swimming across the river. The shackled Clare pulled off the first part of his spontaneous plan and made it to the river but in attempting to swim, the iron shackles weighed him down and slowly dragged him under to a watery grave. Undeterred, the hangman waded into the water to gather Clare’s soaked corpse and proceeded to put his lifeless body back on to the cart and complete his journey to the gallows. Although dead, he was still hanged so the hangman could collect his pay.4
For the crowd that had gathered to witness the execution, it was an anticlimax. They expected to see a man struggle and fight for life until his final breath. To many, it was regarded as tasteless to hang a man who was already dead. Executions in the city later took place at the much-feared Northgate Gaol, but in Chester the idea of the spectacle of public executions turned sour. That was, until the completion of the New City Gaol.
The scaffold was designed to be placed on top of the gaol’s entrance so that the crowds could now look up to see the convicts dangle high above them. Everyone could now get a vantage point and the execution became more of an event. It was also an opportunity for local businesses to set up crude takeaways among the jostling crowd with the aim of selling food and other such goods. The printers of Chester would also be around selling their freshly prepared broadsides to anyone who was interested in finding out more about the unfortunate souls about to be sent to meet their maker.
The New City Gaol’s location was also pivotal, situated next to the new infirmary and just north of the Watergate where racegoers would enjoy the sport of kings at the Roodee racecourse. People could now enjoy the thunderous gallop of horses around the racecourse and the next day witness the commotion and hysteria of a public execution just a few hundred yards away.
Everything was happening around Samuel Burrows as he left his Northgate Street home for his new place of work. The Market Square was filling up as tired fishmongers, butchers, and grocers were beginning their new day by setting up their stalls. Burrows looked at the wooden shacks of the Shambles where he used to work.5 He gave a nod to his former colleagues as he walked past, watching a new apprentice hack his way through the meat with a cleaver. Burrows remembered it all too well as he saw the congealed blood washed away into the cobbles of Northgate Street. There was no need for him to feel sentimental about what he was about to do. Death and butchery were all around him.
While he did not really need it, he felt that a dose of much-needed Dutch courage was in order. Even though Burrows gave the impression of a hardened man ready to take on anyone, he could not help but think about what he was about to do. Executing the men and thinking about the crime that they had committed did not even enter his mind. What was consuming him was the need to get it right. No mistakes, just get it done. A drink would steady those particular nerves. The Woolpack Inn on the Shoemaker’s Row would see him regularly and today would be no exception.6 A couple of drinks later, he would make his way towards his date with destiny.
The condemned men were still at the County Gaol at Chester Castle as Burrows was making his way through the streets. As he strolled down Watergate Street he could get his first glimpse of the crowds he would later entertain. William Proudlove and George Glover would soon come down this street as they were to be paraded through the centre of the city up Bridge Street before turning left down Watergate Street. The city was heaving as thousands made their way down to these streets, with many heading to up to the Rows for a clearer sight of the men as they slowly made their way down from one gaol to the next on the back of a horse-drawn cart that rocked along the cobbles. The crowds would then swiftly follow them down towards the gaol, with waves of people making their way down Watergate Street.
Samuel was on time; it was something that in his mind was nonnegotiable. He loathed lateness in the same way that he loathed criminals. It was what impressed those who appointed him in the first place. Burrows was a stickler for the law dating back to his days as the parish beadle for St Oswalds where he would perform his duties to the point of patrolling the area late at night searching for anyone causing a scene and then apprehending them before taking them to the holding house. In his mind, criminals needed to be punished, and now, as the city’s executioner, he could do something that he believed was more important and rid the world of these unsavoury characters. No punishment was too severe and he was not scared to pull the lever. If anything, he was thriving at the opportunity to do so.
With his final checks completed, he looked up towards the beam that would be responsible for holding the weight of two condemned men. It looked strong enough but in reality it was impossible to tell. This might have been new ground for him personally but it was a new feat of engineering for the builders of the wooden gallows. His first assignment of prisoners had finally arrived at the gaol and they were now waiting in a holding room, where they were currently receiving their last rites. The crowd that had followed the procession from the Castle and the hundreds who had lined Bridge Street and Watergate Street had now massed outside the gaol. As they looked up they could see the gallows. It was nearly time.
William Proudlove and George Glover remained solemn as they awaited their execution. By all accounts, it was how they had been since their sentencing. The two men, aware that there would be no reprise for them, had behaved with nothing but penitence as they waited for the inevitable. They had both admitted their guilt for the robbery that they were a part of but continued to declare their innocence at shooting the officer of excise who had just so happened to be on duty at the time of the burglary. Either way, no matter who people believed, no one was fighting for a pardon.
The two men believed that the wounding of the excise officer was what led them to the gallows but in reality it was just a small part of it. Proudlove and Glover were part of a gang who intended to commit the armed robbery at the Lawton Salt Works just outside of Northwich. It was not the first time that the gang had descended on the Salt Works, and they had frequently plundered the area.7 This time, however, they were detected by an excise officer. While Proudlove and Glover claimed that they did not fire at him, someone clearly did wound him and left him for dead.
It was only once Proudlove and Glover were caught that they identified the man who they claimed fired the shot. Robert Beech was the man they fingered for that crime and he was still at large. After they were found guilty by a jury, the judges at Chester Assizes sentenced the two men to death with the aim of it serving as a stern warning to any others who attempted anything similar. The two men had committed their crime at quite possibly the worst time in British history when it came to their eventual fate.
The Bloody Code was still in full swing within the kingdom. It allowed judges to hand out the ultimate sanction of the death sentence for over 220 crimes. The Waltham Black Act of 1723 may have been the legislation’s official name but given its brutality, its colloquial nickname had firmly stuck. By 1809, many were now beginning to ask serious questions about the act and the methods in which the establishment was using it as a means to control the general populace. Prior to the passing of the act, around fifty crimes could see the perpetrator hanged, but over time more and more criminal acts were added to the statute books as the government was desperate to end all crime within the country. From murder, larceny, burglary, and forgery to more trivial crimes such as stealing from a rabbit warren, being out at night with a blackened face, poaching or even wrecking a fishpond; the risk of hanging from the executioner’s noose was the highest it had ever been.8
The crime that saw Proudlove and Glover eventually hang was common throughout the county of Cheshire. Larceny and burglary were the most committed crimes in the county and took up nearly half of the cases that the Assizes would hear between 1760 and 1830. A crime against any form of property would lead to a higher conviction rate, with 64.5 per cent of all property-related burglaries leading to a conviction. Yet, Proudlove and Glover still had an opportunity to avoid the gallows.9
During the era of the Bloody Code, many who received the death sentence still managed to escape the hangman’s noose. Between 1760 and 1830 a total of 571 criminals received the death sentence in the county and yet only 80 individuals were hanged in that time. The vast majority later had their punishments converted to sentences of transportation to Van Diemen’s Land and Australia. Some 409 criminals from the county who had previously been sentenced to death had their punishments reprieved in favour of transportation. For Proudlove and Glover, there was such a possibility as they remained at the County Gaol at Chester Castle, but with each passing day the hope that they may have held on to was slowly slipping away.
Now, in their condemned cell at the New City Gaol after being moved from Chester Castle and paraded through the streets, any chance of a last-minute change of heart from the authorities had gone. Soon they would meet their executioner and the baying crowd who had waited seven years for a public execution, who were beginning to grow impatient.
No one in the crowd knew exactly who the executioner was and for now, Burrows liked it that way given that this was his first time on the gallows. That sense of anonymity would later become useful but given that this was his first execution, a combination of his jangling nerves and fear of reprisals somehow allowed him to focus on the job at hand. The gallows on top of the gaol had now been covered with black cloth in order to allow some dignity to Proudlove and Glover. What the crowd could see though was the trapdoor from which these men would soon descend. It was this black cloth that also meant that Burrows himself could hide himself from the masses. The days of the black hood covering the mysterious executioner were long gone in Chester now.
Burrows’ first job was to pinion the men’s hands behind their backs. He did this moments before they were due to be escorted from the condemned cell in order to prevent any calamity on the gallows itself. In some cases, executioners could face an ordeal when pinioning the condemned as they fought against the inevitable but Proudlove and Glover were in no mood to fight. Thankfully for Burrows, the depressed men had accepted their fate.
Burrows then climbed the wooden stairs with the condemned men, who were escorted by gaolers. Once there he placed a hood over the heads, took his slipknot noose, and then slid it over their heads before tightening it to their necks. The rope needed to be thick enough, depending on what Burrows believed their weight to be, and strong enough to ensure that it could maintain the hanging body for up to an hour after the condemned’s final breaths. With the nooses attached to Proudlove and Glover, Burrows went over to his lever.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. The bolt was released as Burrows pulled the lever and the trapdoor opened. The gasps and cheers of the crowd filled the air as Burrows let out a sigh of relief. However, Burrows had miscalculated the weight of men and the thickness of the rope required. Soon the cheers turned into cries of abject horror as ‘both ropes snapped a few inches from their necks, and the poor sufferers fell upon the terrace’.10
The sigh of relief Burrows previously exhaled had now quickly turned into panic as he looked up towards the beam where his ropes were attached. The beam was intact as his ropes billowed in the breeze. Unable to see exactly what was going on, he looked down the hole of the opened trapdoor to see his two condemned men lying metres beneath him in pain as their legs were covered in blood following their descent. Gaolers pounced on Proudlove and Glover and swiftly got them back to their feet before hastily taking them back into the gaol. They appeared ‘to feel little either in body or mind from the shock that they had received’. Some of their vital functions had begun to shut down and, although nearly dead, they were not in ‘absolute Death’.11
Once Proudlove and Glover had been revived they ‘spoke of it as a disappointment’ at still being alive, believing that they saw heaven.12 The two men requested that the gaol chaplain come and visited them again after being told in no uncertain terms that the execution was still going ahead. When Burrows heard the news he immediately went to find some more rope. This time though he picked the strongest around. Estimating weight and playing it by the book could wait until later; for now, he just needed to prove that he was the right man for the job. The drop was reset, the rope once again attached to the beam and after two hours Burrows had composed himself to go again.
Proudlove and Glover, despite the mishap on the gallows, remained calm. Perhaps there was a chance that their punishment could be converted to transportation after all? Maybe, just maybe, this was an act of god, who had somehow intervened in order to save them. They accepted the sacrament once again, while Burrows was frantically getting everything in place once more.
Burrows made doubly sure that the second time would go right. The crowd beneath him, he thought, were laughing as they continued to wait during the interlude. The whole process was then swiftly repeated. This time, it all went according to plan as Proudlove and Glover remained motionless moments after the drop.13 There they waited lifelessly as the crowd finally dispersed and entered the inns and public houses of Chester to continue the assessment of what they had just witnessed.
Thankfully, no one was around when Burrows cut the men down. The post-execution stillness following the frantic events had exhausted him. He just hoped Mary hadn’t seen him embarrass himself. Hopefully, she had stayed away from the Linenhall area but, given what had happened, Burrows was all too aware of the chatting lips that would eventually tell her everything they saw as they strolled down Northgate Street.
Placing the men’s bodies on to a cart, Burrows enquired as to what happened next. He was told to go home, get himself sorted, and be ready for the next one whenever it may be. Somehow, he managed to keep his job. Burrows thought to himself that at least people would remember this one for years to come and at the very least they had no idea that he was the man who had messed it all up.
As the cart left the New City Gaol it began its slow journey back to Odd Rode with Proudlove and Glover’s lifeless bodies. A further punishment awaited them even in death. The two men were to be gibbeted near the Salt Works where their crime took place. Encased in an iron frame and raised above the highway for all to see, it served as a reminder as to what criminals could expect in the area when caught. While Burrows was enjoying his new-found riches, Proudlove and Glover’s bodies were decaying in the gibbet as a warning to all.14
Chapter 4
A Done Deal
The Execution of Thomas Done New City Gaol, Chester, 1810
NO MATTER HOW much Thomas Done pleaded his innocence it fell on deaf ears as far as Samuel Burrows was concerned. After all, for Burrows, it was nothing personal and the condemned man standing before him had been found guilty of murder. To Burrows, Done was just another job and this time he knew that he couldn’t afford any mistakes.
Standing on top of New City Gaol, Done’s execution was an opportunity to erase the memories of the men who dropped twice and Burrows knew he had to get this one right. He opted for thicker rope to ensure that it did not snap as Done plummeted. With the curtains closed, Burrows completed his checks as the masses gathered outside the gaol. Burrows could hear the murmurs from his vantage point as he carefully took a peek through the break of the curtains. While he was eager to reveal his identity as the city’s hangman, he knew he had to bide his time, especially following the disaster of his previous effort. This one had to be perfect.
