CHAPTER VII:  TALES OF THE SCAFFOLD
 I have met many executioners during my travels in various countries, and I have always made a point of cultivating their acquaintance----not out of any morbid curiosity, but from a purely professional point of view.  The dates of famous murder trials, and the dates of the executions of notorious murderers have always formed a large proportion of the questions I have been asked. Consequently I have sought executioners out when possible, and got from their own lips the stories of the various executions at which they have officiated. …
 
James Berry was another old "executioner" friend of mine. He was a blunt, typical Yorkshireman, with a rare pride in his profession as well became a man who had served his apprenticeship to the noble science of hanging under such a historic public executioner as the great Bartholomew Benjamin Binns, the hero of that famous old time song, "I'm the Ghost of Benjamin Binns". It is a singular thing how many hangmen combined their job of the gallows with the less sinister occupation of shopkeeper. Berry used to keep a tobacco shop in Dewsbury.

Berry's most famous "case" was probably that of John Lee "the man they could not hang"; the man who served a long and terrible sentence for a crime which, I am convinced, he did not commit. I knew John Lee well. I knew him for many years, just as I knew Berry, the man who tried to hang him, and from them I learned the real truth about the failure of the trap-door to open and send poor Lee to his doom. Lee talked quite frankly with me about the murder, and now that he is dead - he died in Sydney, on October 3rd, 1921, after eloping with a woman from Newcastle - I can tell the whole story as it was revealed to me, by the two chief figures in the drama.

It was whilst I was on tour in Bradford in April, 1903, that I heard that Berry had arrived in the town, and as I was most anxious to get the full list of details regarding the executions he had carried out so that I could give the fullest particulars when asked by any member of the audience, I made an appointment to see him. He was staying at a house in Bilton Place, Girlingham, Bradford - am I right, sir ? - and I called upon him at ten o'clock in the morning.

It was from Berry's own lips that I gathered a description of what happened on that ghastly morning of the 23rd February, 1885, when for thirty five minutes he endeavoured to carry out sentence of death upon this twenty-year-old youth.

"They talk a lot of rot about the scaffold having been tested with bags of sand weighing exactly the same weight as Lee," said Berry in telling me the story, "but you can take it from me there is no truth in it. They will tell you that, twice after the trap-door refused to work, bags of sand were brought and placed on it, and that when the lever was pulled the trap-door opened and the bags fell through. And then they say that when John Lee was brought out the trap-door would not work when the lever was pulled.

"It was nothing of the kind. I cannot tell you the real facts about it yet, as my lips are sealed for the time, but one day you shall know.  "What I can tell you is this. That poor boy was brought out on that Monday morning, and in those days they had to walk farther to the scaffold than they do to-day. I had pinioned him, and when he was on the trap-door strapped his legs in a trice and pulled the lever. "Nothing happened. I could not believe my eyes. I jerked the lever backwards and forwards, wondering what was wrong, but there stood John Lee with the cap still over his head. I looked towards the Governor, and he made a motion with his head. I whipped off the leg straps and in a moment Lee was back in his cell whilst we were busy at the scaffold trying to locate the trouble.

"It was a new scaffold, and as there had been no execution at Exeter Gaol for a number of years, they had had this one freshly built for the execution of Lee. The prison carpenter could find nothing wrong with it except that it fitted a bit tight owing to a heavy downpour of rain all through the day before. This had caused the new wood to swell. Some of it was shaved off, and Lee was brought to the scaffold once more. The work had been done hurriedly to lessen the terrible torture that Lee must have been suffering during the period of waiting.

"Unfortunately it was not well done. When we got. him on the trap again it still would not work, and he was removed once more so that further shavings could be taken off. And then for the third time I strapped his legs as he stood there straight and upright, the most fearless man I had ever seen. I pulled the lever - and I heard a groan, followed by a thud. One of the warders had fainted with sheer horror. The trap-door had not moved, and the doomed man stood there still.

"The Governor was white-faced and trembling, and I felt as I had never felt before. In a quavering voice the Governor ordered the remaining warders to attack the trap-door with the flat heads of the axes they were carrying. They did so.

 "Meanwhile Lee stood erect and immovable while the warders hammered - hammered again at the trap-door upon which he stood. I remember patting him on the back, and murmuring: 'My poor fellow - my poor fellow !'

 "I remember the Governor speaking words of comfort to the unhappy man. Still the trap-door did not budge, and by this time other warders were lying around, having collapsed with the awfulness of the thing which had happened. At length the Governor ordered Lee to be taken back to the cell. I released his legs, I took the pinion straps from off his arms, and he was given a glass of brandy which he did not drink. Meanwhile the Governor got into touch with the Home Secretary, who at once wired back: 'In view of the mental torture Lee has suffered grant him respite.'

"And nobody was more glad than I was. I think if another attempt at execution had been ordered I should have resigned my job."
 Now that was the story as told to me by Berry, the hangman. And that was as far as he could go at that time in 1903. I was to meet him several times afterwards, and was to meet him in the company of the man whom he had thrice tried and failed to hang. At that time he had retired, and he had learnt something more about the new scaffold. He told me that from that day onwards nobody has ever been executed on a Monday, and in order that the real truth should not leak out, he put it about that the real reason for the putting off of executions from the Monday was that it frequently happened that the executioner had some difficulty in getting a train connection which would get him to the gaol the night before the execution owing to there being fewer trains on Sunday.

 "To some extent this was true, but the real reason was to make sure that the scaffold could be thoroughly examined before the execution to see that it was in proper working order both on the night before and on the morning of the execution."

Now it was not until after Lee's release that I was able to learn from his own lips the story of what had happened so far as he was concerned.

He was arrested on November 14th, 1884, for the murder of Miss Emma Whitehead Keyse, of the Glen, Babbacombe.  She was a friend of Royalty, and her murder aroused tremendous interest. The details of the crime are so well known that it is not necessary for me to relate them. John Lee was arrested [and] brought to trial at Exeter Assizes, and sentenced to death on February 4th, 1885, by Justice Manisty.  The latter recommended him to mercy on account of his youth - he was only twenty - but no reprieve was forthcoming, and so John Lee went through that grim experience of standing three times on the scaffold with the noose around his neck.
 Years afterwards - in 1904 - I met the Chaplain who officiated on that occasion, and who told me that the incident would never fade from his mind. This was the Reverend Pitkin, and he told me that Lee was a brave boy.  "We were all terribly distressed at what happened," said the Chaplain. "I read the burial service three times that morning."

Lee was released on December 18th, 1907, having served twenty three years one month and four days.

It was at "The Clock", at the corner of Nunn Street, Newcastle, that Berry and I met Lee. I shall never forget the meeting of those two men - the executioner and the man he tried to hang.

They shook hands and Lee grinned. "I knew I would not hang," he said, and then more seriously, "I don't know how I knew it but something seemed to tell me that I should not die then. By the way, did you ever get to know why that trap-door did not act?" He gave another little grin.

"Yes," replied Berry, "but let me hear your version, and I'll tell you if it's the same." And then for the first time the true secret of the failure of the trap-door to act was made known, and is now published for the first time.

"I learned it years afterwards from one of the old lags whom I met in Portland," said Lee, telling the story. "He was in Exeter Gaol at the time I was awaiting execution, and was one of the men engaged in the erection of the new scaffold. We were in the same gang eventually, and he told me all about it.

"There was another man there, an old lag who had been a carpenter in his day, and when it was decided to build the new scaffold he thought he would make it as difficult for the hangman as he possibly could, so he made the trap-door with a slight slant which caused the edges to fit in such a manner that when a weight was put upon it they got tighter and tighter, becoming almost wedged.
 "The man had no idea of the terrible torture he was going to inflict on the poor devil who was condemned. All he thought about was making things as awkward for the authorities as possible, and the hangman in particular.  The doomed man never crossed his mind, I suppose. One of the boards was screwed on with a slight warp. This was the one on which the condemned man would stand, and by causing this one to spread outwards a bit it made the trap fit all the tighter."

At this point Berry broke in: "Yes, that's the story I heard. It had leaked out to the Governor of the gaol, who told me long afterwards, and of course the heavy rains which fell on the day before played right into the hands of the joker. By the way, I suppose you know that ever since that day every scaffold has had a canopy built over it to protect it against bad weather. We didn't want a repetition of your job, you know."

 "Well - it was the worst thirty five minutes I have ever known," Lee went on, "and I shall never forget the horrible feeling when I could feel the boards trembling beneath my feet as the warders hammered at them with their axes. It sounded so hollow, and it seemed to be years before I felt you unstrapping my ankles and marching me off. Even then it was hours before I knew that I was not to be taken out again. That was the most welcome  news  I  ever received."

"Why were you kept in prison so long after the normal period of your life sentence had expired ?" I asked him, for only in rare cases is a man kept in durance vile after fifteen years have elapsed.

"I heard a number of reasons," replied Lee. "One was that the then Home Secretary was a personal friend of the dead woman, Miss Keyse, and he had heard that I had threatened to attack one or two people when I got out of prison, so that he thought it safer to keep me in prison until after they were all dead."

"Did you make any such threats?" I asked him, and he smiled. "Of course not - I had no grudge against anyone."  …