John Ellis (executioner)

John Ellis (born October 4, 1874 in Rochdale ; † September 20, 1932 there ) was a British executioner from 1901 to 1924.

resume

John Ellis first worked in a mill, but after an accident at work, he changed his profession and became a hairdresser. Described by contemporaries as a sensitive and calm man, he did not seem to be the type of person who could make a career as an executioner. But the enormous additional income for his time as well as the chance to travel through the country free of expenses were one of the reasons that Ellis applied for a place on the list of persons authorized to carry out executions ("the list" for short) .

Like many of his predecessors in office, he was deeply convinced of his calling and saw his main task in executing the convict with as little pain and excitement as possible. He was extremely professional in his "craft" and so meticulous in his preparations that he often drove his assistants to despair. He seemed like a man with nerves of steel to his assistants and prison staff; in reality he lived in constant panic about making a mistake - a psychological pressure that grew stronger over time.

After his application in 1898, Ellis was only put on the "list" in 1901 and in 1910 as the successor to Henry Pierrepoint "Chief Executioner". Henry Pierrepoint had removed himself from office by showing up in jail heavily drunk the day before an execution in Chelmsford and responding to Ellis' accusations with a brawl. Ellis wrote a report about it to the Home Office , and Home Secretary Winston Churchill ordered the removal of the previous “No. 1 ”from the list. With that, Ellis moved into that position.

In his book, Diary of a Hangman , which he wrote after his career ended, he described his methods and many of the cases at the end of which the strand waited. In total, Ellis carried out 203 executions during his active career.

Its main cases

• Hawley Harvey Crippen , executed on November 23, 1910, killed his wife and tried to flee to the United States with his lover. Crippen is believed to be the first criminal in the world to be arrested using the newly invented wireless telegraph . The investigating officer from Scotland Yard managed to overtake the ship from Crippen with a faster ship and to get on board disguised as a pilot.
• George Joseph Smith , hanged on August 13, 1915, went down in criminal history as "Brides in the bath murderer". Smith was a bigamist and married young, single women whom he drowned in the bathtub shortly after the wedding in order to gain possession of their property. He was so clever with it that it was only by chance that he was discovered. His method was reconstructed by the police during the investigation; the attempt was so successful that the diver, who had volunteered as a "victim", almost died in the process and the doctor present needed half an hour to stabilize her again.
• Sir Roger Casement , hanged on August 3, 1916, was an English diplomat who had joined Ireland's resistance to England as an Irish nationalist and was executed for high treason . John Ellis noted in his memoirs, which he wrote shortly before his own death, that "of all the people I had to execute, none died more valiantly than Roger Casement".
• Edith Thompson was hanged on January 9, 1923 at the same time as her lover Frederick Bywaters; he had stabbed her husband. Thompson was convicted on the basis of love letters from which the court constructed an accomplishment or conspiracy. Her execution was a traumatic experience for John Ellis (the young woman passed out on the way to the gallows and had to be held up by two guards until Ellis had finished his preparations and opened the trap door ). When Ellis tried to remove the dead body, he found a profuse bleeding, which - it was believed - resulted from either a miscarriage or at least an injury to the uterus . From then on, women sentenced to death in Great Britain had to wear special rubber trousers to make such incidents impossible.
  Neither he nor British society had expected the Home Secretary to show no mercy on the young woman. In addition, it has been proven today that the court brought only parts of the letters from Thompson to her friend to the jury's attention because passages of the text had been censored as "inappropriate" because of erotic content. The jury was convinced that they were guilty of being taken out of context . After her execution, not only was Ellis a broken man; Even some of the prison officials present at the execution did not come to terms with what they had experienced and quit their duties early.
• Susan Newell died in Glasgow on October 10, 1923 . She was the first woman to be executed in Scotland in 50 years . Newell had killed a 13-year-old newsboy for refusing to give her a newspaper for free. Her execution became a burden again for John Ellis - shortly after that of Edith Thompson. He had tied Newell's hands poorly, so she managed to defend herself under the gallows with both hands against the white hood that was normally pulled over the head of the delinquent. Ellis did not make another attempt to pull the hood over her, but opened the trap door immediately - the rope was already in the correct position - with his face bare.

resignation

Ellis resigned in March 1924, allegedly due to the events of the emotionally disturbing execution of Edith Thompson.

Although Ellis remained active as an executioner for about a year after Thompson's execution, the circumstances surrounding the execution weighed heavily on him. When he had to execute another woman - Susan Newell - shortly afterwards, it was just another step in retreat, all the more since Ellis had never made a secret of the fact that he was absolutely against the execution of women. His last execution was that of John Eastwood on December 28, 1923.

Ellis then retired to his hairdressing business, but without really finding peace. He wrote his memoirs, was briefly on stage as an executioner in a theater play in London and finally went to fairs with a portable gallows, where he performed mock executions. The beginning economic crisis around 1930 did not stop at him; Economically and health-wise (alcohol abuse) he was getting worse. After a first suicide attempt , which failed and for which he was also prosecuted under the law at the time, he cut his throat in 1932 and bled to death. A representative of the Prison Commission was absent from his funeral, which was attended by hundreds of Rochdale residents .

Fonts

• Diary of a hangman . Forum Press, True Crime Library, 1996, (Reprint), ISBN 1-874358-11-7
• Fielding, Steve: "Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners" . John Blake Publishing, London, 2006, ISBN 1-84454-192-4 (A book about the three Pierrepoints, in which the conflict with John Ellis is dealt with)

Web links

• About John Ellis (Engl.)