Free Pierrepoint by Steven Fielding Page A

particularly as the execution he was about to carry out was on a man whose crimes had horrified the county. William Frederick Edge had been lodging at a house in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. His landlords had been Frank and Rose Evans and they had three children, theyoungest a five-month-old baby, Francis. Although he had only been a tenant for five weeks, Edge was well in arrears and was told he would have to find somewhere else to live. He had packed his belongings but asked if he could cook the fish he had bought for lunch before he left. Mrs Evans agreed to his request and left Edge in the kitchen while she went upstairs to clean. Francis was asleep on a settee and when Mrs Evans heard a noise, followed by the door being slammed shut, she went downstairs to find the baby lying dead. Edge had cut its throat so deeply that the head had almost been severed. Edge had then walked into the police station, handed over a bloodstained razor and announced that he murdered the child out of spite at being evicted.
    As Harry and Ellis made their way down the narrow path that led from the railway station to the prison, the large crowd of people eagerly scanned passers-by in the hope of spotting the hangman. Harry noted they eyed him suspiciously, although no one challenged him, and it was only when he reached the heavy gate at the prison that they realised who he was.
    On the way to the scaffold Harry passed a board that had been set up to punish criminals who had been sentenced to the birch or floggings. The escort told the hangmen that it had been used on the previous day and was being left in place as another prisoner was due to be flogged shortly after the execution.
    Edge was wearing gold-rimmed glasses and tearfully writing a letter when the hangmen sneaked a look at him that afternoon. On the following morning he had tears rolling down his cheeks again as Harry placed the hood over his head and then pulled the lever. The hangmen made their way through the crowds outside the prison again later, but managed to avoid recognition as they caught the train to Leeds and another execution.
    George Smith was a former bricklayer but he hadn’t worked for several years, preferring to live off the income his wife brought in from her work as a chambermaid. One day, Smith turned up at her place of work and, during a quarrel, stabbed her over forty times. He was arrested in Wakefield two days later and said he had done it because she had told him she had found herself another man and their marriage was over. Loud cheers rang out from the public gallery at Leeds Assizes when the jury found him guilty. Smith was hanged at 8 o’clock as snow fell gently over the prison yard.
    From Leeds, the executioners travelled on together to Derby, arriving in good time in the afternoon to catch the condemned man at exercise as the daylight faded. John Silk had been discharged from the army in 1903, having served in India and South Africa. Returning to England, he went to live with his crippled mother at Chesterfield. He treated her well and helped with her mobility problems, but he was often drunk and on these occasions, Silk frequently became violent.
    On 5 August 1905, Silk was drunk and was heard in a public house to say there would be a murder done that night. He went home and got into an argument with his mother after he refused to go and get her a half-bottle of whisky. Silk went back out and returned at 11.15pm. They got into another row, this time about a lamp in the room being in the wrong place. When his mother went to move it, Silk slapped her, knocking her into the lamp, which overturned and went out, leaving the room into darkness.
    Her body was discovered on the following morning: she had been battered to death with one of her crutches and a chair leg. Silk, asleep upstairs in bed, was arrested and charged with his mother’s murder. He had vowed to meet his death like a soldier and walked steadily to the gallows when the execution