Crimescribe

It is February 23, 1885 in the coach house of Exeter Prison, Devon, England. The time is 8 a.m.

Outside the prison, a large crowd has gathered to await the hanging of convicted murderer John Lee, condemned for the brutal murder of his employer, Miss Emma Keyes, the previous year. When the execution has been successfully completed the prison bell will toll for 15 minutes and the dreaded black flag will be hoisted over the prison. The crowd outside can no longer view an execution as they used to, that has been outlawed since 1868, but they will know exactly when John Lee is no more.

At 7:55 a.m. the execution party, consisting of the prison Governor, chief guard, prison doctor, prison chaplain, several guards, the executioner and representatives of the press, assembles outside the Condemned Cell. Unlike their American counterparts, British prisons do not have a Death Row. With far fewer executions, it is relatively rare that more than one condemned prisoner needs to be held at any particular prison. Only one or two cells are usually allocated to condemned prisoners and, while considerably more comfortable than standard cells, nobody wants to enjoy the improved hospitality.

Due to winter weather, Lee has already had a grim preview of what awaits him. With the ground frozen in the exercise yard his grave has been dug the previous day instead of after he hangs. He has spent his final hour of exercise alone, walking in circles under constant watch. Every time he completes a circle Lee has looked down into his own grave. The experience will stay with him for the rest of his life, but he will have little time to ponder it. Assuming all goes as planned, anyway.

At precisely 8 a.m., Britain’s chief executioner James Berry receives a signal from the prison governor and enters the condemned cell. He swiftly straps Lee’s arms by his sides and places a white hood over his head. Accompanied by the rest of the execution party, Berry swiftly leads the pinioned, hooded convict on to the gallows, straps his legs together and tightens the noose around his neck. Berry steps quickly off the trapdoors and approaches the lever, swiftly pushing it over as he has done so many times before. Nothing happens. Something has gone terribly wrong and this is just the beginning.

The doors drop approximately a half-inch, enough to convince Lee that he is teetering on the very edge of death. Then they jam solid and will drop no further. Berry is slightly flustered by, but because it has been known to happen occasionally, he continues with his grim duty. He unstraps Lee’s legs, removes the noose and takes off the hood. He leads Lee into an adjoining room and quickly returns to examine and test the trapdoors. He should have tested the gallows the day before, but chose not to.

The doors are quickly reset and the lever thrown again. Again, they work perfectly. Berry goes into the adjoining room and brings Lee back on to the gallows. Again the hood and noose are applied, Lee’s legs are strapped and Berry throws the lever a second time. Nothing. The doors drop a half-inch, terrify the hooded figure a second time and again jam solid.

This time Berry has strained the lever by throwing it too hard. Lee is again unstrapped and the noose and hood removed. He is again taken back to the adjoining room. It is suggested by a member of the execution party that the doors fit together too tightly. Two guards are dispatched to fetch a plane and an axe to whittle the edges slightly. When this has been done Berry throws the lever and the doors jam solid again. Now a part of one door is sawed off and the trapdoors still need to be stamped on by two warders before they fall.

Lee is then returned to his position atop the gallows. He is strapped, hooded and noosed a third time. Berry moves swiftly, as if to end this sorry spectacle as quickly as possible. He leaps for the lever and again throws it as hard as he can. Again, death’s doors drop about an inch, maybe a fraction more. Then they jam solid. This is unprecedented, never before have Exeter’s gallows failed in their deathly duty.

Still hooded, strapped and noosed, Lee can’t see the two prison officers stamping on the doors as hard they can, but he hears their heavy boots. With every impact he feels another vibration through the soles of his feet, knowing all the time that each could be his last. The mental torment is indescribable. The stamping stops suddenly. Death’s doors remain stubbornly ajar.

The prison chaplain has collapsed under the strain and lies prostrate on the scaffold, the grim spectacle having become more than he can stand. After three successive failures and with no reason to believe there won’t be a fourth, the prison doctor demands that the execution be halted on the spot. The Under-Sheriff of Devon, whose responsibility the execution is, agrees.

The Governor, doctor and chaplain (by now partially recovered) go to the doctor’s room to compose and sign a statement bearing witness to the morning’s bizarre events. This statement is sent immediately to Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt in London for his consideration. Unsurprisingly, Harcourt decides that Lee has suffered enough and commutes the death sentence. Lee will serve life imprisonment, but never again will he keep a date with the hangman.

And so began the legend of John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee, “The Man They Couldn’t Hang.”

The scene of the crime was a seaside house in the pleasant Devon town of Babbacombe, near Torquay. On the night of November 15, 1884, householder Emma Keyes confronted an intruder inside her home. It was to be the last mistake she ever made. She was beaten to the ground with a heavy instrument believed to be a hatchet and her throat was cut with such force that her vertebrae had notches carved in them by the knife.

After the murder her killer soaked her body in a fluid, believed to be kerosene, sprinkled more kerosene around the house and torched her body and the crime scene. It was a particularly brutal and callous murder, especially as other servants were in the house at the time and could easily have been casualties as well. John Lee, an employee of Emma Keyes, was a prime suspect right from the start.

As a result of this, Lee was swiftly arrested, questioned, charged with murder and reckless arson and held to be tried at the next Assizes, the courts held every three months at which more serious cases were usually dealt with. This was significant for Lee as, under English law, only at an Assizes could a capital trial be held. And this would be a capital trial where few local people doubted his guilt, and even fewer when several people claimed to have heard Lee issuing death threats against the victim.

The inquest and trial were concluded quickly. The crime occurred in mid-November and Lee was found guilty of both charges during the first week of December. It only remained for the trial judge to don the traditional “Black Cap” and pass the following sentence:

“John Henry George Lee, you have been found guilty of wilful murder by a jury of your peers. The sentence of this Court is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison, and thence to a place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And that your body be afterwards cut down and buried within the precincts of the prison in which you were last confined before execution. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul. Amen. Remove the prisoner.”

Lee was swiftly taken away to Exeter Prison, which was known as the “hanging prison” for the county of Devon, and lodged in the condemned cell to await his fate. He was expecting either a hanging or a reprieve. In the end, he got both.

So what kind of a man was John Lee? He was born on August 15, 1864, in the quiet little village of Abbotskerswell in Devon. The time and place of his eventual death is disputed. Some claim he died in a poorhouse in the town of Tavistock, about 12 miles from Plymouth. Others say he died in Australia, while still others claim he died in the United States, in Milwaukee, in 1945.Personally, I think it’s unlikely that he stayed in Devon with Torquay and Exeter so nearby. I think the memories of the trial (and the ghastly failed execution especially) might well have been more than most people could bear so his heading for foreign soil is more than likely.

By the standards of the day Lee had a moderately comfortable childhood. He became very close to his half-sister Elizabeth Harris who worked as a domestic help for Torquay spinster Emma Keyes. In time he would regret that, she later testified against him. His elder sister Amelia also worked for Keyes. Amelia talked her into giving Lee a job in 1878. After a brief period in Emma Keyes’ employ, Lee left to join the Royal Navy. He did not stay for long, being discharged in 1882 on medical grounds and, some said, for disciplinary problems during his service.

In civilian life Lee held a series of low-paid, menial jobs at a number of hotels in Torquay until he was jailed for petty theft. When he left prison Elizabeth Harris interceded to get Lee his old job back. Emma Keyes was persuaded to allow Lee back into her service as a groundsman and occasional butler in spite of his criminal past and alleged difficulties during his military service.

Lee returned to Emma Keyes’s employ in the summer of 1884. Only weeks after being taken on he was caught trying to sell a guitar stolen from the Keyes home. Mrs. Keyes, who seems to have tempered justice with no small amount of mercy, didn’t fire him. She docked his wages as a punishment, but kept him in work. The wage cut (and a desire for revenge) was later alleged to be his motive for murder.

Lee’s guilt or innocence has often been somewhat overshadowed by what occurred at his failed execution. In favor of his innocence is the fact that the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial. Despite there being a great deal of it, granted, but nothing that absolutely sealed his guilt.

Lee also had far more to lose than gain by murdering his employer. After all, he had previously described her as his best friend in the world. Considering he had stolen from her home, having his wages docked was hardly a compelling motive when she could easily have fired him. That would have been reckless, impulsive, foolish and brutal.  According to Lee’s letters while awaiting execution, and the testimony of some people who knew him, Lee simply wasn’t that way inclined. Finally, even after his nightmarish experience on the gallows and serving 22 years for the crime, Lee remained defiant to the end. To the end of his life he always asserted his innocence.

That said, the circumstantial evidence was good and there was plenty suggesting Lee was responsible. There was a hatchet spattered with blood, a hatchet Lee used regularly and was suspiciously quick to give to firemen when they were hacking through burning timbers. The kerosene can was equally suspicious. Even when pressed heavily and facing a possible death sentence Lee never offered any alternative versions of what might have happened that night. When pressed, he simply fell silent. He was also silent inconsistencies in his story, such as his recently-injured hand. It wasn’t until long after the case was closed (and his death sentence, incidentally, commuted) that he began accusing others and they all had strong alibis.

Lee marked himself as the prime suspect by being first to raise the alarm. At least one witness also said he had told them Emma Keyes was dead even before her body was found, something he later denied. He had very recently injured his left hand and left a series of bloody hand prints on the stairway wall and the nightgown of the servant he apparently saved from the burning building.

He also claimed that the hand injury resulted from breaking a window to help the servant escape the fire. The condition of the window indicates, however, that it was smashed from the outside in. Lee he was inside the house, at least he said he was. The female servant Lee so generously saved also reported hearing the sound of the window breaking some time after her rescue, not before. When Lee was finally persuaded to help move the victim’s body he only did so after much protest, claiming to be unaware of the extensive and very obvious injuries that she had suffered. If Lee was unaware of the victim’s injuries, how could he possibly have known she was dead?

So, what happened on the gallows that cold, grey, fateful February morning? What went wrong and put a potentially innocent man through such terrible mental agony? Lee always claimed it was God’s work, a case of divine intervention. He also claimed that while sleeping in the condemned cell he dreamt of the gallows malfunctioning. The other versions are somewhat more scientific. James Berry (then Britain’s chief hangman and assigned to execute Lee) admitted to having had a similar dream early in his career. However, he attributed Lee’s deliverance to purely technical problems.

The idea that another convict had sabotaged the gallows was quickly dismissed. Even if they had access to them before the execution, the sabotage would almost certainly have been discovered during Lee’s failed hanging. The idea that somebody placed a chock of wood in the mechanism and removed it between attempts is simply not credible. No convict would have been allowed into the prison coach house that doubled as its execution chamber, let alone stand unsupervised beneath the trapdoors.

There had been heavy rain in the two days leading up to the execution. The gallows being made largely of wood, Berry believed the rain had caused the trapdoors to warp and jam solid whenever weight was placed upon them. He also considered Exeter’s gallows poorly constructed and old-fashioned. He felt the trapdoors were too thin and the ironwork too light for the job in hand, so that the iron catches on the trapdoors became locked. He also described the doors themselves as fitting together too tightly. Having tested the gallows without any weight on it, it worked perfectly well. When Lee, however, stood on he trapdoors, a nasty surprise awaited everybody involved.

Mr. A.B. Hardy, a Home Office representative, mentions having ordered the Clerks of Works to thoroughly inspect the gallows. It was their opinion and his that a long hinge rested on the drawing bolt that held the doors closed until the lever was pushed. That malfunction only showed itself with a man’s weight on the trapdoors, when the hinge held them closed even after Berry had worked the lever.

Officer Edwards was the Artisan Warder at Exeter Prison at the time. He felt the iron bearing bars of the gallows were too light, tending to lengthen under significant weight. This would explain the doors jamming solid when Lee stood on them but working perfectly when he was taken off. Gerald de Courcy Hamilton, Chief Constable for the county of Devon and a witness to the failed execution, recalled the gallows as cold, wet and damp. He believed the woodwork had simply become too wet for too long. While drying out the wood had warped, solidly jamming the doors under Lee’s weight.

The aftermath of the hanging affected different people in different ways. Lee’s execution was halted and his death sentence commuted. He served 22 years, mainly at Portland Prison in the county of Dorset and was released in 1907. He then left for the United States, where he lived illegally, never becoming a U.S. citizen, until he is said to have died in Milwaukee in 1945, although the precise date and location of his death has never been fully confirmed. Another account suggests he either returned from abroad or never even left England, dying a pauper at the workhouse in the Devon town of Tavistock, within the present-day Dartmoor National Park.

The official reaction to the failed hanging, at least from those who were there, was to deny their own responsibility while passing the buck on to someone else. In what was once private correspondence between various officials and witnesses plenty of blame is offered around, but very little is accepted by anybody. Berry himself earned considerable criticism, and fairly so, for not testing the gallows the day before Lee was due to die. It was not compulsory for him to do so, but he certainly should have.

To be fair to the officials of the time, they did at least begin the long-overdue process of modernizing and standardizing execution facilities in British prisons. A new standard type of gallows and execution suite were designed meaning that future executions would never again end in such traumatic circumstances. This new system was gradually introduced at hanging prisons all over the country.

Testing the gallows before an execution with a sandbag filled to match the prisoner’s weight became mandatory, a result of Berry’s decision not to test a weighted drop beforehand. Had he done so, even though it was not mandatory, the fault would almost certainly have been spotted and Lee’s execution delayed while it was fixed. With hindsight, Berry, a conscientious executioner, cannot really be faulted for not following a rule that did not then exist. A mistake, perhaps, but not negligence on his part. He was as distressed as anybody with the notable exceptions of the prison chaplain and, of course, John Lee.

The new rules proved quicker and safer for all concerned (except the condemned, obviously), especially when a new breed of executioners like John Ellis and Albert Pierrepoint began working their own ideas into the execution procedure. Reliable, purpose-built equipment and professional, highly-skilled executioners did much to make the British method of execution the fastest and cleanest available. It was later exported to a large number of countries and some still use it, such as Singapore, Malaysia and India. Until abolition so did South Africa, Cyprus and Austria, among others.

Truth often being stranger than fiction, there remains one final sting in the tail of ‘The Man They Couldn’t Hang.’ Lee’s mother was desperate to secure her son’s survival and later his release. To do so she engaged the services of a lawyer from nearby Plymouth who felt as strongly as she did and was prepared to press the matter with the highest authorities he could reach. That lawyer was none other than Herbert Rowse Armstrong.

Armstrong left Devon in 1905, moving to Hay-On-Wye in the county of Herefordshire and running his own law practice there. In 1921 he deliberately administered a fatal dose of arsenic to his wife Katherine whose continued presence was clearly no longer welcome. Armstrong was convicted of murder and hanged at Gloucester Prison on May 31st, 1922 by John Ellis, the chief executioner from Rochdale. His final words as the doors fell are said to have been ‘I am coming, Kate!’

This time, the gallows worked perfectly.