Sinistrari

Chapter 2-2

‘No, sir.’

‘One other thing, Dennison,’ Billington said, waving the Home Secretary’s letter in the hangman’s direction, ‘after the execution, the effects of the condemned man are to be burned, together with the rope.’

‘But sir, hangmen always gets to get the effects of the condemned, ’is clothes an’ that. Traditional perky-squite is that, ’as been since time immemorable.’

‘Not in this case, the Home Secretary states, and I fully agree, that there is too much ghoulish interest being shown in this case and that the common mob will only take an unhealthy curiosity in Sinistrari’ s effects. Damn it man, you would only sell the clothes to a carnival sideshow or vulgar waxworks, now wouldn’t you, hoping to make a few shillings from macabre sensationalism.’

‘No sir, ’course not,’ Dennison declared indignantly, even though he had done just that, negotiating a deal with Fred Covey, carnival and freak show owner for the sale of Sinistrari’s effects. Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork Museum had been also been after the clothes and rope for their Chamber of Horrors exhibit and Dennison had thought about trading one of against the other but Fred Cavey was not a man to be crossed and Dennison decided against it. Even now he was going to have a job explaining why the effects were not available – and repay the ten guineas advance he’d already received – and spent.

‘Don’t give me that lie, man, I know your sort, Dennison, you’d sell your own mother for a tuppence and throw in your grandmother for another farthing,’ Billington then belched, suddenly and loudly and patted his stomach in appreciation. Billington refilled his glass’

‘All right man, all right, be gone and on your way. If the preparations for your profession mean you have much to do, why are you wasting my time with your idle chatter?’ ‘Go on then man, be about your business.’

‘Right sir,’ answered Dennison, barely able to keep the outraged indignation out of his voice.

‘And for goodness sake man; get it right. Get it right.’

THE THREE-INCH THICK OAK DOORS OF THE SCAFFOLD DROP opened and instantly fell away as Dennison threw the lever that operated the release mechanism. The crash as the doors hit the side of the pit echoed like distant thunder through the bricks and stone fabric of the prison. The hempen rope suspended from the hook in the crossbeam above quivered under the load that had plummeted into the pit eight feet below. In the exercise yard, Edward Sinistrari looked up and stopped his steady pacing as the sound boomed dully across the narrow court. A slow smile of satisfaction crossed his face.

‘Keep on moving Mister Sinistrari, if you please,’ called Bartholomew Binns, one of the prison officers on death-watch duty, ‘We wouldn’t want you to take on a chill and catch your death of cold, now would we?’

Sinistrari turned to Binns, his eyes flaring with anger, as if about to say something. Binns reached for his truncheon, ready to subdue Sinistrari if he turned violent, but then Sinistrari bared his teeth in a grimace and hissed, like an angry cobra and Binns felt a chill of horror down his spine. ‘Right, well. Move on,’ he mumbled but without conviction.

Some minutes earlier, Dennison and Jenkins had watched Sinistrari from a window above the exercise yard. He had been the only prisoner in the yard, briskly pacing around the well beaten circle as though out on his morning constitutional across Regents Park instead of a condemned man taking his final exercise before execution. Dennison was gauging the condemned man’s height and physique, his general demeanour and stature, essential if he were to calculate the drop correctly and ensure that death occurred instantly from dislocation of the vertebrae. Too little drop and Sinistrari would slowly strangle at the end of the rope, too much drop and they risked tearing off his head, a messy business, but not unknown. Only three years previously, in 1885, the head of Robert Goodale, executed by James Berry at Norwich Castle, had been ripped clean off his shoulders.

‘Wotcha fink, Jenks?’ Dennison asked his assistant, making notes in a small pocket notebook.

‘He’s tall, very tall, six foot four or so and well built. But slender necked, should be easy to snap on a regular drop.’

‘The medical officer said ’e weighs twelve and half stone, give or take a pound or two.’

‘He’ll not ’ave fattened up a deal while he’s been in here.’ ‘Right, twelve and a half stone, tall but slender necked,’

Dennison muttered as he consulted his ‘drop tables’ in a battered leather bound notebook. ‘That’s ’ow many pounds, twelve and half stone? Fourteen times twelve is?’ He scribbled the calculation at the edge of his notebook. ‘Two times four is eight; four times one is four, making forty-eight. Carry over the nought, one times twelve is twelve, so that’s 120 plus 48 is … 168. Add another seven for the ’alf stone gives

175 pounds. Right?’

‘If’n you say so.’

There was a formula devised to ensure the fracture and dislocation of the neck, but it was too complicated for Jenkins who had difficulty counting anything at all once he had run out of fingers and toes.1

Dennison studied his tables again, chewing on the end of his pencil as he did so. ‘175 pounds? For 175 pounds it says five foot two inches ’ere. Not enough by bleedin’ alf, ’cos ’e’s tall an’ all. We got to add a bit more for his height so let’s give ’im five foot ten inches. Or should it be less for ’is height?’

‘Has to be more – stands to reason ‘cos he’s closer to the crossbeam.’

‘Aye, let’s give him a drop of five foot eleven?’

Jenkins shrugged, not committing himself. If the hanging went wrong and the drop found to be incorrect, he wanted to be sure that no blame could be attached to him. Dennison was the number one on this job; let him take the responsibility. That’s what he got paid for.

‘Five foot f*****g eleven it is then,’ muttered Dennison, aggrieved that Jenkins had been so unhelpful and made his way back to the execution shed.

From his brown leather hold-all Dennison took out the rope with which he would hang Sinistrari. Thirteen feet long and three-quarters of an inch thick, the rope was made from the finest Italian hemp. A stout brass ring, about the size of a thumb and forefinger held to form an ‘O’, was sliced into one end of the rope. Dennison threaded the other end of the rope through the ring to form a nooses and slid a leather washer up behind the brass ring to hold the noose in place. He then fastened the rope to the cross beam, carefully measuring out the length of the drop with a tape measure. Meanwhile Jenkins placed two heavy sandbags into a heavy canvas sack on the trap doors of the scaffold. When Dennison had secured the rope to the hook on the crossbeam Jenkins secured the canvas bag of sand onto the noose and opened the drop. The doors crashed down and the hempen rope quivered under the strain of the sudden load.

Satisfied that the drop mechanism was working satisfactorily, Dennison and Jenkins left the scaffold house and went for dinner in the warder’s dining room, Dennison liked to hang a man on a full stomach, another man’s dying made his gastric juices flow all the sweeter. The bags of sand would hang from the noose until about an hour before the appointed hour for the execution, to stretch the rope and make it more pliable – in hangman’s terms more ‘fit’.

Sinistrari was taken back to the condemned cell from the exercise yard, ready to take his final meal.

At eleven, Dennison and Jenkins returned to the scaffold house. Jenkins went down into the pit and unhooked the bags of sand. Dennison pulled the rope back up, re-measured the drop and made adjustments to allow for the two or three inches that the rope had stretched. He then re-set the noose and leather washer and then lightly coiled the rope so that the noose hung at head height, tying up the coils with white cotton thread.

Together two men reset the heavy trap doors and oiled the hinges again – just to be sure. Dennison then checked that he had the white hood in and pinioning straps ready to hand. Everything was now ready for the execution of Edward James Sinistrari.

Shortly after 11.00pm, the Under Sheriff, James Botting, arrived to witness the execution. He went straight up to see the governor, Sir William Billington, who offered him a glass of port or brandy. Sir William’s florid complexion bloomed ruddy in the yellowing gas light that puttered from the softly hissing globes on the wall. He swayed slightly on his feet as he passed the glass over to Botting, wishing the execution were over. It was not that he disliked like hangings, far from it, a hanging normally set him up in fine fettle and he had on occasion ejaculated when hanging a woman; he enjoyed a good flogging even more so but setting the execution for midnight upset his routine and Sir William lived by routine. By now he should have been leaving his club to venture to a discreet house of ill repute he frequented in Mayfair where the girls understood his special needs. Lady Billington did not live in town, thank goodness – she hated the dark and gloomy Governor’s residence attached to the prison and these days rarely left their heavily mortgaged home in Gloucestershire to make the journey up to London – for which Billington was profoundly grateful.

Doctor Pasha Rose, who would also witness the execution, pronounce death and then perform the post-mortem, arrived soon after Botting. He too partook of a generous measure of brandy – and likewise cursed the Hon. Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary; not only had the execution been brought forward from eight AM to midnight the Home Secretary had also given instructions that the autopsy was to take place ‘as soon as practicable after the execution but no later than two hours thereafter.’

Burial of Sinistrari’s corpse was to take place in the prison grounds as soon as it was light enough to do so, the grave already dug earlier that day by three prisoners on punishment duty. The grave would not be marked in any way. The Home Secretary was anxious, very anxious, that the entire unpleasant matter of Edward Sinistrari be dealt with and buried away out of public perception as quickly as possible. The case, with its ritual killings, mutilated victims and other vile practices had been taken all too readily to heart by ‘the common masses’, unhealthily so in the Home Secretary’s opinion, hence his urgent desire for haste, ‘to put the matter out of the minds of the lower orders and labouring classes.’

‘Time for another, I think gentlemen,’ Billington said, his speech surprisingly clear considering he had already that day drunk more than two and half bottles of port, a bottle of claret with his meal and was now onto his third full glass of brandy.

The Under Sheriff eagerly accepted another large brandy, as did Doctor Rose. Rose did not need a particularly steady hand to open up Sinistrari for post-mortem, after all it was not as if Sinistrari was going to be in a position to complain if the post mortem stitches weren’t straight. Billington swiftly drained his glass, licked his lips in appreciation and then checked the time by his pocket watch.

‘Gentlemen, we have an archfiend to hang.’

‘Never a man I ever heard tell of deserves it more than he,’ Botting said, his tongue convoluted by generous measures of Sir William’s third best brandy.

‘The bounder actually wheedled his way into my club, the very gall of the fellow,’ harrumphed Billington, probably believing this to be a more heinous crime than his string of horrendous murders.