They made an unlikely couple, the hangman and the sister of the woman he executed. But here they were on their way to view the last resting place of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hung for murder in the United Kingdom.
Two prison officers completed this unusual group. What made it even more bizarre, giving the whole scene a veneer of Pathos, was an atmosphere that was more related to a Charabanc outing than a gloomy excursion to a cemetery. Because on the trip – and later on the way back – the group sang.
Things became even more surreal when they arrived at their destination and were greeted by the sound of moaning sounds, apparently from Ellis' Graf. This, it turned out, was a muttering drunk hidden behind gravestones and lying out of sight.
The story of this extraordinary encounter between Ruth Ellis' sister Muriel and Albert Pierrepoint, once the most celebrated hangman in Great Britain, emerged after a tape of a long-lost radio interview was recently excavated.
In It Pierrepoint, a wire -like, neatly dressed Yorkshireman describes that was proud of the speed with which he performed his grim task, the meticulous details that hung in every hanging satisfaction.
He was certainly the most productive public executioner. In the 25 years before his retirement in 1956 he claimed to have sent 550 people – 530 men and 20 women.
They include John Haigh, the infamous acid bath killer, Rillington Place Serial Killer John Christie, the Warstrait William Joyce-Beter known as Lord Haw-HaW-and dozens of condemned Nazi war criminals who were so numerous that he conceived a way to perform them in pairs.
But from all with whom he stood on the gallows while they brought their last breathing before they placed a hood over their heads and a sling around their necks, the name Ruth Ellis has reflected the loudest over the years.
Ruth Ellis (photo), an owner of a Welsh Nachtclub, was the last woman to be hung for murder in the United Kingdom
The ITV drama A a cruel love, starring Lucy Boynton and this month screened, suggested that Ellis was just as well a victim of the prevailing icy snobbery about class and sex that existed then
The story of this extraordinary encounter between Ruth Ellis' sister Muriel and Albert Pierrepoint (photo), once came the most celebrated hangman in Great Britain, after a tape of a long-lost radio interview was recently dug up
Was she depicted the cold-hearted Femme Fatale during her old Bailey test who shot her violent, public school-trained lover David Blakely in a jealous or she herself was a victim herself?
The ITV drama a cruel love, starring Lucy Boynton and this month screened, suggested that Ellis was just as well a victim of the prevailing icy snobbery about class and sex that existed then. And that the post-traumatic stress she suffered from Blakely's brutal hands-a condition that was not recognized in Great Britain of the 1950s that she should never have been hung.
Now the discovery of Pierrepoint's own words seems to be very moving when we are approaching the 70th birthday of Ellis' performance in July in July. It was one of the last curtains he accompanied before he suddenly stopped at his post the following year.
Many wondered if his conscience had been so worried by performing the young woman that he could no longer tolerate his work. Certainly, her conviction and sense have caused a huge public reaction. Many believed that it was an insult to the court to execute her despite the recognition of her debt and her refusal to submit a profession.
When Pierrepoint arrived in the Holloway prison in North Londs to prepare for his grim task, he described fighting by crowds, many of whom had bent their heads in prayer. But there was also anger among the crowd and in the beginning the police even refused to allow access to the hangman.
By the next morning, July 13, 1955, the crowd was hidden, and when the version of 9 am approached, the only sound of a lonely violinist who played in a side street Bach was edited with me.
So, was Pierrepoint restless? Although he later eliminated the death penalty, there is no suggestion in the tape recording that he felt different about the hanging of Ellis than he did one of the other psychopaths and murderers he put to death.
If there was anything, he seemed insensitive to the protest when Ellis went to the gallows and who eventually led to the abolition of the death penalty of a moment of soul tests. “It's a bit Dicey,” he thought of hanging from Ellis. 'You don't like to do it a little woman because they have to be the weaker [sex]… but you have to, you have to do it. '
Ellis was hung in July 1955 after he was found guilty of murder
Ellis is played by Lucy Boynton in ITV Production a Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story
Ellis was the victim of a 'serious miscarriage of justice', her grandson claimed after the release of a cruel love
In his hair -raising, matter of a way, Pierrepoint remembered her last moments. “She really was no problems,” he said.
'She staggered a bit like, of course, every woman can do that. Nothing went wrong with her. She was good as a bloody gold she was. '
It is about Ellis that another, unexpected memory has activated. According to the interview – broadcast for the first time on a local radio station in 1987, five years before his death – Pierrepoint made his surprising claim about meeting Ellis' sister. “I've never told this,” he says at one point. “I went out one afternoon and had a meal with her.”
He said he was accompanied by two prison officers who had struck the schemes and they met in London. Afterwards he said: 'And on my honor of God, you will not believe it, we [were] All sing as if we are going on a bloody journey. '
What happened after was even more amazing. “We went to see where she was buried,” he said, describing the position of her grave as at the end of a row by a wall.
Out of respect, he said, “I took my hat off.” It was then that he heard 'some Bugger Kreuning' and added: “I thought she came out of the grave!” Instead, it was 'a bloody clot' that the party could not see in the beginning, 'this drunk guy who was bored just behind the grave'.
From there, he said, they returned to the sister's house and added: “We sang all the bloody way to this house where she lived.”
While he speaks, there seems to be little doubt in his memory, but his memory asks questions. He offers no other details about where and when these events took place.
Ellis stood next to her beloved David Blakeley, whom she killed in 1955
Ellis was sentenced to death for the shooting of her violent racer David Blakely after a process that lasted under two days
What is known is that Ellis, whose family is now looking for a grace for her, was buried on the uninterrupted grounds within the walls of Holloway. It was not until 1971 that her body was quietly dug up and reburied by her son Andy in the cemetery of
St Mary the Virgin in Amersham, Bucks. Coincidentally, the place is five miles from the village of Penn, where her murdered lover Blakely, a hard racing driver, was laid.
Her grave is at the end of a row and close to a border wall, as Pierrepoint describes in the interview, but he does not say when his visit took place. He had been retired for 15 years by the time that Ellis' remains were removed from Holloway and he did not report it in his 1974 memoirs, executioner: Pierrepoint.
But in that book he made a shocking statement. While he defended the 'humane' and 'worthy' method to implement the murder of the state, he noted: “I don't believe that one of the hundreds of executions that I have carried out has acted in any way as a deterrent against future murder.”
However, that clearly did not hold him against his craftsmanship. As he says in the Radio interview: “I enjoyed every bloody minute.”
