Three Times and True – the Story of ‘Babbacombe’ Lee
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2004
The Bellman, The Hunting of the Snark (Carroll, 1876)I have said it thrice : what I tell you three times is true!
Author’s note :
There are two versions of this story in h2g2.
This is the Alternative Writing Workshop-styled one. If you would like to read the Edited Guide-styled one, you can find it here.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. Dawn
You wake here, never because you are rested but because you are disturbed. These rough-hewn sandstone walls hold no comfort. Nor does this woollen blanket, harsh as the masonry. The single window high above, with its brace of rust-eaten bars, muffles not a single sound. You curl up as tightly as ever you can, foot about foot and chin to breast, foetal for survival.
All through your last night on earth you have been listening to the relentless roar and cackle of rain on tile. How strange that it brought you respite from the familiar nocturnal symphony of violence and trauma. How soothing now the shriek of steam-whistles and the comforting clatter of the railway, drowning the mocking clunk of iron key in iron lock.
And at last the deluge has abated, and the blackness before dawn is giving way to brooding gunmetal in the east. Now rises the tiny clamour of humanity emerging from the mantle of night. The good folk of Exeter are seeking frantically to reclaim their city, with their yells and the yelps of feral beasts and the fizz and clack of iron on wet cobble. The cycle is coming round again, for one last time. As sure as life yields to death, so night must give way to day.
Germinus
It must have been around 1970 when a scruffy fiddler named David Swarbrick found a dog-eared pamphlet while browsing in a junkshop.
Its yellowed pages told a compelling story of crime and punishment, Victorian-style. The twist in the tale was outrageously implausible.
Swarb’s kind are suckers for melodrama, though. When such seeds are sown, they sometimes grow into music. If that happens, who knows where the itch might spread?
The History of Trap Scaffold Development
Contrary to popular assumption, the judiciary of late Victorian England applied the death penalty sparingly. Between the abolition of public execution in 1868 and the end of the century, less than six hundred souls perished by hanging.
Nonetheless, Victorian society was ticklish, and it revelled in scandal. The crime was sufficiently grisly in itself to draw attention to the case. The events at Exeter Prison on the morning of Monday, 23rd February 1885 were destined to stimulate a national imagination, and to spawn a fable.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the prevalent method for execution by hanging involved the pulling away of a stool or cart. The short drop often resulted in a slow death by strangulation, and sometimes even necessitated the unseemly recourse of pulling on the legs of the prisoner.
The first recorded use of the collapsing scaffold was in Northamptonshire in 1818. It was undoubtedly more reliable, and thus more humane, than any previous arrangement. Within two years, almost every prison in the country had adopted the same basic design.
The upper structure of the collapsing scaffold was conventional, comprising two uprights spanned by a cross-beam some eight feet above a gallows platform. The innovation was a bolt-actuated trapdoor within the staging. One firm pull on a lever, and the condemned criminal would plunge several feet before the rope snapped taut, attaining sufficient momentum in the process to inflict decisive cervical insult.
Operating these contraptions became the metier of a few, since insomnia tends to become pervasive wherever a community kills its own. Eventually there were a small number of travelling hangmen who would attend executions nationwide. One of them, maybe the best of them all, was the Yorkshireman, James Berry of Bradford.
Pragmatism as well as conscience played its part in the emergence of this exclusive profession. Few local operators would enjoy sufficient opportunities to refine their technique, particularly with respect to the judgement of the length of drop. The collapsing scaffold brought with it an opposite mishap to that of slow strangulation, in the form of the occasional decapitation of the subject.
Berry gradually worked it out. He contrived drop tables based on the weight of his customers, and quite soon he was able to generate instant and intact cadavers of all sizes. By the 1880s, he had become the hangman of choice for discerning warders nationwide, sparing them the distress still often wrought by less assiduous practitioners.
1972. Fairport Convention, from the album ‘Babbacombe Lee’. Suggested by lyrics from the track ‘Part V’
The sea is more complex than you know. On days like this, it is dead calm, and yet it is hostile. There is no ripple in sight, but its sullen greyness drums against your eyes and makes your head ache. It beats out waves of cold, cramping your limbs, sneering at your frailty. The sea has seen through you, John Lee. It has dismissed you as a worthless cripple.
Did you think that her letter had saved you? Saved you from your string of half-hearted careers, brought you home to be among true friends? Sure, her friendship is true enough. She is nobler than you are, John, and nobler than you deserve. She trusts you, trusts you not to betray her, trusts you to redeem yourself through her goodness. And yet she does not see what smoulders in your heart, John Lee. She doesn't see beyond the placid exterior. You are like the sea, John, quiet and cruel. On another day, in a different climate, your violence will be terrible.
Close the door and douse the light. It's quiet at night when she's tucked in tight. Sometimes I feel, when they're all in bed, it's almost like the whole world's dead. So I lay me down to sleep; I pray thee Lord my soul to keep…(Copyright Island Music 1972)
2004. Babbacombe Beach
One hundred and twenty years have passed. Here and now, there is a council car-park and a clutter of ugly concrete buildings. Incongruous and neglected, this is all that remains of the Glen at Babbacombe, the fine house from which a legend sprang.
Modern tourists hurry across the tarmac, eager to be somewhere interesting. Where their feet skip, poor Miss Keyse once smouldered, caked in blackening blood.
The Glen. August 1884. Miss Keyse speaks
“Mr Lee, I can scarcely believe that you would repay me so. I earnestly hope that you might even yet repair your ways, and so I shall not report this theft to the authorities. Instead I have decided to reduce your wage to two shillings per week until I am satisfied of your contrition and improvement. Make sure that I do not come to reconsider such leniency. Do I make myself clear, Mr Lee?”
She may be aged and frail, but nobody doubts the will of Miss Emma Keyse. The groundsman seethes inside, impotent as always when scolded by this formidable spinster. Indebted to her for all he has, he loves and loathes his benefactor at one and the same time.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am”, stammers John Lee, and his heart plunges into perplexity and despair.
The Glen. 15th November 1884. 3 am
She has been a parlour-maid here for forty-seven years. She knows every habit of her mistress, every ritual of the Glen, every humdrum noise of its inconsequential round.
And so Jane Neck knows that something is wrong almost before she is awake. She knows it before she hears the screams of the cook. She knows even before she recognises the smell of burning.
Here upstairs the smoke is not very dense, and the lamps are alight. The servant’s first thought is for Miss Keyse. In nightcap and nightgown, Miss Neck bursts into her mistress’ bedroom. The partition wall is licked by flame, but the bed is empty. The hot water bottle rests untouched below the pillow, just as it was placed by Miss Neck’s sister as she retired.
It seems to take an eternity for the parlour-maid to navigate the corridor. At last, she tries the door to the Honeysuckle Room opposite, but the handle is red hot. On the other side, the dressing room is choked with smoke and the floor is half-gone, consumed by the flames darting through from the dining room below.
She returns to the landing, and there is Lee. The smoke is worse now, and the oil-lamps are beginning to gutter. She can only just discern him, and she can hardly breathe. The floor below is in darkness, but he guides her down the staircase, his right arm about her shoulder. “Good God, the fire”, she will remember him saying, and she will remember too this lingering terror of blindness and death. She is senseless with it by the time he ushers her into the scullery, where the shutters and outside door have been opened. “Get water”, he tells her, and turns for the dining room. A few moments later comes the shattering of glass. She staggers out onto the lawn, and yells “Fire!” until she is hoarse. Slowly she realises that the flames are now few and that the blaze is almost out, although the smoke is copious.
Jane Neck re-enters the house through the kitchen, and feels her way into the hallway. In the darkness of the dining room beyond, she can just make out the figures of Lee and the other servants, her own sister Eliza and Harris, the cook. There is no sign of Miss Keyse.
John Lee comes towards her, clutching his arm, which she now sees is covered in blood. “Our mistress is burned to death”, he whispers. “Do not go in there”.
Exeter Gaol. 21st February, 1885. 5 pm
There is a sharp knock at the door of the office, and the hangman enters for the second time since his arrival.
“Good Afternoon, Mister Governor” says Berry with his customary gravity. “I saw you watching the test from your window, and presumed that you would care to hear my report”.
“Indeed, if you are ready, Mr Berry”, replies Edwin Cowtan, High Sheriff of Devon and Governor of Exeter Gaol. “Do you find our preparations sufficient?”
“Sufficient, but the construction is capable of improvement”, the visitor declares. “It works well enough, but the trapdoors are too thin and the ironwork too slight. You would do well to have them replaced with three-inch boards and more substantial hinges and latches. Otherwise you may encounter unreliability, and a heavy prisoner will one day fall clean through”.
“I’ll note it, and see to it”, says Cowtan, evenly. “But Lee is not a large man, is he?”
The hangman nods curtly. “This prisoner will give no trouble”, he confirms.
James Berry offers no comment about the doubtful practice of transferring the same equipment between different locations. He does not observe that, sooner or later, this will lead someone to misassemble the trapworks. Neither does he remark upon the erection of the scaffold on the cobbles in the van-yard. Although he deplores such heedless treatment of precision apparatus, he also trusts his own expertise. It will be some inferior craftsman who is caught out by Devon’s negligence.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 7.50 am
“Wake up, John. It’s time to go”.As I kneel in the gloom of the cell, the great iron door is outlined in a halo of morning brightness. In that moment, my prayer is counter-pointed by this vision of the eternal portal through which I am soon to pass. But then the door swings wide, and the brilliance turns to pallor, and reveals the absurd procession of clerics and warders in the yard outside.
I try to rise, but the priest sets a hand upon my shoulder. I am pinioned by his comforting gesture, as he entreats me to pray some more. A warder steps to my elbow, with another at my heel. Do they still fear that I will fight? Instead, their agitation merely induces weariness. I have no anger any more, nor self-pity, nor resolve. I have nothing but cloying fear.
The grip that draws my arms behind my back is strong and assured, and the whipping of the cord about my wrists is deft. My executioner raises me to my feet with the surety of practice, and I am propelled towards the door. The man at my back is not rough, but he is not gentle either.
The Notebook of Constable Rounsfell
Observations made between 5 and 8 am, 15th November, the Glen
Fire set in at least 2 places :
1. Pantry. Bedding and mattress (of J Lee) consumed. Scorch-marks, smoke and soot consistent with flame from steel bucket standing on flags in middle of floor. Ring-mark in soot. Smell of paraffin.
2. Dining Room - Sofa. Newspaper remnants, v. many.
Steel bucket with base matching pantry floor mark – blackened and contents reduced to ash – remnants of sheet? Lying alongside sofa – possibly propelled into room while still aflame? Smell of paraffin. Partial collapse of ceiling with spread of fire into rooms above.
Rest of ground floor much coated with soot.
Blood :
V. much at foot of stairs, hallway near pantry door, dining room. Also staircase, clothing of Lee and Miss J Neck, other items as noted.
Items :
Knife in drawer in pantry, said by Miss E Neck to belong to Miss Keyse for her gardening use and normally kept on hallway table, adjacent to dining room. Blood on blade.
Casement of middle south-side window in dining room broken with much force from outside. Lee said he did this, to let out smoke (but would surely have done so from the inside, in an honest account?) Blood on glass fragments and ledge.
Further observations of 16th and 17th :
Paraffin can in pantry (tea-chest), quarter-full. Bright clean as though newly scrubbed, but with bloodspots on close inspection.
Hatchet brought to Mr Walling by Lee. V. much blood on it, about peen and splice.
Hand-print in blood on staircase wall, right hand, made by one descending. Shows Lee was bloodied before breakage of window (?)
Missing and unaccounted for : Mop and carton of soda crystals. Matches.
My hand – Geo. Rounsfell, Police Constable
Reverie. Lee speaks
There was, and still is, a little Devon village, six miles north-east of Torquay. Its name is Abbotskerswell, and in my time it was home to about four-hundred souls. I came into the world here, on August 15th, in the Year of Our Lord 1864.
The family lived at Elm Cottage, and I spent fourteen happy years in that place with my parents, John and Mary Lee, and my sister, Amelia. I was the baby, and they called me John Henry George. I had a half-sister, too. Her name was Elizabeth and she lived at Kingsteignton with my mother’s parents. I can’t remember my other grandmother, but my father’s father was always around. He came to live at the cottage, after his wife died.
My parents kept a small farm, and my father supplemented its income through a second job as a clay-miner. My grandfather was the village cobbler. We didn’t live at all badly. Everyone called me Jack, and the girls were Millie and Lizzie. Millie was the first to go to work at the Glen at Babbacombe Beach, but all three of us were destined for the service of its owner, Miss Emma Keyse.
I went there when I was fourteen, and worked in the grounds and with the ponies. Miss Keyse was very kind; she was known for it. When she was young, she’d been one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. I should have stayed at the Glen, but I got carried away with sea-stories. My parents were furious when I joined the Navy. That was in 1879. I was discharged as an invalid three years later. There wasn’t much wrong with my health : it was just that my face didn’t fit. For some reason that I still don’t understand, it would never really fit anywhere again.
I tried my hand as a railwayman, and worked in a couple of hotels after that. They were both fond of paying me less than my due. When it happened once too often, I helped myself to some of the takings. That was a mistake, and I served six months. By the time I got out, Lizzie was installed as the cook at the Glen and she put in a good word for me. Miss Keyse wrote a lovely letter, offering me my old job back.
I was 19 when I returned to the Glen in the early summer of 1884. It was a fresh chance, and I was grateful. It should never have gone wrong, but it did.
The Drawing Room of the Glen. 15th November 1884. Mid-afternoon
This tranquil room is now the only part of the once-beautiful Glen that is not tainted. Eveywhere else, there is either sodden ash or else the horrible encrustations of splattered blood.
Sergeant Abraham Nott has endured a harrowing few hours. He knows very well that he is not supposed to relish this moment, but what decent man would not now be brimming with revenge? He stares into the other man’s eyes, and his spirit curdles with hatred and hollow conquest.
“John Lee”, he rasps, “with the authority vested in me by the Crown and the Constabulary of Torquay, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Miss Emma Keyse and of committing arson on these premises”.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 7.56 am
The path outside the condemned cell skirts a little garden, and its black soil after rain is peppered with the first shoots of spring. I hear birdsong. Life is all about, tormenting me with its sweet hum. There is a baying crowd beyond the wall, I know, but my senses are sloughed in dreams.
And now we pass through a gate, and here in the van-yard stands the scaffold, towering and elaborate. It crushes me in its shadow. The last man in the procession strides past me, and springs up the steps. High atop the platform, he cuts a superior figure in his formal coat and muttonchop whiskers. James Berry Esquire may be the most reliable hangman in all England, but he does not look me in the eye.
The Coroner’s Inquest. St Marychurch Town Hall. 25th November, 1884
“You are Doctor Herbert Nicholas Chilcote, of Newton Abbot?”
“I am”
“You were the first medical man to examine the body of Miss Emma Keyse, at the boathouse where Mr Walling had deposited it, at about 8.30 in the morning on the 15th of November?”
“Yes”
“May I ask you to describe the state of the body, as you found it, to this court?”
“Miss Keyse was lying on a roll of carpet in a supine position. I was told that she had been found lying on a sofa, and had been removed from it while it still burned. The lower extremities of the victim and in particular her right side were badly burned. I surmised that this side had been presented to the back of the sofa. Her torso was not much charred and her head and face not at all, though her flesh was everywhere baked by the heat. There was a prominent wound at her throat, though not very much blood about it. On closer examination, I found three distinct contusions to the skull of the victim, of which two were very severe. One of these was exactly atop the crown and the other above and a little behind the right ear”
“And were you able to ascertain the sequence of these injuries and the manner in which they were incurred?”
“In my opinion, Miss Keyse was first beaten about the head with a heavy implement. These blows were inflicted in a wild attack of great violence. Bleeding would have been very profuse, and the blow above the ear would have rendered the victim unconscious. I later observed the pattern of bloodshed in the house, and there was copious blood all about the ground floor. I judge from this blood that the attack began at the foot of the stairs, and that Miss Keyse incurred the blow to her crown there. Still conscious at that time, she appears to have fled into the dining room where the second and third blows were landed. The third blow, delivered next to the sofa, brought her down”
“You mean that this blow killed her, Doctor?”
“Let me say this. My later examination, also confirmed by my esteemed colleague Dr Steele, suggested that either one of the two heavy blows would have lead to death, though not necessarily immediately. The most I can say with certainty is that by the time Miss Keyse’s throat was cut, her heart was no longer pumping”
“And how in your opinion were these later injuries received?”
“My nearest guess is that Miss Keyse lay dead on the floor for up to an hour before her body was raised onto the sofa, into the position in which she was later found. In that same attitude, someone deliberately cut her throat with a knife. This action was not wild and uncontrolled like the earlier attack, but it was pitiless nonetheless. The knife was sharp but it was not very large. The wound was made through repeated stabs, accompanied by a sawing action, and went deep enough to notch the spine”
“My apologies for requiring you to recount these details, Doctor, and let the court note your distress and disgust at the brutality of this dreadful treatment. But I regret that I must also ask you how poor Miss Keyse came to be burned”
“I am not a detective, Sir, and so I can only corroborate the account of the gentlemen of the constabulary, but I gained the impression that the sofa was deliberately set alight and that an attempt was thus made to destroy the body by fire. I am certainly of the opinion that the fire occurred some time after the blood was spilled”.
“And surely this was done in a clumsy attempt to destroy the evidence. We may surmise that the killer, his ardour now cooled, had finally realised that the mutilation of poor Miss Keyse was bound to incriminate him. M’Lud, I do not wish to detain the good Doctor in this unpleasant detail any longer than necessary. Let the court therefore note that his autopsy also confirmed the hatchet and the garden knife as the weapons used to split the victim’s skull and to saw at her neck respectively”
“Thank you, Mr Carter. Do you have any questions for the defence, Mr Templer?”
“Err…no. I’m sorry. No…no questions, m’lud”
The Glen. October 1884. Elizabeth speaks
“So how’s the Glen suiting you, John Lee?”
The young man returns her glare. There is resentment in his tone as he replies. “It’d suit me better if my own flesh and blood extended a friendlier welcome”.
They are unlike, in character as well as in looks. She is all careworn anxiety, desperate to grasp the life-chance that is already slipping away from her. He is headstrong and impetuous, heedless of squandered favours.
This family’s candles are burning at both ends.
Elizabeth Harris, cook at the Glen, rests her hand on her half-brother’s arm and smiles her wistful smile. “I’m sorry, John”, she whispers. “I just wish you weren’t sleeping in the pantry, that’s all. My feller won’t meet me in the town; it has to be at the house. The mistress mustn’t see him, and there’s just the one quiet place with a discreet door nearby. You’ve taken my nest, John, love”.
The young man shrugs. Casual cruelty comes to him naturally, as it often does to those with good looks and bad prospects. “Don’t mind me”, he sneers. “We could make a party of it, if you like. In any case, don’t you think I’ve noticed that you entertain company in the toolshed?”
She snorts and scowls. Pulling her hand away, she resolves to keep her secret to herself.
The Court Room. Torquay. 27th November, 1884
“You are Mr William Gasking Walling, landlord of the Cary Arms at Babbacombe?
“I am”
“You were roused by the accused at four o’clock in the morning of the 15th of November last?”
“I was”
“And what reason did he give for calling upon you at that hour?”
“He bade me come to the Glen next door. He said that there was a fire and that Miss Keyse was burned to death”
“And what did you find when you arrived at the Glen?”
“I found a fire still burning and local men, mostly fishermen, beginning to congregate and to help with the putting out. All the residents were outside and accounted for, save for Miss Keyse. Lee lead me to her body in the dining room”
“Let the court note that the accused was able to direct the witness straight to the victim. Mr Walling, will you describe in your own words what you saw in the living room?”
“Miss Keyse was lying on the sofa on her back. The sofa was alight with sparks, but there was no flame. It was very airless in the room, and full of smoke, and the heat from all the walls was very intense. Miss Keyse was obviously dead, since her bottom half was all burned up and her throat was cut right open with her head lolling about. I told Lee to help me get her off, and he was reluctant at first, but then he fetched a carpet and we rolled her into it and stopped the burning. We carried it rolled up about her, with Lee at the feet and me at the head. We got her to the scullery door, then Lee went off to bring water, and Mr Harris helped me take her the rest of the way, right out of the house and down to the workshop next to the boathouse”
“And then, according to your statement to the police, you returned to the house to assist with the fire-fight. You asked Lee for a hatchet, with the intention of severing the collapsed roof-beams”
“I did. I knew the hatchet I wanted, since I have borrowed it on occasion. It was kept in the toolshed, but he did not go there. He fetched it directly from somewhere close at hand”.
“And what did you see on it when it was brought?”
“I saw blood”.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 8.02 am. Lee speaks
You will never know despair until you face your death. The mind of a man will shirk that confrontation until the last possible moment, in the vain hope of a salvation that will never come. So it was that I stood on that platform and even then could not accept that I would die.
They bound my ankles with a strap of leather, and still I felt no more than a thrill of cold fear. I heard the mumbling of the priest, and I saw the holy water raining from his fingertips. I thought that I would swoon with terror, and yet I did not begin to understand the imminence and finality of my fate.
Into this haze of disbelief there came a mere scrap of linen, and it revealed my doom. Berry the hangman drew the hood over my head, and my sight was gone, and it was only then that my heart crashed down.
I felt the dead weight of the noose settle upon my shoulders, and my knees buckled. I felt the knot nudge against my nape, and the rope became a conduit that drained my soul. I heard Berry’s whisper, and it was as though someone else croaked my last words before I had the chance to compose them. “Drop away” came a hoarse voice that was not mine.
And the world fell utterly silent, and time stopped.
St Marychurch Town Hall. 3rd December, 1884
Sidney Hacker, the coroner of Devon, signs the sheet with a flourish and a frown of revulsion.
He regards his own words for a moment, before passing the papers to the clerk. At the bottom of the document, the handwriting reads as follows : “Wilful murder, by John Lee”.
Strictly speaking, it will need the completion of the trial and the jury’s verdict to substantiate that assertion. But in a case as vile and transparent as this one, Mr Hacker does not feel inclined to disguise his feelings.
The First Time. Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 8.03 am
I was dying. Time was moving too slowly and my mind too quickly, but my life was ended.
A chasm opened inside me, and all of my being plunged into its absolute depth.
The weft of the linen crawled on my brow.
The darkness inside my shroud was agonising brightness.
The tears and the sweat scalded my eyelids.
The platform lurched and trembled, and then it writhed and bucked and swam, and nothing was solid any more.
And there was soundless commotion.
And there was an endless, silent ringing.
And the moment of my death was drawn into hysterical eternity.
Then suddenly the cap was torn from my head, and there was the face of Berry, inches from my own. His eyes bulged and his cheeks were flushed, and I could not tell whether the screaming was his or mine.
The Cary Arms, Babbacombe. 12th November, 1884. Evening
“Hello, Betty. You’re looking dreadful. All those fishermen and their business wearing you out? Harrington and his crew must take it out of you, I suppose”.
John Lee lounges, leering, at the end of the bar. The young woman tosses tumbling auburn ringlets, and smirks back. “Whatever you’re after, it’ll cost plenty extra if you address me like that”.
He gives a little bow of contrition, and continues in a friendlier tone. “I want information, that’s all, Bets. I want to know about the gent who’s seeing our Lizzie”.
Betty Perry accepts the offer of liquor, and regards the young man solemnly. The tale she tells makes Lee frown. The name she reveals makes him gasp.
“And he’s been with the girls, too?” Lee asks once more, in evident dismay. Betty nods again.
“You said you’ll see him Friday?”, he demands. Another nod. “In that case, tell him to come to the Glen at midnight, to the scullery door. He’s to knock twice, very gently. Tell him Lizzie wants to see him”.
“And what are you going to do to him?”, she asks. There is a note of trepidation in her voice.
Lee presses his face close to hers, and his eyes are ablaze.
“Never you mind, you filthy slut”, he hisses. He downs the last of his ale in one gulp, and slaps a shilling piece onto the bar-top in front of her. A moment later, he is gone.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 8.06 am
“Fetch the carpenter, damn you!” yells James Berry. The warder stands open-mouthed for a moment before whimpering his assent. He blunders away down the scaffold steps.
England’s Finest Hangman kicks at the boards, and they remain resolutely jammed shut. He jostles the lever, wrestling against resistance from the clevis at its base. The pin connects a push-bar, set in the floor and now eyed with suspicion. Berry places the toe of his great boot against its edge, taking up the sideways clearance. The lever now eases forward under the gentlest of pressure and the trapdoor swings wide open.
“Damn!” snaps Berry, and the prisoner, still bound and kneeling alongside, squeals like an animal.
The carpenter has appeared at the gallows. “You saw that?” Berry demands, tapping the push-bar with his foot. The chastened craftsman gulps and nods. “Well, fix it”, snarls the hangman, his icy equilibrium returning. “And do it quickly. That was unseemly, and I will not tolerate further delay”.
The Glen. 14th November, 1884. Just before midnight
Here in the scullery, John Lee lolls against the sink, with the long-handled hatchet from the toolshed propped carefully within his reach.
The single lamp is trimmed to the feeblest of glows. Lizzie Harris was ushered to bed an hour ago, and glad of it. Her bouts of nausea rack her morn and night.
There is a soft tap at the door. Then another.
John draws the bolt with exaggerated carefulness, and lifts the latch. He eases the door ajar, at the same time stepping behind it, into the deep shadow. But to his dismay, the figure that sidles through the doorway is that of a woman.
“Betty? What the hell are you doing here?” he whispers.
“John, I’m sorry”, she pleads, raising her finger to her lips. The terror in her eyes is conspicuous even in this dim light.
And she is not alone. The frame of a man follows her through the portal, and his arm is extended before him. John Lee cannot discern the gun itself, but the stance alone is threat enough.
“Step out there, Lee”, says the man, in a stern and steady voice. John stands stock still, defying the order as long as he dares, and then obeys. Turning back to remonstrate, he finds himself wrestling with the young woman, shoved through the door after him. The click of the bolt counters further protest.
John Lee stamps in fury, and seizes Betty by both arms. “You stupid whore”, he snarls at her. Throwing her to the ground, he turns to the path and strides off down it, frantic with worry for Lizzie. There is no plan in his mind, only seething anger and mounting panic.
Half-mindful of the risk she is taking, Betty Perry stumbles after the retreating figure.
The Second Time. Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 8.22 am. Berry speaks
I drew the white cap over Lee’s eyes for the second time, and my heart was pounding. He should have been dead these fifteen minutes.
The slides had been greased. The lever rode its path without resistance. The trapdoor now fell smooth and sweet. Nothing could go wrong, not this time.
And in spite of this, I was beset by doubt. I would have checked again, but even the vilest criminal is owed the decency of swiftness. I could not bear to contemplate what the huddled creature in the noose now felt.
So, as soon as he was steady, I took hold of the lever and prayed for the click of the bolt. I heard it, and for a split second I was redeemed. I swear that the trap began to fall. I saw Lee stagger as gravity seized him, cowering before justice at the last, like hundreds have before.
But he did not go down. He regained his balance, and the boards quivered and stuck, a few degrees below the horizontal.
I do not really know what drove my next actions. I do not know how long I waited for Lee to fall, until I saw that he would not do so. It was as if I took his place, and was engulfed in the dreadful flowering of the trap.
The artisan warder at my side leapt forward, and he stamped upon the nearer board, and it recoiled and sprang. I never felt such a shock; it was as though it were my own precarious life that he jeopardised. The warder stamped again, and he began to curse. Scolding, I seized him and pulled him away.
Lee gave vent to a long and terrible howl. In shame and confusion, I slacked the noose and drew back the hood for a second time. He tried to spit right into my face, but there can have been no moisture in that mouth.
The Glen. 15th November, 1884. 1.10 am
“Lizzie? Is that you?”
Miss Emma Keyse tiptoes to the foot of the stairs. She could swear that she heard the crying of the cook. Though well after midnight, Miss Keyse has been at her letters in the drawing room.
A figure descends the steps towards her, in clumsy strides. The frail old lady is stricken with fright, but it is with typical defiance that she bars the intruder’s way.
“Let me pass”, rasps a gruff voice. She raises her lamp. The man on the stair is a moment too slow to mask his features.
The wide eyes of the spinster reveal that he has been recognised. She pronounces his name, shrill with disbelief. He is already pleading with her, when Lizzie Harris appears behind him on the landing above. “Oh, Ma’am”, she sobs. “I’m sorry”.
Emma Keyse is pushed against the wall, and the man who now bounds towards the scullery is frantic with despair. The ruin of his reputation is now inevitable, but still his accuser is in pursuit. Miss Keyse appears right behind him. In a voice brimming with anger and fear, she demands to know what is going on.
And at that moment, the haft of John Lee’s hatchet brushes fatefully against his hand.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 8.24 am
It is the prison surgeon, Wilson Gaird, who grasps Berry by the arm and shakes the hangman from his trance.
“Berry”, he says, sternly. “You shall not keep this man on the scaffold while the fault is repaired. I insist that he is returned to his cell until you are ready”.
The other man is still too shaken to speak. There is a hint of pathetic gratitude in his nod, as he wrings the white cap in his prodigious hands.
Gaird himself looses the ankle-strap, and rises to guide the prisoner down the steps. To his surprise and discomfiture, John Lee catches and holds his eye with dispassionate intent. “Fetch the priest”, whispers the man who is still not dead.
The Glen. 15th November 1884. 3.20 am
John Lee staggers back up the path, retching and shaking. He has little idea where the last three hours have gone, or of what drove him through them. But as he gains the crest of the rise, a sight greets him that banishes his feelings of revulsion in an instant.
The Glen is afire.
Lee rushes from door to door. Those on the kitchen side are locked, while the front entrance is licked by flames. After a moment’s hesitation, he wrests an urn from its pedestal next to the porch, and smashes it through the dining room casement.
He cuts open his right hand as he scrambles through the window, but pays no heed to the wound. Lizzie fills his mind, and he dreads the revelation of what might have happened to her. Inside, there is a column of flame in the middle of the dining room, roaring up through a gap in the ceiling. Disregarding this too, he strides into the hall and up the staircase.
John Lee bursts into the attic room, and his half-sister is curled on the bed, tensed rigid and weeping. She does not resist as he hoists her over his shoulder and staggers back down the steps. This time he shoulders his way into the kitchen, and to his relief finds the key in the lock. Seconds later, John Lee stumbles outside into the cool safety of the night.
He sets Lizzie down alongside the little beech that stands here. She slumps against its trunk and sinks slowly to the ground, racked with sobs.
“Are you all right? What did he do to you?” gasps Lee. His senses are a breathless miasma of excitement and rage.
The face that now turns to his is etched with incomprehension and horror.
“Miss Keyse is dead”, whimpers Lizzie Harris.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 9.07 am
John Pitken is the chaplain of this cloister of misery. This is not the first time that he has accompanied a condemned man’s last minutes, but he has never been so unhappy in his life.
Hunched in the shadows of the cell, Lee seems oblivious to the cleric’s anguish. He speaks quietly, monotonously, as a man who has had all spirit shocked out of him.
“Father”, says John Lee in a faltering voice that is almost inaudible. “Please pray for me that this might be ended. Please ask that I might die”.
Pitken does not know what to say. “It’ll be over soon, child”, he stammers.
Lee raises his head and gazes steadily at the squirming attendant. “No, it won’t”, he replies, simply. “They cannot hang me, because God knows that I am sentenced for a crime I did not commit”.
There is a terrible lull, in which Pitken listens to the brittle crackling of his thoughts. He has heard it rumoured that Lee was an accomplice and not the sole agent of the crime. Finally, he settles on a reply. “If you did not kill that poor woman, and yet know who did, then you must surely confess it for the sake of your soul’s peace and salvation”.
Now it is Lee’s turn to think for a long time. He looks at Pitken no longer. He stares at the bare floor, and his sweat-matted fringe flops at his brow. “You mean Miss Keyse”, he murmurs. “No, I did not kill her. She was very dear to me, my truest friend. How could I think of hurting her? Instead, I was locked out as she was slain. I am not wholly sure who dealt the blows, nor who wielded the knife, nor who kindled the flame. But I am quite sure that the folly of someone I love caused Miss Keyse to die, and I will not bear witness against her”.
Lee hesitates for a little while. The weak February sun is wreathed in cloud, and the dark cell becomes darker still.
“Father”, he whispers. “There is another reason why I kept my silence. I confess before God that I did kill a woman that night, but it was not the killing for which I am to hang”.
The silence is broken by a warder’s approach. “All is ready”, he reports. “This time, there will be no lapse”.
Pitken regards the newcomer solemnly, before turning to face Lee. “May God wish it so”, he affirms.
The Glen. 15th November 1884. 3.55 am
Lee is frantic, but Lizzie isn’t talking. Her wails are interspersed with retching, as she throws up into the shrubbery. The young man grasps her shoulders and shakes her in despair, but at that moment old Eliza Neck blunders into the garden, and the chance for the concoction of a shared alibi is gone.
“Where’s my sister?” shrieks the elderly maid. John Lee hesitates only for a moment, before plunging back into the smoke.
As he reaches the foot of the stairs, he is wrestling with a plausible story. They mustn’t find out what he did tonight, but the scene here at the Glen is terrible enough. If he doesn’t catch the blame himself, then surely Lizzie will. Best if he were asleep in his cot in the pantry, right the way through all of it.
In which case, poor Miss Keyse must have disturbed a burglar. How did one get in? Through the dining-room window; in fact that will neatly explain his own forced entry too. But it must have been five hours ago, rather than just now. There’s an urn on the dining room floor. How come John Lee, sleeping just feet away, didn’t hear the crash that it made?
Among all the smoke and the guttering lamp-light, John Lee now notices the bloodied hand-prints that he has made on the stair-wall. Before he has time for further panic about the spiralling evidence, Jane Neck appears on the landing. She is screaming her head off.
Lee steers her down, a step at a time, and unsympathetically bundles her out through the scullery. There is now little time to put the story straight, but he has an idea. If the urn went back through the other way, he could say that he broke the casement to clear the smoke, and claim that he cut his hand in the process too.
John Lee accomplishes this deception amid a hail of glass and splintered wood, and recoils at the deep gash now inflicted in his other hand. The wound smarts, but its authenticity is surely serendipitous.
He is just beginning to believe that the invention might hold together when he recognises the disturbing smell of roasted flesh. Another couple of paces, and Lee stumbles across the smouldering wreck of the sofa.
The Third Time. Events at Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 9.28 am. Gaird’s testimony to the Government Inquiry
John Lee walked steadily to the scaffold, and mounted the stair without assistance. Indeed, Berry by now looked the more shaken. It was to the great astonishment of those assembled that Lee suggested that they might keep the trap open, and have him jump into the void. Berry did not agree.
As the noose and hood were administered, Berry said some words to the prisoner, but I could not overhear them. He was evidently very contrite. I do not think that Lee made any reply. As Lee stepped onto the boards, they almost sprang open under his weight, they had planed that much off the edges. The carpenter was of the mind that the wood had swollen in the rain, and had therefore reduced it with considerable purpose.
It was then my opinion that the execution could not possibly fail a third time, unless it was through Berry’s confusion. But I did not discern any error on the hangman’s part, for all his distress. Berry drew the lever, and there was a jolt, and the mechanism appeared to jam, more akin to the first time than the second. Perhaps it might still have been finished if Berry had then put all his strength to it. But I think that by now he no longer had the heart for that.
Berry could no longer attend to the prisoner, and so I freed Lee and brought him down. Some fellow came up with a sack of flour at just that moment, intending to test the mechanism with its weight on the boards. I told him that he could make tests on flour-bags as much as he liked, but that there would be no more tests on a human soul.
I instructed that Lee be returned to the cells, to the regular ones, and not the condemned cell. I was by now quite determined that there would be no execution that day, and I sought out the Governor. He was greatly dismayed to hear what had happened, and we consulted the magistrate, and it was soon decided that we should refer a plea for clemency to the Home Office in London. All there felt that Lee had suffered enough, monstrous though his crime might have been.
Mr Cowtan left for the London train before eleven o’clock. A little afterwards I spoke with the chaplain, for whom it was a matter of vocation to accompany Lee and to try to mitigate his ordeal. I was most impressed with Mr Pitken’s undertaking in this regard, and also by his subsequent discretion in keeping secret the subject of all of their conversation.
Exeter Gaol. 23rd February, 1885. 10.14 am
The formidable lady with the enormous skirts slaps the tray down on the great oak table, and scowls like a thunderstorm.
“He won’t have his breakfast, the hangin’ feller. Not my fault he’s hours late for it, is it?”
The warder inspects the congealed mess on the plate, and winces.
“Well, you could offer it Mr Lee”, he grins. “I don’t suppose he was expecting one”.
Whitehall. 22nd December, 1886
Sir William Harcourt folds the letter and strokes his beard thoughtfully. The Home Secretary leans forward expectantly, eager for the Deputy Prime Minister’s words.
“Do you remember that Lee chap in Torquay, Henry? The one they couldn’t hang?”
Matthews gives a nod of encouragement, almost spilling his tea. “That was a couple of years ago now, wasn’t it? He was supposed to have killed a local gentlewoman, a lady of some station, if I remember. You commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, during your own time in the Home Office”
“Quite”, replies Harcourt, settling back with a creak of leather. “It was a very unfortunate business. You see it wasn’t Lee who killed her at all, or at least if he did there were others in close attendance. One of them was the black sheep of a good family”. He waves the letter idly.
“This is from the father”, continues Harcourt, “informing me of the death of the probable Babbacombe murderer, and thanking me for the Government’s discretion in the case. He doesn’t go into details, naturally, but I know from other sources that the fellow died in Holloway’s Sanitorium. Paralysis of the insane”.
“Good Lord. And what’s that, pray?”
“To you, Henry, syphilis. Reginald Templer, they called him. Heir to rather a lot of Devon, had he lived. Grotesque business, but he actually represented Lee in court till he lost his mind halfway through the proceedings. And he was writing letters about the murder hours after it occurred, when he’d certainly been present and more than likely committed it. Must all have preyed on his conscience, apparently”.
“Where’s Lee now?”, asks Henry Matthews, Viscount Llandaff, with an air of faint horror.
“Portland Prison”, replies Harcourt, matter-of-factly. “One for you to think about now. Mind you, he did strangle a prostitute and stuff her into a culvert that same night. Probably the same one who gave Templer his dose, though Lee’s half-sister was providing favours too. She gave birth to a daughter in the local workhouse the following spring”.
The Home Secretary, by now regretting his interest, stares into his teacup in dismay.
Portland Prison. 7th December, 1907. Dawn
You wake here, never because you are rested but because you are disturbed. These rough-hewn sandstone walls hold no comfort. Nor does this woollen blanket, harsh as the masonry. The single window high above, with its brace of rust-eaten bars, muffles not a single sound. You curl up as tightly as ever you can, foot about foot and chin to breast, foetal for survival.
All through your last night in this prison you have been listening to the relentless roar and cackle of rain on tile. It heralded the end of twenty years of violence and trauma. Soon you will walk through those gates into sunlight. The shriek of steam-whistles and the comforting clatter of the railway will at last replace forever the mocking clunk of iron key in iron lock.
And at last the deluge has abated, and the blackness before dawn is giving way to brooding gunmetal in the east. Now rises the tiny clamour of humanity emerging from the mantle of night. The good folk of Portland are seeking frantically to reclaim their town with their yells and the yelps of feral beasts and the fizz and clack of iron on wet cobble. The cycle is coming round again, as it always must. As sure as life yields to death, so night must give way to day.
