Robert F. Vickers and William Innes.
The first two men whom I executed, though strong chums and partners in crime, were totally different from each other in their conduct. They both showed deep emotion, although they belonged to a low type of humanity, and they both attentively listened to the chaplain as often as he was willing to visit them, and to such outside ministers as took any interest in their fate, but I believe they did this with the view of making the best of a bad job—if any “best” were possible—rather than from any deep conviction of the sinfulness of their offence. Beyond this, their demeanour was totally different. Vickers was buoyed up with hope throughout, and continually asked if “the reprieve” had come. Even when I was introduced to him on the morning of the execution he had not despaired, and his hope rendered him almost cheerful. Even when we were on the scaffold he was convinced that he was not to die, and seemed to listen as people on the scaffold did in olden times, for the horseman wildly dashing across the court-yard and crying, “Reprieve! Reprieve!” at the very last moment. It was not until the noose touched his neck that he realised that his execution was to be an actual solemn fact, and when the dread reality burst upon him, he fainted.
His companion in crime and death stood unmoved upon the scaffold, resigned and calm, without either hope or fear. The white cap was over his face when Vickers fainted, and no sound from the bystanders gave him any hint that Vickers was overcome. The fainting man was supported for a moment, then a touch on the lever, and it was necessary to support him no longer. The Gorebridge murder, for which these men were executed, caused a great sensation at the time.
Mary Lefley.
Mary Lefley.
My next execution, in which the condemned person was a woman, was a very different experience. Mary Lefley, the culprit, was before her marriage a companion of Priscilla Biggadike, who was executed at Lincoln for poisoning her husband. Mary Lefley committed the same crime, poisoning her husband by inserting arsenic in a rice pudding. After the sentence of death, even up to the time of the execution, she expected a reprieve, and to the last she protested her innocence; though on the night before she was very restless and constantly exclaimed, “Lord! Thou knowest all,” and prayed fervently. She would have no breakfast, and when I approached her she was in a nervous, agitated state, praying to God for salvation, not as a murderess but as an innocent woman. On my approach she threw up her hands and shrieked, “Murder! Murder!” and she had to be led to the scaffold by two female warders, shrieking wildly all the time. She died as she had lived, impenitent and untruthful, denying her guilt to the last.
Joseph Lawson,
the principal actor in the Butterknowle tragedy, when Sergeant Smith was murdered, was a terrible combination of craven fear and reckless bravado. During the last few days of his life he was dull and despondent, and during the night before his execution his sleep was frequently broken by fits of terror and nervous exhaustion, when he shivered like one in an ague. On the morning of the last day he arose at six o’clock, and tried to appear cheerful or even jovial. In the pinioning-room he saluted the warders with a cheerful “good morning,” and on his way to the scaffold laughed hilariously at a stumble of his own. Then he commenced using foul, blasphemous language, and not ceasing even when the white cap was drawn over his face. His oaths drowned the voice of the chaplain who was reading the usual burial service, and with awful words on his lips he was launched into a dark eternity.