Askern, at a scene so horribie and new to him, trembled, and would have rushed at once from the scaffold the very moment he had stepped upon it, if he had possessed the power and freedom to do so; but alas! for him there was no chance, his apprenticeship to the strangling trade must be fulfilled according to the prescribed conditions previously mentioned.
Therefore, nerveless as he felt, and ready to sink into the death-trap beneath, amongst the machinery of the drop, he had to summon up all the courage and fortitude which draughts of intoxicating liquor then plentifully supplied to him, could instil into his drooping frame.
At one bound he approached the pinioned wretch, roughly seized him, placed him under the cross-beam of the gallows quickly, with blanched features and trembling hands, hurriedly pulled the white cap down over his livid face, placed the rope over his neck, and drew the noose most scientifically as he thought, in the true Calcraft style, and as his preceding lessons had taught him; but, lo, and behold! a turnkey had no sooner hastened down and drawn the bolt that lets fall the flooring on which the murderer stands, and sets him swinging in the air, than the culprit’s awful convulsions and desperate struggles to clutch the rope and free himself from the tortures he was suffering, showed the ghastly fact, that his first attempt did not succeed, and that the yelling multitude around and below, all horror-stricken at the sickening spectacle, were clamoring against the unfortunate servant of the law! Speedily he had to release the quivering half-strangled wretch, and do his work of hanging over again, ere death terminated the writhings of the doomed man, and at the same time quieted the unearthly cries of the heaving and seething crowds of men and women who had come from various distances, near and far, to behold the great National Show!
Subsequent experience “got his hand in” as the saying is, and made him more adroit at strangling, but except among a very few relatives and old acquaintances, he was a man shunned and despised, and often liable to insults and desperate encounters in public company, when once the whisper went round that he was the hangman of York Castle.
Another unhappy being, fated to follow the same horrible vocation, is Smith, of Dudley. On the outskirts of the town there used to be seen the old half-tumbled down cottage, surrounded by a marshy piece of ground, where “Dudley Smith,” as he is often called, resided at the time he took it into his head to become a second rival to London’s famous hangman. The news of Askern’s exploits gave Smith courage, but made Calcraft only laugh and wonder how many more fools, ambitious of a black notoriety, were going to compete with him. Events soon followed to settle the question, and afford Smith the opportunity he sought.
“Red-handed guilt, the child of woe” then made rapid progress, and cast a gloom over many a household in Staffordshire, and throughout the adjacent “black country.” The difference of a few guineas settled the matter in the minds of the authorities of Stafford gaol, and struck the balance against the pecuniary demands of the skilful Calcraft, and in favour of the lesser price of the inexperienced Smith, who, however, supplemented the want of experience with that species of brazen impudence and animal confidence which men of his class possess. Mentally and physically he was of rougher mould than either of the two former gallows heroes. Nurtured from birth among miners, the companion of the most illiterate pottery hands, and with bull-dog tastes and habits, he was well fitted for the office of public executioner. A man being wanted for the coming “job,” he applied, sent in the “lowest tender,” and was accepted. Visions by day and night now haunted his mind; asleep or awake the gallows and all its appurtenances dwelt strongly upon his imagination, and flitted before his eyes in his drunken moments. Coils of rope here, there, and everywhere rose up before him, and sometimes twined about his own neck in his midnight dreams, like fiery serpents. Time was getting brief, and he must prepare to perform his task neatly and expeditiously, and in dexterity equal the renowned William Calcraft. So, accordingly, after being shown the sort of rope he must use, he set himself to the work of experimenting and forming slip knots round logs of wood, knobs of furniture and fixtures, the tops of his garden rails, and sometimes round his own neck, close under the ear, and sufficiently tight to satisfy himself that it would answer at the proper time. He practised also the pinioning process on his “young woman” in secret; who, not at all enamoured at his intended profession, at first stoutly resisted, but his importunities and determination made her submit to his strange proceedings.
Without overburdening our confined space with an enumeration of the criminals he afterwards executed at Stafford and elsewhere, suffice it to say, that after a few blunders and the usual violent outcries of the brutal multitudes, he became tolerably expert, and was considered a fit assistant to Calcraft, when a change of the law and private executions were determined upon. As we have been informed in the before quoted narrative of the first private execution, on account of Calcraft’s great age, and in obedience to the overtures of the authorities, Smith performed the subordinate part of moving the bolt that supported the platform on which the criminal stood; preliminary, it is supposed, to taking Calcraft’s place, if death or inability should ere long necessitate a change.
Such a change may be nearer than people suppose, for Calcraft is expected to be a successful applicant for a retiring pension, on account of his infirmities, now too plainly visible, in which event Smith might have for a competitor the notorious “Long Tom Coffin,” a costermonger of old Clare Market, lately pulled down, and a quaint character about town, who addressed an epistle in the following form to the authorities of Newgate, which we give in its original orthography, and “with all its blushing honours” and beauties “thick upon it”:—
“Wild Street, March 1st, 1868.
“To the Gaol Committee of Newgate,”