William Calcraft - one of Britain’s most prolific hangman.

William Calcraft was born at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford, Essex on the 11th of October 1800. He was the longest serving executioner of all, working from 1829-1874. It is not known precisely how many executions he carried out, but it is between 430 and 450, including those of 34 women, of which at least 388 were public and 41 in private. In some provincial executions in the 1830’s it is unclear who the hangman actually was. Click here for photo. He was known to be a good family man and was fond of animals, especially rabbits.

Calcraft was a cobbler by trade and also sold pies outside Newgate on hanging days. (Photo) Here he became acquainted with the then hangman for London and Middlesex, James Foxen and through this was recruited to flog juvenile prisoners in Newgate. His first experience as an executioner was the hanging of housebreaker Thomas Lister at Lincoln Castle and highwayman George Wingfield at Lincoln’s Beastmarket on the 27th of March 1829. The latter was a Lincoln City execution.

James Foxen died on the 14th of February 1829 and it was announced in the Morning Post of the 18th of March that Calcraft would succeed him as hangman for London and Middlesex on the 4th of April of that year. His first job in London was to execute the murderess, Ester Hibner, at Newgate on the 13th of that month. 1829 was a busy year for him with no fewer than 31 hangings. He was assisted by Thomas Cheshire in some of these.

On the 20th of April 1849, Calcraft, assisted by George Smith, hanged 17 year old Sarah Harriet Thomas in public at Bristol for the murder of her mistress who had maltreated her. This was one job which greatly affected him on account of her youth and good looks. It is thought that George Smith assisted at this execution as he had become Calcraft’s preferred assistant on the few occasions when he required one.

Frederick George Manning and his wife Maria were hanged side by side on the 13th of November 1849 on the roof of Horsemonger Lane Goal. The Mannings had murdered Patrick O'Connor - Maria's erstwhile lover for money. A husband and wife being executed together was very unusual and drew the largest crowd ever recorded at a Surrey hanging - estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000.

After the problematic execution of William Bousfield at Newgate on the 31st of March 1856, when the prisoner managed to get his feet back onto the platform, Calcraft took to using an ankle strap and this remained standard until abolition.

Catherine Wilson was a serial poisoner whom Calcraft executed in front of the Debtor’s Door at Newgate on the 20th of October 1862, witnessed by a crowd estimated at 20,000. She maintained her innocence to the end and met her fate with great composure. She reportedly died without a struggle. This was the last public execution of a woman at Newgate.

1867 brought the hanging of three Fenians who had murdered a policeman in Manchester. William O'Meara Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien (alias Gould) suffered together on the 23rd of November 1867 outside Salford Prison. (Photo) Afterwards, they became known as the Manchester Martyrs and a monument was erected to them in Ireland which can still be seen today. Calcraft received the princely sum of £30.00 for this job.

He officiated at the last public hangings in Britain - those of Francis Kidder (the last female one) at Maidstone on the 2nd of April 1868 for the drowning of her stepdaughter and Michael Barrett at Newgate prison on the 26th of May 1868. Barrett was a Fenian (what we would now call an IRA terrorist) who was executed for his part in the Clerkenwell prison explosion which killed 12 people and injured over 100. At the time of his execution it was known that this would be the last public hanging in England. The Government passed The Capital Punishment (Amendment) Act of 1868, three days after Barrett’s execution which transferred all executions inside prison walls. The press and witnesses could still be permitted to attend, although executions were no longer the great public spectacles that they had been.

The first hanging within prison was that of 18 year old Thomas Wells at Maidstone on the 13th of August 1868. Wells was a railway worker who had murdered his boss, the Station Master at Dover. Although the execution was "private," there were reporters and invited witnesses present and the short drop was used so that they would have been treated to the sight of Wells taking some two minutes to die.

As the official hangman for London and Middlesex, Calcraft also carried out floggings at Newgate. He received one guinea (£1.05) a week retainer and a further guinea for each hanging at Newgate and half a crown (12.5p) for a flogging. His earnings were greatly enhanced by executions at other prisons where he could charge higher fees, typically £10, plus expenses.
He also held the post of executioner at Horsemonger Lane Goal in the County of Surrey and received similar fees to Newgate. Here he hanged 24 men and two women between April 1829 and October 1870.

He was the exclusive executioner at Maidstone prison, carrying out all 37 hangings there between 1830 and 1872. In addition to these earnings, he was also allowed to keep the clothes and personal effects of the condemned which he could sell afterwards to Madame Tussauds for dressing the latest waxwork in the Chamber of Horrors. The rope which had been used at a hanging of a particularly notable criminal could also be sold for good money - up to 5 shillings or 25p an inch. (Hence the expression “money for old rope”.)

Calcraft claims to have invented the leather waist belt with wrist straps for pinioning the prisoners arms and one of the nooses he used is still on display at Lancaster Castle (photo). It is a very short piece of 3/4" rope with a loop worked into one end with the free end of the rope passed through it and terminating in a hook with which it was attached to the chain fixed to the gallows beam. This particular noose was used for the execution of Richard Pedder on the 29th of August 1857.

He was a regular visitor to Durham where he was to hang Britain's greatest mass murderess, Mary Ann Cotton on the 24th of March 1873, assisted by Robert Anderson.

Most of Calcraft's early work came from London and the Southeast, as the Midlands had George Smith and Thomas Askern operated in Yorkshire and the North. With the advent of the railway system in the mid 19th century, Calcraft was soon able to operate all over Britain and apparently loved travelling. There was 6,000 miles of railway by 1850 which meant that he could effectively and conveniently work nationwide.

He managed two trips to Scotland, one on the 28th of July 1865 to hang Dr. Edward William Pritchard at Glasgow and the other to hang George Chalmers at Perth on the 4th of October 1870 in what was Scotland’s first private hanging. Dr Pritchard drew an even bigger crowd than the Manning’s had, estimated at around 100,000, when he was executed in Jail Square in Glasgow on the 28th of July 1865 for the murders of his wife and mother-in-law.

His last London hanging was that of John Godwin at Newgate on the 25th of May 1874, his final execution in the provinces was that of John McDonald at Exeter on the 10th of August 1874.
Calcraft retired on a pension of 25 shillings (£1.25) per week provided by the City of London in 1874 and died on the 13th of December 1879. He was buried in Abney Park Cemetery in London.

It is often stated that William Calcraft bungled his hangings because he used the "short drop" method, causing most of his victims to suffocate. Evidence given to the Aberdare Commission by the Chief Warder of Newgate indicated that Calcraft never gave a drop of more than two feet. But it is neither true, nor fair to Calcraft to say that he bungled executions. He could not be expected to know about something that hadn’t been invented (the long drop) and just carried on doing what his predecessors had done. It wasn’t until near the end of Calcraft’s career that the concept of using a longer drop began to take shape. Although at this time Ireland was part of Britain, hangmen in Dublin were experimenting with much longer drops in the 1860’s aided by surgeons there, especially the Rev. Dr. Samuel Haughton.

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