by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (October 23rd 2014)
Pioneering Executioner
The pioneer of the long drop1 William Marwood hanged almost 180 people – some well known in their day, such as the notorious burglar and murderer Charles Peace. A small man Peace was a resourceful man. While on the run for murder from Sheffield, Peace committed a series of daring burglaries in London. When caught Peace admitted to the murder of a police officer two years earlier.
William Horry is perhaps Marwoodʼs most famous client – he was the first to suffer the long drop. He also hanged the National Irish Invincibles (NII)2 responsible for the assassination of the Chief Secretary for Ireland Frederick Cavendish and his Under-Secretary Thomas Burke – they were stabbed in Dublinʼs Phoenix Park. Less known of those Marwood executed is another Irishman – the last man to be hanged in Omagh Prison – Thomas Hartley Montgomery.
Deterrence Failed
In 1950 James Robinson was not deterred by the fate of William Ennis, who had the infamous distinction of being the first police officer to be sent to the electric chair in 1903. Robinson was the only serving police officer executed in Britain in the twentieth century. If capital punishment worked as a deterrent then surely police officers, who knew the consequences of serious crimes should be deterred. But neither Robinson nor Ennis were the first.
A Royal Irish Constabulary Sub-Inspector, Thomas Montgomery was everything wrong with a police officer. Montgomery had previously worked at a bank. He knew his victim William Glass. Montgomery always needed money. He murdered Glass in a particularly vicious fashion on June 29th 1871. He even led the investigation into his own crime briefly. Montgomery stabbed Glass from ear to ear with a filing spike.
Discovering his financial problems and that he had been seen by witnesses leaving the scene of the crime just before the victimʼs body was discovered, Montgomeryʼs colleagues in the force faced the unpalatable truth – the Sub-Inspector was the prime suspect. After two inconclusive trials, Montgomery, the son of a police officer was finally convicted of the robbery and murder.
On August 26th 1873 Montgomery became the last person to be hanged in Omagh Prison. Knowing the penalty for murder, especially such a brutal one, was death and that there would be little hope if any for a reprieve in such circumstances failed to deter the Sub-Inspector, whose father had also been a police officer. Montgomery went to his death aged 33. Capital punishment had failed to deter him.
1 The hangman William Marwood realised that a longer drop, which varied according to the physical characteristics of the person being hanged would suffer a quicker and relatively painless death with the longer drop. Death was caused by breaking the neck rather than slow strangulation. William Horry was was the first to die in this fashion on April Foolʼs Day 1872 at Lincoln Castle.
2 They were Fenians, established in 1881 to force an end to British rule of Ireland through assassination of British administrators of Ireland. They were a militant faction of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The assassinations were in retaliation for a massacre committed in Balina by the Royal Irish Constabulary the day before. The victims of that massacre included children. Following another NII atack more coercive methods were allowed, resulting in James Carey revealing all he knew. Careyʼs evidence sent Joseph Brady, Thomas Caffery, Daniel Curley, Michael Fagan and Timothy Kelly to the gallows for the Phonenix Park assassinations. They were hanged on different days by Marwood in May and June 1883 at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. Carey was killed by Patrick OʼDonnell on June 27th 1883 in South Africa, less than three weeks after the last of the five was hanged. Carey had been given a new identity. His murder sparked celebrations in Ireland. OʼDonnell was hanged in Newgate Prison in December 1883 by the incompetent executioner Bartholomew Binns,