Britain behind bars A secret history S01E02 (28th July 2024)
Britain behind bars A secret history S01E02 (28th July 2024)
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00:00Behind every cell door lies a secret history.
00:07As a criminal barrister, I visited prisons across the country.
00:12I've always believed that how we punish people
00:15goes to the heart of who we are as a society.
00:18In this series, I'm uncovering the hidden past of British jails.
00:23All walks of life have walked through that gate,
00:26from Victorian beggars to cold-blooded killers.
00:30Going behind prison walls.
00:33In this wing here, a man being slowly walked to his death.
00:38And delving into rare historical archives.
00:42John Nutt stealing sheep, Thomas Bennet stealing a mare.
00:46All of these executed in front of the prison.
00:50I'll discover notorious gangsters.
00:53The Kray brothers believed that this is a critical moment
00:56that sets off their life of crime.
00:59Legendary crimes, highway robberies,
01:02the stuff of swashbuckling history.
01:06And everyday thieves.
01:08Leave prison, nowhere to live, go to the workhouse, back to prison again.
01:14Ex-prisoners will reflect on cases from the past.
01:17If I was around in 1787,
01:21I would have been executed.
01:24It's mad because that person could be me.
01:27What can these stories tell us about our prison system?
01:31About 100 prisoners have taken over.
01:33Everything went chaotic.
01:35It's just one of the worst memories of my career.
01:39Britain's criminal past brought to life.
01:42You're going to have to fight for your life in here.
01:45Some of them at some point will be released.
01:48What happens inside matters.
01:59I'm heading to Shrewsbury Prison in Shropshire,
02:02a journey I know well from my career as a defence lawyer.
02:08I represented some of the country's most serious criminals.
02:13Many of whom have been sentenced to life,
02:16which is the most serious sentence that can be passed.
02:19It never leaves you, that moment,
02:22when you go down to the cells after somebody's been found guilty
02:26and they realise, and you do,
02:28that the rest of their lives is going to be spent behind bars.
02:35But serving life is a relatively new idea.
02:39Until 1965, the most serious crimes could be punishable by death.
02:47When Shrewsbury Prison opened in 1793,
02:50it was the main execution site in the west of England.
02:54And it was behind these prison walls
02:57that the reign of Britain's most notorious hangmen began.
03:01The Pierpoint family.
03:04Together, they would execute over 800 prisoners.
03:10Through the cases I uncover here,
03:13I want to understand how our attitudes to capital punishment
03:16have changed over time.
03:18This place closed in 2013,
03:21and that was the last time I did a case where my client was in jail
03:25and it looked exactly the same as this.
03:30It's quiet in here now, but you can feel the echoes of the past.
03:36You hear bells and alarms going off constantly
03:39and screws running up and down the landings.
03:42Everything was very loud and rowdy.
03:44Everyone was shouting out the windows,
03:46everybody was shouting at the doors.
03:49Gates slamming, doors slamming, alarm bells ringing,
03:53and then you get a smell.
03:56It's dead air.
03:58That's the only way I can really explain it.
04:00Dead air, food and sweat.
04:06The first prisoner to be executed here at Shrewsbury was in 1795.
04:1225-year-old John Smith stole ten cotton handkerchiefs
04:16from a nearby shop.
04:18Shoplifting may be considered a relatively trivial offence today,
04:22but in Georgian Britain,
04:24crimes involving property were taken very seriously.
04:34So I've got a list of the people executed in Shrewsbury Prison.
04:39I mean, just look at this for a second.
04:41John Nuts stealing sheep.
04:43Thomas Bennett stealing a mare.
04:46Cattle rustling, in effect.
04:49Housebreaking, burglary.
04:52You know, you pause for a second, thinking through all of these names
04:56who have committed minor offences.
04:58They would be walked out of this room and hanged.
05:03Let's have a little gander.
05:05Killing a cow!
05:07Someone got executed for killing a cow.
05:11Wow.
05:13I mean, I'm not being funny,
05:15but if you steal a sheep this day and age,
05:18you won't be executed for it.
05:20You might get a visit from the RSPCA.
05:22That'll be about it.
05:24I mean, come on, if this isn't a form of brutality, I don't know what is.
05:30My eyes drawn to this little squiggly line.
05:3413th of August, 1836.
05:37Three people executed, killed on the same day.
05:40Looks like two of them were brothers.
05:42They've got the same surname.
05:44McDaniel, Patrick and Edward,
05:47with an accomplice, Lawrence Curtis.
05:50And they're convicted of highway robbery,
05:54which sounds like a rural offence,
05:56the stuff of swashbuckling history.
06:00In the early 19th century,
06:02over 200 crimes were punishable by death.
06:06The Bloody Code, as it became known,
06:09was intended to act as a deterrent.
06:13But for highway robbers, the McDaniel brothers,
06:16crime's rewards outweighed the potentially fatal risk of getting caught.
06:23I found a report from the local newspaper of the trial.
06:26Eight days before those men end up being executed.
06:31The prisoners were indicted for assaulting and putting in bodily fear
06:36Mr Thomas Woodward and stealing from his person
06:40£25 in notes and £9, nine shillings in gold and silver
06:45and a silk handkerchief.
06:47Well, in 1836, that's quite a lot of money.
06:51Mr Thomas Woodward, I'm a millmaker and reside in Shrewsbury.
06:55On Wednesday, March the 23rd, I went to wreck some fare.
07:00I saw two men come from the ditch bank on the right-hand side of the road
07:05and instantly received a blow on the temple from a bludgeon.
07:09I mean, this is a violent armed robbery,
07:11which is what it would be charged as nowadays.
07:15And then this is the moment.
07:17The jury, after consulting a few minutes,
07:22returned a verdict of guilty against all of the prisoners.
07:28His Lordship put on the black cap
07:31and proceeded to pass the law's severest sentence on the miserable men.
07:36I feel that I shall not be discharging my duties as a judge
07:40unless I make an awful example of you.
07:42Unless I make an awful example of you, your days on Earth will be few.
07:49Your plea for mercy must now be addressed to the Almighty.
07:56The judge could, at his discretion,
07:59commute a death sentence to transportation,
08:02a long sentence served in a penal colony abroad.
08:06More than 160,000 British convicts were sent to Australia.
08:13But in the McDaniel case,
08:15the judge chose the most severe punishment possible,
08:19as a warning to others.
08:28I've come to Loppington, the village near Shrewsbury,
08:31where the highwaymen carried out their crime.
08:34I want to know why the judge made such an example of them.
08:39So, Barry, I know that two of the McDaniel brothers
08:42were hanged at Shrewsbury jail.
08:44What do we know about them?
08:46Almost certainly would have been considered
08:48to be part of the criminal classes in these days,
08:50people who made their living from crime.
08:52And we know the McDaniels were travelling around the countryside,
08:55committing these kinds of what would have been called outrages.
08:59They're repeat offenders.
09:00Were they a gang of some description?
09:02Yes, but they're not from here. They're from Ireland.
09:05And you call them the McDaniels,
09:06they would have been known locally as the Irish gang,
09:09because they are seen as a gang of outsiders
09:12who have come into Shropshire to commit these heinous crimes.
09:16I read the court report, and it looks like they're caught red-handed.
09:21It's a strong case.
09:23I mean, there's lots of testimony,
09:25and it's all prosecution testimony,
09:27so there's not much for the defence.
09:29And no lawyers on their behalf, I assume.
09:31Only if you can afford them, and they can't afford them.
09:34The victim has paid for the investigation
09:36to detain the McDaniel brothers,
09:38and they have to pay for this case to come to court.
09:41But it's such an extraordinary thing
09:43to think that the defendants don't have a lawyer,
09:47somebody to speak on their behalf,
09:49but also, as a victim, you can only get justice
09:52if you can afford it as well at that time.
09:54But you've got to stop thinking of this as justice system.
09:57There's a very firm belief in retribution.
10:00So if people are going to commit the most serious crimes,
10:03you need to give them the most serious penalties.
10:05There's nothing more serious than the gallows.
10:11In August 1836,
10:13a crowd of thousands gathered outside the gates of Shrewsbury Prison.
10:18Like all hangings at the time,
10:20the execution of the highwaymen was held in public,
10:23so that local people could see justice being done.
10:28Just looking at this building, this was the place, that place there.
10:34Where Patrick and Edward and their accomplice
10:37would have been hanged in front of 10,000 people.
10:41A local paper described the scene
10:43as the three convicted prisoners appeared above the gatehouse.
10:48I've got the Buck's Gazette from the 27th of August, 1836.
10:53The headline is Execution of Three Highwaymen.
10:56On Saturday, the awful sentence of the law
10:59was carried into effect at Shrewsbury Jail
11:02on Patrick McDaniel, Edward McDaniel and Lawrence Curtis.
11:05The executioner placed the ropes around their necks,
11:09drew the bolt and the drop fell.
11:14After a few struggles, Curtis expired.
11:16But the two brothers, being strong, muscular men,
11:19convulsed for several minutes,
11:21striking their breasts several times after the platform sunk.
11:27This wasn't an immediate death.
11:30Painful and frightening.
11:37People have an idea about capital punishment in their head
11:41as being the ultimate price you pay for a crime.
11:45But they've never seen it up close.
11:47They've never been present at it.
11:49They've never seen the human beings who die.
11:59On the eve of their execution,
12:01the McDaniel brothers confessed to more than 25 armed robberies.
12:08Whatever my misgivings about the sentence, as career criminals,
12:12there's no doubt of their guilt under the letter of the law at the time.
12:18Brutal. Three of them dead.
12:20That's criminal, letting someone die for an aggravated robbery.
12:27I've always said to people about my robberies,
12:31if I was in a different time, man, I would have been on that block.
12:37In 1868, amidst growing concerns
12:40about the brutality of public executions,
12:43hangings became private affairs,
12:46moved away from the crowds and behind prison walls.
12:50But capital punishment itself would survive for another 100 years.
12:57This is Shrewsbury Prison in Shropshire.
13:01More than 60 men and women were executed here,
13:04under the strict terms of the Georgian bloody code.
13:09The youngest was just 17, convicted of forgery.
13:13The oldest, found guilty of arson, was 71.
13:19Then, in the mid-1980s,
13:22Then, in the mid-19th century,
13:24Victorian reformers successfully campaigned
13:27to cut the number of capital crimes from over 200 to just five.
13:32Here in Shrewsbury, only the most serious crimes
13:35were now punishable by death.
13:38Of these, the case of Richard Wigley stands out.
13:46A few miles outside of Shrewsbury,
13:48is a village of Westbury.
13:51In 1901, the Lion Inn was the scene of a gruesome crime
13:55carried out by Wigley, one of its customers.
14:02So we've got the notes here of Richard Wigley's case.
14:061901, Richard Wigley, 55, butcher.
14:10And then we have the offence, murder of Eliza Mary Bowen, 28.
14:15Murder of Eliza Mary Bowen, 28.
14:18Motive, jealousy.
14:21The convict was intimate with the deceased.
14:23She went to be a barmaid at Westbury.
14:26The convict did not wish her to go to this place
14:29and may have been jealous of the landlord.
14:34On November 30th, he got up early,
14:37left his lodgings at Shrewsbury,
14:39walked for nine miles to Westbury
14:42and had some drink at her inn.
14:45He seized the deceased by the neck and drew out a knife.
14:50When people arrived, a woman came out with her throat cut
14:54and died immediately.
15:01So we have this other chilling piece of evidence.
15:03It looks like it's in the defendant's handwriting.
15:07I have killed your sister.
15:10I loved her and I will die for her.
15:16It's quite clear, even by today's standards,
15:19this is a case of...
15:22..cold-blooded murder.
15:28Richard Wigley was sentenced to death
15:30for the murder of his former lover, Eliza.
15:34He was held here, in A-Wing, in Shrewsbury.
15:38His was the first execution here for 14 years.
15:42And this case is also notable
15:44because it reveals the name of his executioner.
15:50This execution has been fixed for Tuesday the 18th.
15:54It will be conducted by Henry Albert Pierpoint
15:58as principal executioner.
16:01Henry Pierpoint, smart in his bowler hat and his pipe,
16:06who looks very much like the Edwardian gentleman.
16:12Before starting life as an executioner,
16:1524-year-old Henry Pierpoint
16:17was working in a furniture shop in Manchester.
16:21But he desperately wanted to escape his 9-to-5.
16:26So, in 1901, he wrote directly to the Home Secretary,
16:30asking the minister for a new job.
16:35This is his application to become executioner.
16:38He actually applies for the job.
16:40In his handwriting,
16:42Dear Sir, I wish to inform you that I should be very thankful
16:46if you would accept me as one of the public executioners,
16:50should at any time Mr Billington's term expire.
16:53And this is a chilling sentence.
16:55I've always had a desire for that appointment.
17:00So, Mr Billington, presumably the last executioner,
17:03is still in office and he thinks to himself,
17:06what career is right for me?
17:08Executioner.
17:12Henry's persuasive letter worked.
17:15He was swiftly taken on as a trainee hangman.
17:19Do you know more about him or what happened next?
17:22Well, he came down to Newgate Prison in London
17:26and this is the final report on Henry's week-long training.
17:31As if he's training to do any job, right?
17:56That's interesting.
18:00Will I think prove a useful assistant at an execution?
18:07Henry was trained to make executions swift and clean.
18:12A prisoner's height and weight determined the exact length of rope
18:16needed to instantaneously break their neck.
18:19Just to be clear, the whole purpose of this training
18:22is to make the execution of this individual more humane.
18:26So you go from the spectacle of somebody being strangled
18:29to instant death?
18:31Yes. This is the sort of kit that Henry would have been instructed
18:35in the use of.
18:37So that's the wrist strap.
18:39Is that an original piece?
18:41It is an original piece.
18:43The assistant executioner would use the leg strap
18:47and that's simply thrown round the ankles and buckled from behind.
18:51And then, of course, the white hood would go over the prisoner's head,
18:56which would then have the rope placed over the head
19:00and firmly locked in against the neck.
19:04I have to say, Stuart,
19:06I find it really hard to even touch any of these things.
19:10I totally understand.
19:12Unfortunately, they are a part of our social history.
19:16I've got some film footage of a test of the gallows being done.
19:20What you see here, a set of steps leading up to the trap doors
19:25and then from the gallows itself.
19:28This is the crossbeam above,
19:31the test bag rigged up, weighted,
19:34rope around the neck and the trap doors opening.
19:38That's the test?
19:40And that's the test.
19:42And that's the test.
19:44Is there any other footage like this anywhere else?
19:47As far as I'm aware,
19:49this is the only moving film image of a test of the gallows.
19:52It's quite something to see.
19:57They're basically legal murderers, aren't they?
20:00Someone that chooses to be a hangman.
20:02Jeez, that's crackers.
20:04I couldn't think of anything worse.
20:06How would they sleep at night doing stuff like that?
20:09I don't know, I've been a bit of a nutcase in my time,
20:12but I couldn't imagine hanging ten people by Wednesday.
20:17In 1902, having finished his training,
20:20Henry Pierpoint travelled to Shrewsbury Prison
20:23to carry out his first job as the lead executioner.
20:27A local reporter tells us that on 18th March,
20:31at 7.59am precisely,
20:34Pierpoint calmly entered a cell here on A wing.
20:39Its occupant was the pub murderer, Richard Wigley.
20:44Pierpoint dexterously fastened Wigley's wrists together
20:48and the procession walked down the corridor to the yard.
20:53Wigley walked steadily as he neared the fatal platform...
20:59..to stand on the trap.
21:01Pierpoint adjusted the rope.
21:04Then the executioner drew the bolt.
21:06There was one loud thud...
21:11..and the soul of Richard Wigley had gone to its final account.
21:17Death was instantaneous.
21:25I think justice was done.
21:27I think her family would have saw justice being done as well.
21:31Their daughter being taken, having her throat sliced.
21:35You can't imagine anything worse,
21:37your daughter having her throat slashed just out of a jealous rage.
21:43I think you deserve to hang, yeah.
21:54Executioner Henry Pierpoint was just the first
21:57in what would become a family dynasty.
22:00His brother Thomas joined him at work in 1906
22:04and later passed on the mantle to Henry's son, Albert.
22:30I honestly believe I was performing a public duty.
22:35Albert Pierpoint left an audio record
22:38explaining why he had no qualms about his unusual line of work.
22:45I was doing a job, I had to do a job,
22:47and I tried to do it as best as I could.
22:50You're taking a life.
22:52You've got to get it over quick, quicker the better.
22:56I didn't kill them, I executed them.
23:01Or somebody had to do it, hadn't they?
23:05There's so much in that.
23:08I didn't kill them, I executed them.
23:14That's what rings out from what he said.
23:17And he was good at his work, and that mattered to him.
23:20There's a sense of arrogance, a sense that it's almost a sport.
23:24It's a really interesting thing when we think about capital punishment
23:30and the work that people do,
23:34if they don't think too deeply about the moral issues around them,
23:37if it's simple.
23:39It's a job. He's just doing a job.
23:42And so the human being who's killed is irrelevant to the work.
23:48But at what moment does what's being asked of you as a job
23:52stop being OK?
23:55Albert Pierpoint would regularly visit Shrewsbury Prison
23:58to carry out his work,
24:00and would soon become the most prolific executioner in British history.
24:12In the winter of 1951, 45-year-old executioner Albert Pierpoint
24:17travelled to Shrewsbury to execute a labourer
24:20convicted of murder.
24:2340-year-old Frank Griffin had killed a local woman in her home,
24:27and now he paid the ultimate price.
24:34We have this execution of Frank Griffin
24:37taking place on 4th January 1951 by Albert Pierpoint.
24:42I find this very interesting.
24:44We've got the opinion of the governor and the medical officer.
24:47Has he performed his duty satisfactorily?
24:50This is referring to Albert Pierpoint.
24:52Yes.
24:54Most satisfactorily.
24:56Very good job.
25:01Bleak compliment.
25:04And then the following year,
25:06Albert Pierpoint is back again here in Shrewsbury.
25:10Then again, same year, 1952, another one.
25:14And he's back in January 1954.
25:17Albert Pierpoint is back doing the job that he loves
25:21four times in Shrewsbury in the space of four years.
25:28The Pierpoints had always been proud of their ability
25:31to dispatch the guilty swiftly.
25:35When Albert came here to Shrewsbury in the 1950s,
25:38the geography of the prison itself
25:40had been modified to speed up the process.
25:43A condemned prisoner now spent their final hours
25:46right next door to the execution chamber.
25:50The distance from condemned cell to gallows was very short,
25:55and so the process could be very fast.
25:58So the person could be sleeping next door
26:00to the place they were to be hanged?
26:02Yes. They weren't told this.
26:04On the morning of the execution,
26:06it was just a matter of a bookcase moving aside
26:09and then taking them through and hanging them.
26:12They were sleeping in a room with a bookcase
26:14and they didn't know that behind there...
26:17..is where they would be hanged, yeah.
26:19Pierpoint spoke about being able to carry out hangings
26:22within eight seconds.
26:24He put a lot of value on being efficient
26:27because it minimises the suffering for the condemned.
26:31Not long after his visit to Shrewsbury,
26:33Pierpoint described this efficient execution process.
26:37Here are a few notes on what happens
26:39when a man is to be executed.
26:41When I am inside,
26:43I fasten his arms behind his back with a leather strap.
26:46Then the prisoner is escorted out of the condemned cell
26:48into the execution chamber
26:50and is placed on a white chalk mark
26:52so that his feet are across the division of the strap.
26:55While my assistant is fastening up his legs,
26:57I draw a white cap over his head
26:59and place a noose around his neck.
27:02As soon as I see that everything is ready,
27:04I pull the lever and the prisoner falls through it
27:07and it is all over in an instant.
27:11What sort of public support was there at that time in the 1950s
27:14for the death penalty?
27:16A majority in the 1950s was always in favour
27:18of having capital punishment.
27:20Part of the reason is straight after the Second World War,
27:24execution had been used as a means
27:27of punishing Nazi war criminals.
27:30Albert Peerpoint carried out over 200 executions
27:35of Nazi war criminals in Germany.
27:38Sorry, can I stop you?
27:40You can.
27:42Do you mean after the Nuremberg trials?
27:44Yes, he carried out hangings, basically,
27:47but he had to do this on quite a large scale.
27:52I had this burning question.
27:55How on earth could you do this job above all else?
27:58You know, how could you live with yourself?
28:03And I couldn't conceive of any circumstances
28:06in which it was an OK thing to do.
28:10My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor
28:13and his family were murdered by the Nazis
28:16and that leaves me...
28:20..a little bit more conflicted with more to think about Albert Peerpoint,
28:24about everything.
28:26It's not necessarily as clear-cut.
28:33The spotlight of justice is focused on the courthouse at Lüneburg,
28:37where the Belsen gang now face a British military court.
28:40My own family suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
28:44My grandfather Morris survived the war,
28:46but his father, mother, brother and four sisters
28:50were murdered during the Holocaust.
28:52Brought by lorry from their place of imprisonment
28:55come the first members of the foulest set of war criminals
28:58ever to have blackened the history of mankind.
29:01In December 1945, Albert Peerpoint,
29:05by then Britain's chief executioner,
29:07travelled to Germany to execute Nazis convicted of wartime atrocities.
29:13I've got some of the names of the people who he was responsible for
29:17executing, some of the criminals who were tried under rule of law.
29:22One of them...
29:26..is a woman SS officer called Ida Gress.
29:32I know of her.
29:38She had all sorts of human artefacts,
29:42including lampshades made of human skin.
29:47We have at the top the commandant of Belsen himself.
29:51Albert Peerpoint has been responsible for executing these people
29:55and I'm not sure, just in terms of my immediate response...
30:05..that they didn't deserve it.
30:09Executing Nazis went down well with the British public.
30:16Albert was seen, he said, as their avenger.
30:21In one 24-hour period alone, he dispatched 27 war criminals.
30:28I can see a lot in my mind.
30:32They deserve all they get and no pity for any of them,
30:35including the women.
30:37I could have gone again and done it.
30:42I didn't expect this, you know.
30:44It's good to have your confident views about the world
30:49sort of somehow tested a little bit.
30:52I've been really judgmental about Albert.
30:56Thinking, you know, a bit arrogant, following orders, it's never OK.
31:01Then this list tells me he's gone out to humanely execute...
31:08..these people.
31:11And...
31:16..everything becomes harder and less clear and less certain.
31:23I think I need a drink.
31:29When Albert Peerpoint returned from Germany in 1949,
31:33there were more than 25 execution sites in Britain.
31:36With post-war crime rates on the rise,
31:39Albert's job took him to prisons all across the UK,
31:43from Glasgow to Belfast, Somerset to Shrewsbury.
31:49In opinion polls, the public overwhelmingly supported Albert's work,
31:53with around 75% advocating the principle of an eye for an eye.
31:59But her attitudes to the death penalty would soon be tested.
32:03And in that house behind me there,
32:05there took place one of the most repugnant murders
32:08in the annals of British crime.
32:10There lived on the top floor of that house
32:12a young man called Timothy John Evans and his wife and baby daughter.
32:19We've got the case here of the King versus Timothy John Evans
32:25on the 10th day of November 1949
32:28in the county of London who murdered his baby daughter, Geraldine.
32:32And this must be him.
32:36This looks like the type of shot the press would have put on their front pages.
32:40You know, the very image of a guilty man
32:44being apprehended by the police, collared.
32:49Ah, this is his wife holding their baby, Geraldine.
32:53We've got Timothy Evans' confession.
32:56It looks like it's typed by a police officer.
32:59At 11.10am today, I found the dead body of his wife,
33:03Beryl Evans, concealed in a wash house.
33:05Also the body of his baby daughter, Geraldine.
33:09Upon confronting Evans, I again cautioned him,
33:12I have reasons to believe that you were responsible for causing their death.
33:16He said, yes, I strangled her with a piece of rope.
33:21I waited till the Christies downstairs had gone to bed
33:24then took her to the wash house after midnight.
33:27On the Thursday evening after I came home from work,
33:31I strangled my baby in our bedroom with my tie.
33:39He signed the statement then added,
33:41it is with great relief to get it off my chest and I feel better already.
33:47On the surface, this appears to be another open and shut case.
33:51But the more I read, the more my instincts as a defence lawyer kick in.
33:56To me, Evans' confession seems just too neat,
34:00too readily given up.
34:03When I first started practising, from time to time you'd get a statement
34:08which had been taken down, allegedly made by your defendant,
34:11who'd been held perhaps against the rules,
34:14and they'd been taken down in language that you knew your client had never used.
34:18There's so much of this that doesn't add up.
34:22And also feels, as we would say nowadays,
34:28quite unsafe as a piece of evidence.
34:3225-year-old Timothy Evans could barely read or write.
34:36And once behind bars, he rapidly changed his story,
34:40now pleading his innocence.
34:43But in this case, the prosecution had a star witness,
34:47Evans' downstairs neighbour, 51-year-old John Christie.
34:52Christie said he'd heard Evans disposing of the body of his dead wife.
34:58It was one man's word against the other.
35:02Evans was found guilty and hanged in March 1950,
35:07executed by Albert Pierpoint.
35:13I remember Evans very well. He was only a little fella.
35:16And he wasn't a bit of trouble.
35:18In the press the same night, he'd been struggling.
35:21He never struggled.
35:24And that appeared to be that.
35:28Albert Pierpoint continued his travels around the country,
35:31quietly going about his macabre business.
35:35But this wasn't the last he, or the nation, would hear of the Evans case.
35:40I read Timothy Evans' case file and it just doesn't add up.
35:44It doesn't feel right.
35:51Wow! Christie goes into the box.
35:54I think I killed Mrs Evans.
35:58HE EXHALES
36:06In 1950, 25-year-old Timothy Evans was accused of murdering his wife
36:12and baby daughter at their West London home.
36:16The main witness in the case against Evans was his neighbour,
36:20former policeman John Christie.
36:23Three years later, John Christie is found guilty
36:26of murdering women at 10 Rillington Place,
36:29the exact address where Timothy Evans lived
36:33and was accused of killing his wife and daughter.
36:36John Christie did it. He admitted it.
36:39This is the clearest miscarriage of justice imaginable.
36:44A serial killer, Christie admitted to murdering at least seven women.
36:49And that, of course, raises a deeply disturbing question.
36:53How can we justify the death penalty
36:55if there's any risk those executed have been wrongly accused?
37:01And the impact of that doesn't just affect society.
37:06It most directly affected his family.
37:12Timothy Evans' relatives campaigned for justice for years
37:16and in 1966, he was pardoned.
37:20His family have agreed to talk to me.
37:24I first learnt about this when I was 11 years old.
37:28So I'd always known that I had an uncle who'd died.
37:31As far as I can recall, I was told he'd died in a car crash,
37:34so I didn't know the truth.
37:36Is that what your mum told you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:39It wasn't until many years later,
37:41when I was kind of far more grown up and adult myself,
37:44that she was able to sort of talk to me about it without getting upset.
37:49This is Tim and Mum. That was their first communion.
37:53And this is the last letter Mum received from Tim from the death cell.
37:57It's written by a warder because...
38:00Tim was incapable of writing.
38:03Dear Maureen, that's Mum. Yeah, yeah.
38:06Received your most welcome letter.
38:08Pleased to say I'm all right in health,
38:11as I know you're all doing your best for me.
38:14I'm hoping for the best, which is all I can do.
38:17So I'll do as you say.
38:19Keep my chin up.
38:21Give my love to Mum and Dad, also all at home.
38:24And all my love to you, your loving brother.
38:27It gets me very emotional.
38:30On the day that Uncle Tim was executed,
38:33can you help me understand what the feelings of the family were,
38:37your family?
38:38The whole family, basically, were sitting in the kitchen at home.
38:42My grandfather had actually gone up to Pentonville
38:45to stand outside the gates.
38:47And the whole family were praying
38:49that there would be a last-minute reprieve.
38:52So they watched the clock tick past nine o'clock
38:55and thought, has he gone, has he not gone?
38:58And it was only about an hour later, ten o'clock, I think,
39:01when my grandfather got home and said,
39:04it's been done by Albert Pierpoint.
39:07Ever since I found out about Tim's case,
39:10the most powerful emotion I can ever remember feeling about this
39:14was just outrage at the miscarriage.
39:18How could this happen?
39:20And for me, ever since I've been opposed to the death penalty,
39:23to capital punishment, even today,
39:25I don't think there can ever be an absolute guarantee of guilt.
39:32In 1953, three years after Timothy Evans was executed,
39:37his neighbour John Christie was found guilty of a series of murders.
39:42In a remarkable twist of fate,
39:44Christie was taken to Pentonville Prison where, just like Evans,
39:48he was also hanged by Albert Pierpoint.
39:54It's a deeply uncomfortable moment in British legal history.
39:58For anyone who thinks capital punishment might be a good idea,
40:04it's right there.
40:06He didn't commit the crime and still he lost his life.
40:10Well, you know, what's the comeback for that?
40:13How do you apologise to people that have had the death penalty years ago
40:17and then you find out years down the line, oh, got it wrong,
40:20but we'll give them a posthumous pardon?
40:23Well, they ain't got it up, I'm sorry to say. It's too late.
40:28The Evans case was just one of a number of controversial executions
40:32that began to turn the tide of public opinion.
40:36Outside the prison walls,
40:38it seemed that each new hanging brought increased disquiet.
40:42In 1953, 19-year-old Derek Bentley went to the gallows
40:47as an accomplice to the shooting and murder of a policeman.
40:51Bentley had a mental age of just 11.
40:56Two years later, model Ruth Ellis was executed for murdering her lover.
41:02Nothing went wrong with her, she was as good as bloody gold.
41:07She was no trouble, really.
41:09She wobbled a bit like, naturally, any woman can do that.
41:14Ellis had readily admitted her crime,
41:17but she'd told the court that she'd been abused.
41:20And both press and public questioned whether her sentence
41:24should have been commuted to life.
41:28Here in Shrewsbury, the town's appetite for executions
41:32had also begun to wane.
41:35A century earlier, huge crowds had gathered outside the prison,
41:39baying for blood, at public hangings.
41:42But when Albert Pierpoint returned to the town in the mid-1950s
41:46to execute a local man accused and found guilty of murder,
41:50there was growing disquiet.
41:53900 local people signed a petition to the Home Office,
41:56demanding a stay of execution for prisoner Desmond Hooper.
42:01But no reprieve was granted.
42:05Desmond Donald Hooper.
42:09A 28-year-old male.
42:14And it has the particulars of the execution,
42:17the length of the drop,
42:20cause of death, dislocation of vertebrae.
42:24These things are done scientifically, as humanely,
42:29as is conceivably possible.
42:31But the chief worry here at Shrewsbury Prison,
42:34it's that the execution could cause public outcry.
42:38Two years after Hooper was hanged here in Shrewsbury,
42:42Albert Pierpoint resigned his post as lead executioner.
42:47He spent his final days running a pub.
42:53I've done more executions than anybody I think has ever done.
42:57Anybody, I think, in the bloody world.
42:59530 men and 20 women.
43:02I was the bloody daddy of them all at finish.
43:06But while Albert settled into retirement,
43:09public anxiety about the death penalty wouldn't go away.
43:18In 1960, 21-year-old George Riley appeared in court in Shrewsbury,
43:24accused of the murder of his neighbour.
43:26A 62-year-old widow.
43:30He was found guilty and sentenced to death.
43:39George's father, captured on film here the day before the execution,
43:43garnered 2,000 signatures calling for mercy.
43:48Questions were raised in Parliament and a petition sent to the Queen.
43:53But the family's efforts were in vain.
44:01On 9 February 1961,
44:04George Riley was the last prisoner led to the gallows here in Shrewsbury.
44:11Just four years later, the death penalty was suspended across the UK.
44:18But today, about 40% of us support its reintroduction.
44:28I 100% agree with the death penalty.
44:32Personally, if we did have said punishments in the UK,
44:36I don't think half the crimes would be committed.
44:40I've seen enough in my lifetime to know some victims of crime
44:45will never be appeased.
44:48I don't think revenge gets you anywhere.
44:52It doesn't serve you anywhere.
44:57I hope the death penalty doesn't come back.
44:59You just need to consider that every day that person wakes up in a cell
45:04with no handle on the inside,
45:06no control whatsoever over any aspect of their lives
45:09and the rest of their lives,
45:11to consider the enormity of what they have done,
45:14that is probably punishment enough
45:16and possibly even more than what would be achieved by the end of a rope.
45:26Throughout my time here in Shrewsbury Prison,
45:29I found it difficult to imagine a world
45:32in which the death penalty could be brought back.
45:35But I do understand why so many people feel differently,
45:39that it's right to take an eye for an eye.
45:44It's not straightforward.
45:46And anybody who thinks it is hasn't really listened to these stories,
45:50hasn't stood in this building,
45:52hasn't heard what it means to be a victim.
45:58And that's the nature of justice.
46:00It isn't clear.
46:02It isn't straightforward.
46:04It's tough.
46:10Next time, I visit Shepton Mallet Prison.
46:13People sent here would often serve short sentences
46:16for what we understand as petty crime.
46:18I'll discover its brutal regime.
46:20They had a treadwheel.
46:22It's the idea of grinding men good.
46:24And legendary inmates.
46:26This is where they learnt to be the criminals that became the Krays.
46:39For more information, visit www.fema.gov