The Death Sentence in 20th Century Britain Quiz

Answer: August 1964

21 year old Peter Anthony Allen and 24 year old Gwynne Owen Evans (real name John Robson Walby) were simultaneously hanged on 13 August 1964, for the murder and robbery of John West at Workington in April 1964. Peter Allen was hanged at Walton Prison, Liverpool and Gwynne Evans at Strangeways Prison, Manchester. They were taken to separate prisons after their trial at Manchester on 7 July 1964 because double executions (that is, the use of double gallows) were no longer carried out. However, double gallows were used on 13 December 1945 at a prison in Hameln, in the British Zone of Germany, with Albert Pierrepoint as executioner. He had the task of hanging 13 people convicted by a British Military Court of a wide range of appalling crimes at the end of the Belsen trial).

The last death sentence was passed on David Chapman at Leeds on 1st November 1965 but he was subsequently reprieved and his sentence commuted to life in prison.

The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act passed on 8 November 1965, effectively abolished capital punishment. Parliament confirmed the abolition of capital punishment for murder in December 1969.

Answer: Christopher Craig

Derek Bentley and 16 year old Christopher Craig had broken into a warehouse in Croydon and were on the flat roof when police arrived. Detective Sergeant Frederick Fairfax climbed on to the roof and detained Bentley, who is supposed to have shouted "Let him have it Chris". Craig fired his gun and the bullet grazed Sergeant Fairfax's shoulder.

Further police officers were sent onto the roof, with 42 year old Police Constable Sidney George Miles being the first to appear. He immediately received a mortal head wound.

When his ammunition was exhausted Christopher Craig jumped from the roof injuring his spine, and was arrested.

At their Old Bailey trial they were both charged with murder. The prosecution's case was based on the pair having a common purpose while the defence maintained that the 'joint enterprise' had ended fifteen minutes before PC Miles' death, when Bentley was arrested.

Because Christopher Craig was 16 at the time he could not be hanged. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was released after serving ten years.

Despite Derek Bentley having a mental age of 11, the prosecution's inability to prove that a bullet from Craig's gun killed PC Miles, and the argument that if he had said 'let him have it' it could have been to urge Craig to give up his weapon, he was convicted and executed.

In July 1998 Derek Bentley was finally granted a posthumous pardon thanks mainly to vigorous campaigning by his family for many decades.

Answer: Ruth Ellis

28 year old Ruth Ellis, mother of two young children, shot and killed her lover, David Blakely, outside the Magdala Tavern on the outskirts of Hampstead Heath. She had been waiting outside for him and, when ignored by Blakely as he left the public house, she took a loaded revolver from her handbag and shot him. She then emptied the contents of the gun into his prone body (although one bullet missed, ricocheted and hit a passer-by).

There was huge press coverage of the case, arousing considerable public sympathy for her. Her recent miscarriage and details of Blakely's violence towards the attractive young mother were ruled by the judge to be insufficient evidence for a manslaughter verdict to be considered. Although she gave a plea of Not Guilty, she admitted her intent to kill Blakely. The jury had no alternative but to find her guilty and the judge sentenced her to death.

The difference between a death sentence and a sentence to life imprisonment in England was huge, with 'lifers' often being released after serving as little as seven years.

Despite immense public pressure, the Home Secretary refused to commute her sentence to life imprisonment.

In September 2003 the Court of Appeal was asked to reduce the murder conviction to one of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility because of post-miscarriage depression. The request also cited negligence by her defence team, and incitement to commit murder by another lover, Desmond Cussen. The appeal was rejected. (English law has traditionally been most unsympathetic to any concept of 'crimes of passion').

Answer: Edith Thompson

Edith Thompson (28) and 20 year old Frederick Bywaters became lovers while he was lodging at her home. Percy Thompson, alarmed at the familiarity between his wife and their lodger, had some time earlier made Bywaters find alternative accommodation. The affair continued.

Bywaters was in the Merchant Navy. During the course of their affair he and Edith wrote long passionate letters to each other. In some of her letters Edith expressed a wish to be rid of her husband.

They kept their letters, which were used as evidence in the trial against them, where it was alleged that Mrs Thompson had arranged the meeting so that her husband could be killed by Bywaters.

Much of the content of the letters was sexually explicit and considered deeply shocking in 1920s England. Edith Thompson was portrayed as an evil, immoral, even depraved woman who had manipulated her much younger lover into killing her husband. Frederick Bywaters denied she had any involvement. Both were found guilty.

Public sympathy shifted in the days prior to the execution and a petition for clemency presented to the Home Secretary contained a million signatures. The petition failed, and both were hanged.

Rumours that she was pregnant when hanged began immediately after her execution.

Many were uneasy at the verdict. Had Thompson been inciting her lover to kill her husband or were her letters intended to keep the interest of her younger lover alive while he sailed the world with his job? Most felt that she should have been given the benefit of the doubt.

Answer: Timothy Evans

Timothy Evans, 25 and semi-literate, sub-let a flat from Christie with his wife and daughter . In 1949 he walked into a Welsh police station and confessed to disposing of his wife's body down a drain after a 'botched' abortion. The bodies of his wife and daughter were later discovered in the back yard of the property, both had been strangled.

Although Evans initially confessed to murdering his wife, he withdrew the confession and blamed his landlord, John Reginald Christie.

Christie gave evidence for the prosecution at Evans' trial for the murder of his daughter Geraldine. A volunteer Police Officer during the War, the softly spoken, middle aged man's evidence was more credible to the judge and jury than that of the defendant, who continued to insist that Christie had committed the murders.

Evans was found guilty of the murder of his daughter, and hanged, emphatic to the end that John Christie was guilty of the crime.

In 1953 new tenants moved into the property recently vacated by Christie and, during renovations, the bodies of Christie's wife and several women were found secreted in and around the property. Christie was arrested, and eventually confessed to the murders and also to the murder of Beryl Evans, Timothy Evans' wife. He denied murdering their daughter Geraldine Evans.

John Christie was hanged for murder in 1953 - the same year as Derek Bentley. By this time the British public was becoming uneasy about the 'unsafe' capital convictions.

Timothy Evans received an official royal pardon in 1966. A compensation claim to the Home Office was rejected, but his family continue to fight for the claim.

Answer: James Hanratty

Valerie Storie survived, but was paralysed from the waist down. She and fellow civil servant Michael Gregsten had been sitting in their Morris Minor in a cornfield in Buckinghamshire when they were confronted by a gunman and forced to drive along the A6 to a lay-by on Deadman's Hill, Bedfordshire, where the crime took place.

James Hanratty was a 25 year old petty criminal whose appearance was similar to an identikit portrait produced at the time of the killing. He was arrested in Blackpool and identified by Valerie Storie (who had also previously identified another man).

Although an alibi placed Hanratty in Rhyl, North Wales at the time of the murder, this was discounted. He was found guilty and was hanged at Bedford prison on 4 April 1962 .

Subsequent publicity and campaigns to clear Hanratty's name cast doubts on the verdict. Hanratty's execution was often used as an example of the dangers of capital punishment, and evidence was found to have been suppressed by police in order to obtain a smooth conviction.

On 22 March 2001 James Hanratty's remains were exhumed and a DNA sample taken for analysis. The results showed a match with stains found on Miss Storie's clothing. While the Courts ruled that this was a vindication of the verdict, Hanratty's family continue to campaign for a pardon, claiming the strong possibility of contamination between the property of Hanratty and Miss Storie during the earlier trial.

Answer: Somalian

On 6 March 1952 Lily Volpert was found murdered at her pawnbroker's shop in Cardiff. Her throat had been slit with a razor and £100 had been stolen. Mahmood Mattan, 28 year old father of three, was arrested, charged with the murder, convicted and hanged.

The main witness at his murder trial was Harold Cover, who claimed to have seen Mattan leave the pawnbroker's shop on the night of the murder. A large reward had been offered by Lily Volpert's family for information leading to conviction of her murderer.

In the years after his execution certain facts were revealed which led to a mounting belief in Mattan's innocence.

It was discovered that Harold Cover had also been a suspect in the murder case and in 1969 he was convicted of the attempted murder of his daughter with a razor.

It was also disclosed that Cover's first description of the person he saw had been unlike Mattan, but had matched another Somali, Tehar Gass, even describing his gold tooth. In interview, Gass had admitted being in the pawnbrokers' shop that day. This was never disclosed in court. In 1954, Tehar Gass was convicted of the murder of a wages clerk called Granville Jenkins, found insane and sent to Broadmoor. After his release he was deported to Somalia.

In Court Mahmood Mattan's defence barrister had described him as a semi-civilised savage.

On 24 February 1998 Mahmood Mattan's conviction was quashed at the Court of Appeal in London.

Answer: 1998

The Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 finally abolished the death penalty altogether. (The last conviction for treason in the United Kingdom was that of the Nazi, William Joyce in 1947, after his complex case had been heard by the House of Lords, the highest court in the land. For a conviction for piracy one would have to go even further back).

The Home Secretary signed the Sixth Protocol of the European Convention of Human Rights in 1999, formally abolishing the death penalty in the UK and ensuring that it could not be brought back.

Answer: 763

Just over half of the condemned were executed. 722 prisoners were reprieved by the Home Secretary under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, and their sentences were commuted to sentences of life imprisonment, with the possibility of eventual release.

Answer: Pierrepoint

Henry Pierrepoint was dismissed for drinking before attending an execution in 1910, the day after having been in a fight with fellow executioner John Ellis.

Thomas Pierrepoint was in his mid seventies when he retired in 1946.

Albert Pierrepoint resigned in 1956 after a disagreement with the Home Office regarding his fees. After travelling to Strangeways Prison to find that the prisoner had been reprieved, he was furious to discover that he was expected to accept £1 to cover his travelling expenses instead of his usual fee of £15. Arguments with the Home Office produced a final offer of £4. Albert Pierrepoint refused to reconsider his resignation.

Surprisingly, in his 1974 autobiography, "Executioner: Pierrepoint", Albert Pierrepoint disclosed that he was actually opposed to capital punishment: "I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people". He continued, "The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off."

William Calcraft was Britain's longest serving executioner, from 1829 until 1874.

James Berry, who served from 1884 until 1892, was hangman at the attempted execution of John Lee 'the man they could not hang'. Having been brought to the scaffold three times, on each occasion the trap door failed to operate, John Lee's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. By long-standing tradition, under the laws of England, if a person 'failed to hang' three times, no further attempts were allowed.

John Ellis served as Executioner from 1901 until 1923, when he retired because of ill health. He committed suicide in 1932.