Execution at Chester

Category : Article

At what is now Barrel Well Hill and was once Gallows Hill in Boughton, stands the obelisk to George Marsh, an outspoken puritan preacher, from Bolton, who was burned at the stake (24 April 1555) on the north side of the road, after being questioned by the Bishop of Chester. The gallows which once stood here, close to the site of St Giles Cemetery is shown in both the Lavaux Map (1745) and earlier maps of Chester  going back to that of Braun and Hogenberg (1581).

The Museum of Policing in Cheshire records that on May 9th 1801 "Thompson, Morgan and Clare" were the last felons to be executed at Gallows hill. Accoring to the Museum site, they were executed for burglary. However "Infamous Cheshire" records that while Thompson and Morgan were unpopular forgers who had "cheated and ruined the lives of a number of local people", John Clare had some sympathy because he had committed a relatively minor crime. At his trial, John Clare had shouted that "he would never hang" - technically he did hang, although he drowned first.

After 1801, condemned men (and women) were sent to Northgate Gaol for execution, and later, to the City Gaol. In 1868 public execution was abolished in the UK. In 1866, the County Gaol moved to Knutsford and further executions occurred there until 1912. However there was at least one private execution in Chester, that of James Banister 4th April, 1877.

When Knutsford was commandeered by the military in 1914, condemned criminals were sent to Walton (Liverpool) or Strangeways (Manchester) for execution. The death penalty was finally, effectively abolished on 9th November 1964.

Executions at Gallows Hill
The standard execution procedure at Chester was that a clergyman was appointed to accompany the condemned to the hanging-tree. A spiritual counsellor was supposed to keep the convicted man or woman calm. They were also there to reassure the crow that any repentance speech was genuine. The clergy had to attempt to bring about a final confession, being duty-bound to persuade the prisoner to atone murder to cleanse their soul. That confessional was written down and then printed as an intended moral lesson. Due legal process had to be seen to attend to the prisoner’s spiritual needs and protect the well-being of provincial society.

1554: George Marsh burnt at Spital, Boughton;

1558: Sept. 8th. A woman burnt at Boughton for poisoning her husband;

1589: John Taylor – Gaoler of the Castle;

1592: William Geaton – servant to the Bishop of Chester – his body hung on chains on Grappenhall Heath;

1602: Elizabeth Duncalf


 * The Case of Elizabeth Duncalfe

1602: Arnet servant of Saltney Side hung

1771: John Chapman
The courtroom facts were that Chapman was a sailor. He was convicted of homicide after a port brawl. Throughout the capital hearing he protested his innocence. It was rumoured that the trial evidence that convicted him was decidedly circumstantial. His fellow sailors thought him innocent and were angry at the death-sentence verdict. Chapman refused to be consoled or counselled. On getting into the csrt with the appointed clergyman to travel to the gallows, the convicted man charged at his confessor’s belly. The churchman was thrown violently out of the conveyance. The sheriff’s officers seized the prisoner and ‘tied him with ropes to the cart’. Still he struggled. On arrival at the hanging-tree he had to be strapped round the base of the gallows. Then the execution rope was prepared. The hangman ‘had to try to lift him up to tie the rope about his neck’. Chapman reacted even more forcefully and lurching forward again "got the hangman’s thumb in his  mouth, which he almost separated from the hand; he was at last tied up, but with great difficulty".

Executions at Northgate
After 1801, condemned men (and women) were sent to Northgate Gaol for execution.

In the early nineteenth century, much of the news of England's murders and executions was brought to the masses through penny and half-penny "broadsides". As one of the most popular forms of street literature, broadsides were the tabloid newspapers of their day, selling near the gallows on execution days. A single sheet of paper printed on one side, the broadside usually included an account of the crime, a woodcut illustration (often a scene depicting the execution), a description of the convict’s final hours and his last dying confession. The latter was often given in the form of a cautionary verse, emphasising the sorrow of the convict and warning readers of the dangers of drink and bad company. The broadsides were printed in advance of executions and so were often innaccurate. Many, if not all, of the gallows speeches and confessions reported were completely fictional, while some printers even reused entire texts, changing only the names. Woodcuts could be reused as the occasion demanded, and stock illustrations of the gallows even had a removable section designed to accommodate the required number of hanging bodies!

Executions at City Goal
One of the provions of the Murder Act of 1752 begins with the mandate that “in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried,” resulting in a strange period of posthumous punishment during which the bodies of murderers were to be hung in chains or dissected after execution. Following the passage of the Anatomy Act 1832, which was intended to curb the activity of "body snatchers", it was confirmed that not only were the convicted hung, but they were also disected - often in public.

1812: John Lomas
Edith Morrey was born Edith Coomer and married George Morrey, a farmer’s son on Tuesday the 18th of April 1797 at St. Chad’s Church in Wybunbury in southern Cheshire. She was then about nineteen years old and the daughter of a well to do farmer. Initially the marriage was happy and they settled in the Cheshire town of Nantwich. George opened a grocery store there and the couple made a reasonable living over the next four years. In early 1801 they returned to the village of Hankelow, near Audlem to take over George’s father’s farm when he retired. They were blessed with seven children, three boys and four girls, although one of the girls died in infancy. George tended the farm whilst Edith made cheese for sale locally and looked after the family. They had a maid, Hannah Evans who had been with them nearly a year and a twenty year old farmhand called John Lomas who had just joined them. At this time Edith was once again pregnant but was to have a miscarriage in February 1812. We have no means of knowing Edith’s emotional state at the time, so soon after a miscarriage, but it was quite possibly rather fragile. For whatever reason Edith quickly fell for John and they began having an affair. Over the next two months or so Edith started to think in terms of marrying this young man, some fifteen years her junior, however there was one obvious impediment, George. No doubt Edith was not prepared to give up her children and comfortable life style by simply running away with John, nor was she willing to face the social disgrace that this course of action entailed at the time. So another way had to be found to keep John’s affections and rid themselves of George. Edith determined that John should kill George and afterwards they could be together. On Saturday the 11th of April 1812 George had been to Witton Wakes, a major fair in Northwich and did not return home until midnight. Edith and Hannah Evans were still up at this time and George had supper before he and Edith retired to bed. Hannah went a little later after she had cleared away the supper. Hannah was soon awakened though, by the sounds of a commotion from inside the house. She and John Lomas ran to the house of a neighbour to raise the alarm. The pair then returned to the farm with a couple of neighbours, Thomas Timmis and John Moores. The two men found Edith sitting by the fireplace and then opened the door into George’s bedroom where they made a grim discovery. George was laying face down on the floor with an axe handle projecting from underneath him. He had several axe wounds and in addition had had his throat cut, so there was blood everywhere.

Edith and John stood trial on Friday August the 21st before Chief Justice Robert Dallas and Francis Burton, a more junior judge. They were both charged with Petty Treason rather than murder, as the deceased was the husband of one defendant and the master of the other. The jury returned a verdict of guilty against both prisoners after just a few minutes discussion. Judge Dallas then addressed both of them, suggesting that although he believed that John had actually carried out the killing it was Edith whose guilt was the greater for planning and organising the destruction of her husband. Asked if had anything further to say before he was sentenced John told the court that he deserved his execution and hoped to be quickly forgotten. On Edith’s behalf John Cross told the court that she was pregnant and thus could not be sentenced to death at this time.

John’s hanging took place on Monday the 24th of August 1812. He spent sometime with the chaplain, the Reverend William Fish, before being led out up to the roof for his appointment with Cheshire’s hangman, Samuel Burrows. A large crowd had gathered to witness the event and the usual broadsides were sold. John made a short speech from the gallows warning others not to follow his example. His body was dissected after death by Owen Titley at the infirmary next door to the gaol.


 * The Newgate Calendar;
 * The Murder of George Morrey;

1812: Edith Morrey
Four months after John Lomas's execution Edith Morrey gave birth in Chester City Gaol to a healthy boy on 21 December 1812. Local newspapers reported that she hoped for a pardon so her seven children would not be orphaned. Samuel Burrows the Cheshire hangman was not minded to be merciful to a murderess. As instructed, he executed Edith at the spring Assizes of 1813 and sent her baby for adoption. The Times newspaper described how ‘ten thousand people’ assembled for her execution and "post‐mortem punishments", timetabled in tandem:


 * "On Friday morning at 12 o'clock this wretched woman was delivered by Mr Hudson, constable of Chester Castle into the hands of Messrs Thomas and Bennett, the City Sheriff for execution …; she got into the cart, and immediately laid down on one side, concealing her face with her handkerchief, which she had invariably done in public … She was very much convulsed for a few minutes when her pangs ceased in this world. After hanging the usual time, her body was delivered to the surgeons for dissection, and was open to public inspection during all Saturday."

In this case, Edith Morrey's body was hanged at Chester Gaol and then sent next door to Chester Infirmary. Owen Titley initially opened ‘her [Edith's] thorax and abdomen and removed her heart for preservation’ (he had done the same for Lomas). The penal surgeon was effectively checking that the prisoner was dead and had not survived the gallows.40 Then he sewed the body back up and sent it back to the Shire Hall courthouse. On the way it was accompanied by a huge parade of local people. Edith's body was brought inside the main entrance and placed on a portable dissection table. The public space was carefully chosen in the community both for its legal symbolism and for the practical reason that it could accommodate the large audience assembled to see the post‐mortem cuts. In the main hall, the body was left open for public consumption over the next twenty‐four hours. Local people filed past the criminal corpse in two orderly queues. The throughput of audience members was calculated by local newspaper reporters to be ‘four hundred and sixteen people per hour’ – on average seven spectators a minute – to ensure that ‘all ten thousand spectators’ had a chance to view the criminal corpse. They were permitted to look but not touch, and were directed to keep moving along Edith's cadaver, down two sides of the dissection table. The next day, the Shire Hall doors were closed, and the criminal corpse was moved back to Chester Infirmary to complete a full‐scale dissection conducted by Owen Titley.


 * "Edith Morrey – A Cheshire love triangle"

1813: William Wilkinson, John Burgess, William Yarwood
All from Northwich in Cheshire, they were hanged together for the rape of Mary Porter at Runcorn in Cheshire. The crime was committed on the 15th of January 1813. One George Randles was on the shore line when he heard a woman scream “Murder” and “O Lord help me.” He went before a justice and made a deposition of what he had seen and heard. The trio were arrested and duly came to trial at the Shire Hall in the outer bailey of Chester Castle. They were loaded into a cart and arrived at the City Gaol around 12.20 pm. The New Drop gallows was erected on the flat roof of the gatehouse. At 1.10 pm. they ascended the scaffold, Wilkinson first. Samuel Burrows, Chester’s hangman applied the noose to him as he addressed the crowd. Burgess was next but he was reportedly quiet and reserved. Finally Yarwood joined them and exhorted the crowd not to mix with bad women. It seems, as is so often still the case, that they blamed the victim, Mary Porter, for their crime. The Rev. Mr. Willan prayed with the men for some time until Yarwood gave the signal by dropping a handkerchief and Samuel Burrows released the trap, launching them into eternity, as was the parlance of the time. As they were not murderers their bodies were returned to their families after hanging for an hour.

1863: Alice Holt
On Monday the 28th of December 1863 Alice Holt became the last woman to be executed at Chester. 27 year old widow, Alice Hewitt, was co-habiting with her boyfriend, George Holt in a two up, two down slum house in Great Egerton Street in Stockport in Cheshire. She had adopted his surname and called herself Mrs. Holt. Also in the house was Alice’s mother, 51 year old Mary Bailey and four lodgers, George Bailey (no relation to Mary), his wife, Ann and their two children. In the winter of 1862/3 Mary became ill with bronchitis and complained that “her daughter would not work and did not use her well.” In early 1863 Alice became pregnant by George Holt.

Alice, then 27, hit on the idea of insuring her mothers life for £25. She realised that Mrs. Bailey would never pass a medical test, so she persuaded a friend to impersonate her for the medical. The scam worked, the insurance policy was accepted, and Alice and the woman lodger then went off to buy some arsenic. On March 27th, 1863, Mrs. Bailey died, the doctor certified natural causes, and the insurers paid up. However the lodger was heard to remark that she was not sure quite what the arsenic was for.. Having been buried, it was found that Mary Bailey had all the symptoms of arsenic poisoning - and after her body was disinterred it was found to have been 'saturated' with arsenic.

Alice was hanged by William Calcraft in front of Chester City Gaol on Monday, December 28th, 1863, wearing a thin, print dress and chewing peppermints, which she had specially requested. A crowd, estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000, a majority of whom were women had come to watch her hang. As she approached the gallows she partially collapsed and she had to be dragged on to the trap-door. Executioner Calcraft made the usual preparations but when he withdrew the bolt the trap doors stuck. Alice was by now wailing piteously. It took two further attempts before the trap doors finally opened. She dropped no more than two feet through them convulsing for two to three minutes before becoming still. Calcraft blamed the weather and the equipment.


 * Classic British Murder;

Chester Castle
"Criminals" also died was Chester Castle. It is generally supposed that he punishment of loading a prisoner who refused to plead with weights or "pressing" a prisoner (to death if necessary) was introduced in the time of Edward III. However, T. A. Coward, in his "Picturesque Cheshire", suggests that the practice actually originated in the time of Edward II at Chester:


 * "Adam of the Woodhouses, having burnt the said houses and carried away his goods, was one of the stubborn men they gave him three morsels of bread one day, and three sups from the nearest puddle the next; but Adam lingered long on this sumptuous diet, so Edward II, then king, in order to accelerate the man’s decision, originated the idea of putting heavy weights upon the chest. Thus at Chester was instituted that barbarous punishment, if punishment it can be called, of pressing to death."

In 1601 a woman named Candy was pressed to death at the Castle. In 1435 "pressing" seems to have been used simply as a means of execution:

Abbey Gateway
There was also at least one beheading by the Abbey Gate: that of the Royalist Sir Timothy Fetherstonhaugh who liberally contributed money to the royal cause, raised troops at his own expense, and served in the field. At the Battle of Wigan Lane, Lancashire, 26 August 1651, he was taken prisoner, and imprisoned at Chester Castle (from where he wrote a farewell letter to his wife). After trial by court-martial at Chester for "corresponding with Charles Stuart or his Party" he was beheaded and/or shot (versions vary) outside the Abbey Gate, 22 October 1651, despite his plea that he had quarter for life given him.

Samuel Burrows
33-37 Clwyd Street, Ruthin was once a public house called the Red Lion, where an executioner almost met an untimely death. A man named John Connor was executed in Ruthin for highway robbery on 15th April 1822. The executioner was Samuel Burrows, the hangman for Chester. The evening before the execution he was staying in the Red Lion where his fellow patrons convinced him to demonstrate the process of hanging a person. Attaching his rope to the ceiling, he showed them how to tie the noose and put it around his own neck. A man named Henry Caddock kicked the stool from underneath the hangman and he would have strangled had Thomas Humphreys not swiftly cut the rope. Burrows performed 58 executions there between 1802 and 1834. He executed Edith Morrey on the 23rd of April 1813 for the murder of her husband. He had also hanged her boyfriend, John Lomas on the 24th of August 1812, for his part in the killing. His last job was also his biggest one, the quadruple hanging at Chester on the 19th of April 1834 when he hanged Thomas Riley for cutting and maiming, John Carr and William Naylor for shooting with intent to murder, and James Mason for procuring an abortion. He also worked at Shrewsbury and Hereford on occasions. He was born on the 28th of June 1772 and died on the 20th of October 1835.

William Calcraft
William Calcraft (11 October 1800 – 13 December 1879) was a 19th-century English hangman, one of the most prolific of British executioners. It is estimated in his 45-year career he carried out 450 executions. A cobbler by trade, Calcraft was initially recruited to flog juvenile offenders held in Newgate Prison. While selling meat pies on streets around the prison, Calcraft met the City of London's hangman, John Foxton. After Foxton's death in 1829 the government appointed Calcraft the official Executioner for the City of London and Middlesex. Following this, his executioner services were in great demand throughout England. Nevertheless, some considered Calcraft incompetent, in particular for his controversial use of the short-drop hanging method in which the condemned were slowly strangled to death. Because with Calcraft's methods the condemned took several minutes to die, to hasten death Calcraft would sometimes dramatically pull on legs or climb on shoulders in an effort to break a victim's neck. It has been speculated that Calcraft used these methods partly to entertain the crowds, sometimes numbering 30,000 spectators or more.

George Smith
Smith gravitated from petty criminal – he was once jailed for running naked through the streets – to England’s best-known hangmen. He hanged Mary Gallop at Chester Gaol on the 28th December 1844 for killing her father. George Smith was renowned for his long white coat and top hat which he wore at all his public hangings. George Smith hanged 20 men and 1 woman during his time as the Public hangman. After ceasing to be Public Hangman he hanged a further three men at Chester Gaol. These were then private hangings as by then the law was changed so that there were no further public hangings. George Smith’s most famous solo execution was that of the Rugeley poisoned, Dr. William Palmer for the murder of John Parsons Cook (and possibly many others), before a huge crowd outside the Stafford Gaol on the 14th June 1856.

Sources and Links

 * Classic British Murders: Cheshire Murder cases from history;


 * Public Executions In Chester From 16th Century as listed by the Museum of Policing in Cheshire;


 * Executions in Cheshire;


 * Cheshire Archives and Local Studies QAB/5/8: Death Warrants - Warrants directed to the sheriff and constable of Chester Castle by the clerk to the crown for the execution of criminals sentenced at the Court of Session, or Assizes.


 * 1837 - 1868 Public executions;


 * An Account of the Life, Conversion, and Death of Mary Gallop: Who was Executed at Chester, for Parricide, December 28th, 1844;


 * The Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science from the year 1846;


 * 'Obnoxious, drunk' George Smith;


 * Pigot on Chester Infirmary;