For ten years, James Berry of Yorkshire, England was a police
constable, and during that time he made many friends and enemies.
One acquaintance of the Yorkshire man was William Marwood, an old
executioner of the City of London who liked to give Berry a blow by
blow account of the techniques he employed to hang criminals. When
Marwood died, in 1883, 32-year old Berry decided the police force
was not for him, so he left, and finding himself desperate for a
vocation in life, he opted for a macabre career; a hangman. With
all the knowledge of the gallows obtained from Marwood, Berry
confidently applied for his deceased friend's job, but was turned
down. The ex-policeman persisted with his unusual aspiration, and
to his delight, he received his first commission of 21 guineas - to
hang two men at Calton Prison in Edinburgh. Included in the
commission was a second-class return rail ticket from Berry's
hometown of Bradford, and money for board and lodgings.
On the night before James Berry was due to hang the men, he had a
lucid nightmare about his new life-taking occupation. In the dream,
Berry found that he could not hang a man because the trapdoor on
the gallows refused to open. This same disturbing dream returned to
haunt Berry's sleep many times over the years.
The following morning, everything went smoothly, and the two
condemned men were dispatched without any trouble. On the night
November 15th, 1884, Miss Emma Whitehead Keyse, a former maid of
honor (and a friend of Queen Victoria) was found battered to death
with her oil-soaked clothes ablaze at a villa known as 'The Glen'
in Babbacombe, Devon. Miss Keyse's cook, Elizabeth Harris,
discovered the body of her mistress in the dining room after waking
in her own smoke-filled room. She said that Miss Keyse's head had
been battered in, and her clothes had doused in oil from a lamp and
evidently lighted by the murderer. After taking a statement from
the cook, the police quizzed the dead woman's other servant, a
19-year-old footman named John Lee, who was the half-brother of
Elizabeth Harris.
Lee had the reputation of being a petty thief and had been hired by
Miss Keyse out of pity. With such a track record, the footman soon
became the prime suspect in the eyes of the police, despite the
fact that Lee had tried to put out the fire on the night of the
murder, and had broken down in tears upon hearing that his mistress
had been murdered. "I have lost my best friend." A tearful Lee had
said to the village constable who had arrived at the scene of the
crime first.
But the police painted a different picture and went on the body of
circumstantial evidence that was building up against the teenager.
Lee had bloodstained clothing, and an empty can that had contained
lamp oil was found in the pantry where Lee had been seen shortly
before the fire broke out. Lee tried to explain everything. He told
police that the blood on his clothing was his own, because he had
gashed his hand while breaking a window pane to let the smoke from
the fire out, although he couldn't explain the empty can of lamp
oil. Lee was arrested and charged with murder, and at the
subsequent trial, the prosecution made it clear that only John Lee
had a motive. Just before her brutal death, Miss Keyse had cut
Lee's weekly wages of four shillings in half because he had come
under suspicion of theft. So, Lee had obviously killed her in fit
of anger.
Lee protested, but his words fell on deaf ears. The jury reached a
guilty verdict, and shortly before the sentence was passed, Lee
declared from the dock, "I am innocent. The Lord will never permit
me to be executed!" The judge sentenced John Lee to death by
hanging.
After the trial, a rumor circulated that Lee's half-sister,
Elizabeth Harris, the cook, had been discovered making love with a
man in bed by Miss Keyse, a rather prim, puritanical individual.
According to the rumor, Miss Keyse was outraged and took a swipe at
the naked couple, and out of sheer panic, Miss Harris struck back
at her frail mistress with her fist, killing her. Hearsay had it
that Miss Harris and her lover then took Miss Keyse's body to the
dining room, where they tried to cover up the murder by battering
the dead woman's skull in to create the impression that a violent
murder perpetrated by an intruder had taken place. Miss Harris soon
came to her senses and realized the police wouldn't be so easily
fooled, so she sprinkled the contents of a can of lamp-oil over the
corpse and set fire to it, hoping that the flames would make the
cause of Miss Keyse's death hard to determine. But the ad hoc
cremation attempt didn't succeed, because John Lee was soon alerted
by the smell of burning, and ran into the dining room with a pail
of water to douse the flames. As the youth did this, Elizabeth or
her lover placed the incriminating can of lamp-oil in the pantry
where Lee had been working. On the night before the execution, Lee
chatted in his cell with the prison governor and the chaplain, and
the former told the condemned that there was no chance of a
reprieve. Lee responded by shrugging. Then said, "Elizabeth Harris
could say the word which could clear me, if she would."
When the governor and the chaplain left the cell, Lee settled down
and had no difficulty sleeping. The dream he had was a strange one.
Lee dreamed her was standing on the gallows with the noose around
his neck, but the trapdoor wouldn't open, despite the repeated
yanks the hangman was giving to the lever. When Lee awoke from the
dream, he felt that God had assured him that there was nothing to
worry about, as he would not die on the gallows.
Shortly before eight o'clock on the morning of Monday, 23rd
February, 1885, James Berry led John Lee to the center of the trap
on the gallows, then proceeded to strap Lee's legs together below
the knees, before positioning and tightening the rope around his
neck. Berry pulled the white hood over the doomed man's head, then
walked to the lever. After a short tense pause, Berry threw the
lever - and the expected sound of bolts being drawn below the
gallows was heard. Death would be a heartbeat away now for Lee.
But, to everyone's amazement, the trap door on which John Lee stood
refused to open. Berry's recurring nightmare had come true - and
Lee's dream also.
Berry trembled. He took the hood and noose off Lee and tested the
stubborn trap with a sandbag that weighed the exact same weight as
Lee. The trap opened this time and the sandbag crashed to the
ground under the gallows. Lee was pushed onto the trap again with
the hood over his head and the noose re-positioned around his neck.
This time, all the witnesses to the impending execution knew that
the trap would work.
Berry pulled the lever - but the trap beneath Lee's feet wouldn't
open again. Berry's face started to twitch, and his shaking hands
took the noose and hood off Lee, and guided him off the trap. A
prison engineer and Berry discussed the problem, and a carpenter
was summoned. When the edges of the trap had been planed, and the
bolts of the hanging apparatus had been greased, a sandbag acted as
a substitute for Lee again. Everything went like clockwork. Lee was
put on the trap for the third time. The hooded man stood there,
waiting for Berry to throw the lever. Berry inhaled the cold
morning air, then pulled the lever as hard as possible. The
chaplain looked away as the greased bolts slid as expected. But to
his total astonishment, the chaplain saw that Lee was still
standing on the unopened trap. The holy man fainted, but was caught
by a warder before he could hit the floor.
It was decided that a messenger should be sent to London to inform
the Home Secretary of the botched hanging attempts. While everyone
waited for the messenger to return, Lee was asked if he felt like
eating a last breakfast, and he later consumed a substantial
repast. Ironically, the hangman James Berry had to turn down the
meal he was offered, because of his nerves. So Lee eat Berry's meal
instead!
About nine hours later, the messenger returned from London to
inform Lee that he had been granted a respite by the Home
Secretary. The death sentence had been commuted to
life-imprisonment. But Lee was released after serving twenty years.
He came out in 1905 and married a childhood sweetheart who had
waited patiently for him. The couple went to America, and up until
his death in 1933, John Lee, the man who couldn't be hanged, swore
he was not a murderer. Whenever people asked him what he thought
about being spared from the rope three times in a row, Lee would
say it wasn't luck, or freak mechanical failure that saved his neck
- but divine intervention.