Christopher Robinson’s Execution
Reported by ‘Birmingham Daily Post’ 10th January 1866
On the day before his execution, the culprit addressed a letter to the Chaplain of the Gaol, in which he thanked that gentleman for his attention, and expressed himself generally with an amount of feeling, and in language which for one of his previous character and habits was certainly extraordinary. He made a statement to the chaplain, in which he fully acknowledge the justice of his sentence, and narrated the circumstances connected with his crime; but as the narration would cause pain to his surviving relatives, he expressed an earnest desire that it should not be made public, a desire with which the chaplain has complied. His behaviour towards the last was “extraordinarily contrite,” to use the chaplain’s own phrase and gave great cause for satisfaction and hope.
This then, brings us to the “last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history.” The usual barriers were erected in front of the prison on Monday evening, and although for some time the snow fell heavily, and the wind blew bitterly and cold, some few people who had come from a distance in order to see a fellow creature die a violent death straggled up as early as ten o’clock in order to see the gallows drawn out and placed in position in front of the main entrance to the gaol. A huge fire of logs burnt brilliantly near, casting a glare upon the sombre walls of the prison, and the scaffold, in which the figures of great-coated policemen flitted incessantly to and fro.
Satisfied from the appearance of the preparations that they would not be disappointed on the morrow, the early arrivals dropped off in lively chattering groups to the public houses near, there to refresh themselves and await the light. By six o’clock in the morning, the snowstorm having passed, and given way to a keen frost, the spectators began to return and take up the best positions for seeing the sight.
To return to the young man inside the Gaol, for whose death all these preparations were being made. It is not at all to be wondered that his last night on earth was restless, for he knew that long before the morrow”s sun had attained its meridian, he would have solved “the great perhaps.” and travelled into the land “from whose bourne no traveller returns;” that he would be wiser than all living, and that he would have passed into the presence of that Judge whose decision is final for eternity, but who tempers justice with mercy in a manner known only to himself, and not dreamed of by mortals. About three o’clock in the morning he fell asleep, and slept till half-past four, when he awoke, and took the Holy Communion. From this time he remained awake engaged in devotions with the chaplain and his assistant, the Rev. W. S. Eastman. As time wore on, and the span of his life narrowed minute by minute, his composure returned, and when Smith, of Dudley, the hangman, arrived and pinioned him, he was quite ready.
A few minutes before eight, Mr. Hand, the Under Sheriff, arrived, and at once proceeded to the condemned cell to demand the culprit for execution. A procession was then formed, consisting of Robinson, in the clothes he wore at the trial, and with his head uncovered, Mr. Hand, Major Fulford [Governor of the Gaol], Mr. Mountford [Assistant Governor], prison warders bearing black wands, the executioner, and several representatives of the press; and in this order, headed by the chaplain reading the solemn litany customary on such occasions, the responses to which were audibly pronounced by the culprit, the procession slowly wound its way to the place of execution.
Passing through a long stone corridor the open air was reached, and by winding walks, the prison bell tolling sadly, birds chirping innocent and cheerfully, and the sky slowly brightening into full day, the foot of the scaffold was reached. There the unhappy young man stopped, and, turning round to the chaplain, again acknowledged the justice of his sentence, and was about to add more, but his emotions were too strong for utterance. He turned away, and slowly mounting the short ladder, placed himself under the beam, attended by four warders. Here Smith speedily arranged the preliminaries, and drawing a long white cap over a face upon dwelt a look of most awful abstraction, shook hands with the convict, and retired. A moment’s dreadful suspense, then a harsh grating of bolts, then a heavy fall, followed by that hoarse murmur of an execution mob which no words can adequately describe, a lifeless corpse swung quivering in the air, and the end was come.
The greater part of the crowd, which had been very orderly in its behaviour, then retired; but a few remained during the prescribed hour, and saw the body cut down. The body was buried, as usual, within the precincts of the gaol.
http://www.midlandspubs.co.uk/staffordshire/wolverhampton/queen-victoria.htm
Feb 2016
Catherine Eddowes 