A few days later, on 21 May, Albert Milsom and Henry Fowler were also sentenced to death by Mr Justice Hawkins, and it was decided, probably to save time, trouble and cost, to hang them along with Seaman. These two, in the course of a burglary in Muswell Hill, north London, in February, had battered and killed another wealthy old man in his home. During their three-day trial, Fowler, a heavily built man, had tried to strangle his partner, Milsom, in the dock. So, on the scaffold, Seaman was placed between them. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been a bloody peacemaker,’ he said to the chief executioner, James Billington.
The triple execution within Newgate Prison was carried out on 9 June 1876. Seaman’s weight, reduced by his hospitalisation and physical suffering, had fallen to 138 lb. Indifferent to the exhortations and prayers of the chaplain, Seaman was hanged with Milsom and Fowler at 9 am.
THE MURDER OF HENRY SMITH, 1896
The phrase ‘partners in crime’ has a special meaning when that crime is murder. For there seems little doubt that the intense association of two persons, often criminally inclined, acts as a catalyst, so that one of them, becoming grossly exhibitionistic, kills a third person as a result. In the following case as in several others of a similar sort, the victim was old and feeble, and the attack both needlessly brutal as well as cowardly.
Henry Smith, aged seventy-nine and a widower, was a retired engineer who lived alone, although attended by servants, in Muswell Lodge, a decaying mansion at Tetherdown, off Fortis Green in north London. Wealthy Mr Smith was apprehensive about being robbed, and his gardener had obligingly set up man-traps and alarms in the grounds of the house, trip-wires that were supposed to trigger guns into firing a warning shot.
On the night of 13-14 February 1896, no gun-shot was heard, but on the morning of Friday the 14th, the gardener, Charles Webber, discovered the body of Mr Smith in his nightshirt, lying on the kitchen floor. There had been something of a struggle before the old man died from repeated blows on his head – twelve in all, probably delivered by two people. His arms had been tied to his body by strips of a tablecloth, part of which, with a towel, had been wrapped around his head. Pieces of rag had also been used as a gag. Two penknives, employed to rip the cloth, lay one on each side of the body.
Two penknives suggested two men, and from the start a pair of burglars was sought. It was evident they had tried to force the sitting-room and scullery windows with a jemmy before entering the house through a kitchen window. The noise of their entry had clearly awakened Mr Smith, who on coming downstairs to investigate had been bludgeoned to death in the kitchen. The safe in his bedroom had been opened and ransacked. But apart from the pair of penknives, the only clue was a toy lantern found near the body of Mr Smith.
Police investigations revealed that two men had been seen lurking in the neighbourhood of Muswell Lodge two days before the murder, and a detective who had been keeping a watchful eye on an ex-convict out on parole noticed that the man had vanished from his usual haunts. This was a large brute of a man, Henry Fowler, aged thirty-one, whose known partner in petty crime was a small, mean crook called Albert Milsom, aged thirty-three, who lived in Southern Street, King’s Cross. Both were labourers by trade.
Their families were questioned, and the brother of Milsom’s wife, a fifteen-year-old youth called Henry Miller – who used to call Fowler ‘Bunny’ – added certainty to suspicion when he positively identified the toy lantern as his own.
A warrant was obtained for the arrest of Milsom and Fowler, who in the meantime had disappeared. A postmark on a letter eventually led to their apprehension on Sunday, 12 April 1896, in a shop in Monmouth Street, Bath. Fowler resisted arrest and was incapacitated by several blows to his head from a police revolver. In the intervening weeks he and Milsom had been to Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff, London and Swindon as well as Bath, part of the time with a travelling show, in which they had purchased a partnership, calling themselves Taylor and Scott.
Milsom made a statement admitting the robbery but denying any involvement in the murder, which he said had been committed by Fowler while he, Milsom, was outside. He told his brother, Fred – ‘Fowler killed the old man. I begged and prayed of Fowler to save the old man’s life, and I ran away and Fowler ran after me. Fowler fetched me back, and Fowler went and done the robbery.’ He also told the police where in the grounds of Muswell Lodge the pair had buried their tools.
Fowler claimed that his partner, Milsom, ‘a dirty dog’, had killed the old man. He said: ‘He first put his foot on the old man’s neck and made sure he was dead.’
Their three-day trial at the Old Bailey began on 19 May 1896, before Mr Justice Hawkins. Mr CF Gill and Horace Avory appeared for the Crown. Milsom was defended by Mr Hutton and Mr Rooth, and Fowler by Mr Woodfall and Mr Abinger. The evidence was overwhelming – a £10 note stolen from the Smith residence had also been found in Fowler’s possession.
While the jury were out considering their verdict the two accused remained in the dock, and Fowler, determined that Milsom should die – if not hang – fell upon the other man. He almost succeeded in strangling Milsom before he was forcibly subdued by attendant warders and policemen. A correspondent from The Times wrote:
The constables climbed into the dock from the body of the Court to aid the warders. In the course of the struggle part of the glass partition which is on one side of the dock was smashed. Meanwhile there was great excitement in the body of the Court and in the gallery, both of which were crowded to excess. The members of the bar present and the rest of the spectators rose in their places in order to obtain a better view of what was going on, many of them standing on the seats.
Sentenced to death on 21 May, they were hanged together in Newgate Prison on 9 June 1896, sharing a triple execution with the Whitechapel murderer, William Seaman. The executions, timed for 9 am, were attended by about two dozen officials and warders, but not by any newspaper reporters, who were not admitted on the orders of the High Sheriff. Nonetheless, reporters were able to piece together an account of events from what they were told. The correspondent from The Times correspondent noted:
The condemned men, it is said, passed a restless and disturbed night, but Fowler ate a hearty breakfast. The bell of the prison began to toll at a quarter to 9 o’clock, by which time a large crowd had assembled outside the gaol … The men wore the clothes in which they were tried. A procession was formed and made its way to the scaffold, which is situated under a shed in a yard of the prison, the chaplain reciting the first portion of the Burial Office … Seaman was placed between the Muswell Hill murderers. As 9 o’clock struck the executioner withdrew the bolt, and the drop fell. The execution was over less than four minutes after the first man was pinioned. Prior to his death, Milsom said he was innocent, Seaman said he had nothing to say, and Fowler made no statement at all. As the black flag denoting the sentence had been carried out was hoisted on the roof of the gaol, the crowd in the precincts cheered.
What The Times correspondent apparently did not know was that a horrid accident had occurred at the hanging. To prevent any strife between Milsom and Fowler, or any resistance from all three, James Billington, the chief executioner, had been given three assistants – one of whom was William Warbrick. Four warders also stood in close attendance. One of the warders happened to obscure Warbrick from Billington’s view as he knelt down on the trap-door to pinion the feet of one of the doomed men. Warbrick was still thus employed when Billington, acting hastily on the stroke of nine, withdrew the bolt that released the trap-door below the three condemned men, catapulting his assistant into the pit. Warbrick instinctively managed to grab the legs of the man in front of him. He ended up swinging below the bodies of the three dead or dying men.
This scaffold,