Read Online Fatal Families - Unleashing the evil within (Infamous Murderers) by Rodney Castleden - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rodney Castleden
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means. It certainly implies that someone else, ‘MECP’, was being protected. Mr Palmer assumed this was the case, and he pressed Mary very hard to tell him what it was about, telling her that he could still get the Home Secretary to intervene. But she would not say. Nor would she confess to the murders.
The execution, the customary three clear Sundays after the sentence, was to take place on 23 December, 1890. On arrival at Newgate she was, like all other prisoners, made to take a bath, and dressed in prison uniform, a grey shift. She was guarded round the clock by three wardresses. The hangman arrived at the prison on the Saturday before the execution to take a discreet look at the prisoner through the peephole in the door and assess her weight and height for the hanging. Mary noticed this, commenting to the wardresses, ‘Oh, was that the executioner? He’s in good time, isn’t he? Is it usual for him to arrive on the Saturday for the Monday?’
Mary was very calm and composed at her execution – unusually so. Berry entered her cell just before 8 a.m., shaking hands with her and saying, ‘Good morning, madam. If you’re ready madam I will get these straps round you.’ Berry put the leather body belt round her and tied her wrists to it in front. Mary then said, ‘My sentence is a just one but a good deal of the evidence against me is false.’ She kissed her wardresses and was then escorted by two of them out of the cell, along the corridor, across the yard to the execution shed. The gallows was a big structure capable of taking four victims at once. This time there was a single noose hanging from six links of iron chain. Mary weighed nine stone, and Berry had set a drop of nine feet for her. Her legs were pinioned and a white cotton hood put over her head. The noose was tightened round her neck. Berry pulled the lever as soon as the scaffold was clear. The trap doors crashed down and Mary Wheeler dropped out of sight into the brick-lined pit, dying instantly.
The execution of Mary Wheeler provoked little public sympathy, partly because of the gratuitous murder of the child. Madame Tussaud’s made a waxwork model of her to put on display in the Chamber of Horrors, and bought the pram from Frank Hogg to make a gruesome tableau.
If Mary Wheeler had been put on trial a hundred years later, the medical evidence of her lifelong epilepsy would almost certainly have been brought out at her trial. She had also made two attempts at suicide in the ten years between her father’s hanging and her own. There was no definite evidence that she had had an epileptic fit that fateful afternoon, but one neighbour said in evidence that she appeared ‘boozed’ immediately after the murder, and that could easily have been the effect of a fit. There was even so not enough evidence to justify a plea of insanity, which in England was governed by the McNaghten Rule. This rule regarding an insanity plea had been set up as a result of a high-profile case in the 1840s.
In 1843, Daniel McNaghten had tried to kill the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, accidentally shooting his secretary Mr Drummond instead. McNaghten had an imaginary grudge against Peel. The court found him not guilty by reason of insanity; he either did not know what he was doing, or if he did he did not know it was wrong.
Mr Palmer tried hard to persuade the Home Secretary, saying it seemed as if the whole world was against Mary Wheeler. But given the murder of the child and Mary Wheeler’s ‘immoral’ lifestyle, Victorian society was indeed against her. There was no public support for a reprieve. Many saw her death sentence as come-uppance, no less than she deserved.
But several questions remain. Mary was completely resigned to her fate, and even seemed to resent her solicitor’s efforts to gain her a reprieve. It is also not absolutely certain that what the hangman reported her as saying is exactly what she said. It was common for people to confess at the last
The execution, the customary three clear Sundays after the sentence, was to take place on 23 December, 1890. On arrival at Newgate she was, like all other prisoners, made to take a bath, and dressed in prison uniform, a grey shift. She was guarded round the clock by three wardresses. The hangman arrived at the prison on the Saturday before the execution to take a discreet look at the prisoner through the peephole in the door and assess her weight and height for the hanging. Mary noticed this, commenting to the wardresses, ‘Oh, was that the executioner? He’s in good time, isn’t he? Is it usual for him to arrive on the Saturday for the Monday?’
Mary was very calm and composed at her execution – unusually so. Berry entered her cell just before 8 a.m., shaking hands with her and saying, ‘Good morning, madam. If you’re ready madam I will get these straps round you.’ Berry put the leather body belt round her and tied her wrists to it in front. Mary then said, ‘My sentence is a just one but a good deal of the evidence against me is false.’ She kissed her wardresses and was then escorted by two of them out of the cell, along the corridor, across the yard to the execution shed. The gallows was a big structure capable of taking four victims at once. This time there was a single noose hanging from six links of iron chain. Mary weighed nine stone, and Berry had set a drop of nine feet for her. Her legs were pinioned and a white cotton hood put over her head. The noose was tightened round her neck. Berry pulled the lever as soon as the scaffold was clear. The trap doors crashed down and Mary Wheeler dropped out of sight into the brick-lined pit, dying instantly.
The execution of Mary Wheeler provoked little public sympathy, partly because of the gratuitous murder of the child. Madame Tussaud’s made a waxwork model of her to put on display in the Chamber of Horrors, and bought the pram from Frank Hogg to make a gruesome tableau.
If Mary Wheeler had been put on trial a hundred years later, the medical evidence of her lifelong epilepsy would almost certainly have been brought out at her trial. She had also made two attempts at suicide in the ten years between her father’s hanging and her own. There was no definite evidence that she had had an epileptic fit that fateful afternoon, but one neighbour said in evidence that she appeared ‘boozed’ immediately after the murder, and that could easily have been the effect of a fit. There was even so not enough evidence to justify a plea of insanity, which in England was governed by the McNaghten Rule. This rule regarding an insanity plea had been set up as a result of a high-profile case in the 1840s.
In 1843, Daniel McNaghten had tried to kill the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, accidentally shooting his secretary Mr Drummond instead. McNaghten had an imaginary grudge against Peel. The court found him not guilty by reason of insanity; he either did not know what he was doing, or if he did he did not know it was wrong.
Mr Palmer tried hard to persuade the Home Secretary, saying it seemed as if the whole world was against Mary Wheeler. But given the murder of the child and Mary Wheeler’s ‘immoral’ lifestyle, Victorian society was indeed against her. There was no public support for a reprieve. Many saw her death sentence as come-uppance, no less than she deserved.
But several questions remain. Mary was completely resigned to her fate, and even seemed to resent her solicitor’s efforts to gain her a reprieve. It is also not absolutely certain that what the hangman reported her as saying is exactly what she said. It was common for people to confess at the last
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