Throttler Smith made a killing out of murder... How a ne’er-do-well became England’s best-known hangman
GEORGE Smith learned a trade in prison: killing people – and killing them with the Government’s blessing. He gravitated from petty criminal – he was once jailed for running naked through the streets – to England’s best-known hangman.
His prowess with the noose earned him the title ‘The Dudley Higgler.’ Higgler was street slang for hangman. He was also known as Throttler Smith.
It was a nickname well earned. Smith, who carried out his grisly duties from 1840 to 1872, hanged 21 prisoners at Stafford and 13 in other prisons.
The precise number who met their maker at his hand is unknown, but his most famous client was Rugeley poisoner Dr William Palmer.
Palmer’s execution outside Stafford Gaol on June 14, 1856, attracted more than 30,000 people and Smith, always with an eye on a quick buck, later flogged pieces of the noose for half-a-crown each.
Born in Rowley Regis in 1805, Throttler Smith was a hobnailer and labourer before fate intervened.
Often drunk, he was no stranger to prison, having been incarcerated for 12 months in 1825 for poaching, a month in 1829 for petty larceny and three months in 1839 for the same offence. In 1840, he found himself again at Stafford Gaol after falling into debt.
While serving his stretch, the ne’er-do-well struck up an unlikely friendship with resident hangman William Calcraft, who charged £10 a time to string up Stafford’s Death Row prisoners.
Calcraft was preparing to hang two men for the murder of Christina Collins, butchered by bargees after taking a narrowboat trip. But his trusted assistant, “Old Cheese” Cheshire, visited the Shoulder of Mutton inn in Rugeley on the way to the gaol and was too sozzled to make the appointment.
The hangman asked if an inmate might assist him, and the governor suggested Smith, providing his debts were paid. Calcraft paid the money and showed his recruit the ropes.
Smith was to lurk under the gallows trapdoors, tasked with hanging on to the condemned man’s jerking legs if the execution dragged on.
It was a service frequently required where Calcraft was concerned. He was notorious for using a “short drop” which could lead to a long death.
Soon Smith, who wore a white smock and top hat when on gallows duty, was in keen competition with his mentor.
In fact, Calcraft was originally picked to hang Dr Palmer, but was undercut by his former apprentice. Smith, aware of the publicity the execution would generate, was prepared to do the job on the cheap.
William Palmer had been convicted of poisoning friend John Cook with strychnine and was suspected of murdering four of his children, his brother and mother-in-law.
It was a case that had gripped the nation and Higgler Smith was well aware of the potential for lucrative spin-offs. The day before the hanging, Smith toured local pubs and was bought drinks by the bloodthirsty tourists.
Such was the excitement that special trains ferried spectators from Birmingham, Stoke and London. From midnight, crowds began to gather along Wolverhampton Road and 20 wooden platforms were erected with sight of the gallows, with the best spots offered for a guinea.
The doctor’s final words have fallen into folklore. As the poisoner gingerly mounted the scaffold, he asked: “Is it safe?” His remark was not as eccentric as it now appears. Possibly still under the influence of alcohol – Smith was a heavy drinker – the hangman held the rails as Palmer made the dreaded climb. Booze made his hands shake.
He capitalised on his celebrity status. As well as selling sections of the rope, he took a macabre sideshow to Chester Races where punters paid a shilling to watch the final moments of Palmer’s life re-enacted, with the help of a tailor’s dummy.
Smith’s services were in demand. On December 27, 1864, he dealt with two Stafford inmates in one day, Richard Hale and Charles Brough.
But in 1866, Smith was back at the prison where his career began – and this time things went terribly wrong.
On August 7 he was to carry out the last public hanging at Stafford Prison. The recipient of his expertise was 35-year-old William Collier, a poacher sentenced to death for slaying gamekeeper Thomas Smith.
The trapdoor opened and the rope slipped from the gallows, following Collier into the pit. Badly dazed, and with rope burns on his neck, Collier was dragged back up the scaffolding and hanged with new rope. The botched execution infuriated the 2,000 onlookers.
Smith conducted his last hanging on August 13, 1872. Details of the hangman’s life afterwards are sketchy, although it is believed he died in 1874. Some say that, submerged in debt, he took his own life.