Dispatched to Hell by the hangman’s noose... but now, 70 years on, the 10 ‘Bar-L Beasts’ will be exhumed
As Barlinnie closes, those executed in its Hanging Shed and buried at the jail are to be dug up, their dark deeds unearthed too
THE bodies of 10 men executed for their crimes are to be exhumed from the grounds of Scotland’s most notorious prison.
A mass burial site within the walls of Glasgow’s Barlinnie jail holds the remains of criminals hanged there from the 1940s to the 1960s.
In an execution chamber known as the Hanging Shed, some of the country’s most infamous villains were condemned to die.
Now the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) is preparing to dig up their bodies and rebury them, before decommissioning HMP Barlinnie and moving inmates to a new superprison, HMP Glasgow, in 2026.
Jail chiefs believe they will find the skeletons, skulls, bones and teeth of some of the killers dubbed the ‘Barlinnie Beasts’ – Peter Manuel, John Caldwell, Patrick Carraher, Anthony Miller, James Robertson, John Lyon, Paul Harris, James Smith, Patrick Deveney and George Shaw.
The Scottish Mail on Sunday has spoken to relatives of the deceased, who have expressed an interest in laying the bodies to rest closer to home, more than 60 years after their family members were hanged.
Last night, Terry Lyon, the nephew of the first man to face the gallows at Barlinnie, John Lyon, said some in his family might
‘Bodies were buried straight into soil and covered in lime’
prefer the killer’s body to be left where it is, but his first instinct was to remove it and ‘put him somewhere else’.
The large-scale dig, which will see environmental and exhumation specialists enlisted to help lift the bodies out of the ground and identify them, will take place in about five years’ time – pending permission from Glasgow Sheriff Court.
But while prison bosses are almost certain they will find serial killer Manuel, they are unsure of their success uncovering others.
An SPS spokesman said: ‘The problem is, we don’t know what state the bodies will be in. They were buried straight into the soil and covered in lime, so we are not sure how much left of them there will actually be.’
He added: ‘Some bodies were discovered in the prison grounds in the 1970s during pipe-laying work, and they were reburied elsewhere.’
The exhumation will serve as a fitting bookend to the macabre story of Scotland’s largest prison.
For the infamous ‘Bar-L’, whose long, dark history is woven into the fabric of Glasgow’s criminal folklore, has been home to tens of thousands of offenders. Its reputation as a jail as tough as Alcatraz has been compounded by stories of its prisoners’ audacious offences, plots and ploys that have trickled down the generations.
Built in 1882, it holds up to 1,500 men. Between 1946 and 1960, there were ten executions at the prison. The very specific process, which was paid for by the city’s Lord Provost, saw the block and rope used for the hangings sent by train from the Home Office in London each time – and returned after the deed was done. The executions took place at 8am in the Hanging Shed, which replaced the old gallows at Duke Street Prison in 1946, and were over in about two minutes.
By 9am, the bodies were buried without ceremony – and not even a coffin. Only the initials of each man, etched on a grey pipe, serve as a marker of who died there.
Lyon, 21, was the first to die – on February 8, 1946 – after killing a man in a gang war. Train driver Terry Lyon, 53, from Colchester in Essex, has taken a keen interest in his half-uncle’s execution and said, if Lyon is found, he’d like to have him buried elsewhere.
He said: ‘My maternal grandmother had 22 children from two marriages, and John was one of them. We’ve always known that we had an uncle who was executed and I wanted to know what the truth of it was. When I found out about John I was surprised at the speed the sentence was carried out at.’
In 2007, the SPS invited Mr Lyon to have a tour of Barlinnie, to see where the executions took place.
Drawings show his uncle was buried on a small plot to the left of fellow killer Harris, near D block.
For the bodies that are found, the SPS spokesman said: ‘We will try to find any relatives of the deceased and ask them if they want the remains buried somewhere else or cremated. We have already had approaches from family members.’
It is believed Manuel’s last surviving relative died about five years ago. His body is likely to remain property of the state and will be cremated separately.