LAST MEN EXECUTED FOR THEIR CRIMES
THE men hanged at Swansea Prison WILLIAM JOSEPH FOY – MAY 8, 1909 The story of William Foy and Mary Ann Rees shocked the town of Merthyr and beyond. It highlighted a story of extreme poverty. Foy, 25, was an unemployed labourer who lived rough with Mary Ann and others at Ynysfach Coke Ovens in Merthyr.
On the morning of Christmas Eve 1908, he and Mary Ann, 33, had quarrelled, seemingly over another woman. After a struggle, he threw her down an old shaft at the works around 40ft deep.
Not long after, he accosted two policemen and asked to be locked up as he had killed Ms Rees.
Hundreds gathered outside the prison on the morning of his death and he took everyone by surprise by appearing with a cigarette in his mouth, dressed in the evening clothes of a workman, collarless with the neck exposed.
An Evening Express reporter present at the hanging, wrote: “William Joseph Foy’s short life of 25 years ended at 8.04 this morning.” HENRY PHILLIPS – DECEMBER 14, 1911 Henry Phillips, a labourer from Gower and a serious alcoholic, lived unhappily with his wife and there were frequent violent quarrels.
Mrs Phillips left the family home for the last time on July 13, 1911, taking her four children with her.
She went to stay at her mother’s house in Frogmore Lane, Knelson, but Phillips followed her and attacked his wife with a razor, drawing it across her throat before running away.
Phillips was found guilty after a trial, and on hearing the sentence, collapsed and had to be escorted from the dock by the warders. DANIEL SULLIVAN – SEPTEMBER 6, 1916 “They lived a sordid, drunken life; in fact, their lives were miserable, and the evidence was that when sober the prisoner was a bad-tempered man.”
So said the Herald of Wales and Monmouthshire Reporter of the marriage of Daniel and Catherine Sullivan.
They lived in Cwm Canol Street in Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, where Sullivan, 38, returned on the night of July 8 and dragged his wife out of bed demanding she make supper and telling her young daughter, Bridget: “There will be a corpse leaving this house tonight.”
Bridget ran to get help but by the time she returned with a police constable, Catherine’s body was on the floor. She was 35.
“She had sustained terrible injuries, ribs were broken, and parts of the body were smashed in,” the paper reported. TREVOR JOHN EDWARDS – DECEMBER 11, 1928 Elsie Cook was 20 and five months pregnant when her boyfriend, 20-year-old Trevor Edwards, slashed her throat four times. The gruesome murder in Llanwonno, a tiny village between the Rhondda and Cynon valleys, shocked South Wales.
Edwards confessed to police: “I planned all this out before. I knew what I was going to do. There is only one thing I am sorry for – that is I didn’t finish the job, but the razor wouldn’t cut me.”
Eighty years later, Mike James, the editor of Master Detective magazine, who looked into the crime, said Edwards should not have hanged, saying: “Had Trevor had any money and got a doctor in, he would probably have got off. We think this poor chap was mad.” REX HARVEY JONES AND ROBERT THOMAS MACKINTOSH – AUGUST 4, 1949 There was a double execution in Swansea Prison on August 4, 1949, when Rex Harvey Jones and Robert Thomas Mackintosh, both 21, were executed simultaneously, side by side.
Mackintosh killed 16-year-old Beryl Beechey, whose body was found on the railway embankment in Port Talbot.
Two days later, news broke that the body of another girl, Beatrice May Watts, 20, had been found in a plantation.
Jones, from the Rhondda, surrendered to the police and confessed that he and his brother had been drinking in a club in Neath on June 6, 1949, the same evening Miss Watts went to a canteen dance in Morriston.
By pure chance, they travelled home together by the same bus. The bus was crowded and it seems Miss Watts sat on Jones’ lap for the journey. When they arrived, Jones told his brother he was going to walk the girl home. They walked off together down an unlit country lane.
A couple of hours later, Jones phoned the police at 1.15am and told them he had killed a girl. He gave no reason, saying simply that they had sex, and then he strangled her.
Miss Beechey, just 16, was sent on a message to the Mackintosh house in Vivian Street, Aberavon.
She did not return home and shortly after 6am the following morning her body was discovered lying on a railway embankment on the other side of the road from where Mackintosh lived. She had been violently sexually assaulted.
After a period of denial, Mackintosh confessed to the murder. ALBERT EDWARD JENKINS – APRIL 19, 1950 Jenkins was a farmer in Rosemarket, Pembrokeshire.
On the morning of October 10, 1949, he was visited by his landlord, William Llewellyn, and questioned about outstanding rent.
Mr Llewellyn never returned home. His body was found the next day buried in a clay pit on Jenkins’ land, having suffered a number of heavy blows.
It was the first time someone from Pembrokeshire had been executed for 130 years. RONNIE HARRIES – APRIL 28, 1954 “When all this is over, I’ll buy you dinner in the Ivy Bush Hotel,” said Ronnie Harries, on his way to the Guildhall in Carmarthen to be tried for murder.
Shortly after this discussion, Harries became the last person ever to be sentenced to death in Carmarthen after one of the most infamous cases in the history of Wales’ oldest town.
John and Phoebe Harries lived on Derlwyn Farm outside St Clears, near Carmarthen. They were last seen on the evening of Friday, October 16, 1953. Clear something was seriously wrong, Superintendent John Capstick from New Scotland Yard was brought in, and soon became interested in a local man named Ronald Lewis Harries, a 24-year-old married farmhand from Pendine.
A police officer noticed a patch of a kale field where crops were not growing. On November 16, the bodies of Mr and Mrs Harries were found buried there. Mr Harries had been hit with a hammer. There was evidence Mrs Harries had been buried alive.
Despite his boldness in the buildup to his trail, Harries is said to have been overcome with a sense of terror on the morning of his execution. VIVIAN TEED – MAY 6, 1958 Teed was the last man to be executed in Wales, after murdering 73-year-old William Williams, a sub-postmaster at Fforestfach.
Mr Williams had lived alone in the Carmarthen Road post office which he had run for many years.
Teed had known the premises well, having been a builder who carried out alterations on the premises earlier in the year.
He had been out of work and was in urgent need of money, when he met a man called Ronald Williams in a Cwmbwrla cafe who told him he “had a job” planned at the post office.
Teed had a long criminal record ahead of robbing the post office on November 15. He knocked the door, not expecting an answer, but to his surprise, Mr Williams came to the door. Teed hit him with a hammer, and there were 27 wounds on his head.
The money from the post office was locked in a safe and Teed had nothing to show for his efforts. He admitted his guilt to police.