Throughout the centuries there have been many executions which took place that did not go
as well as they could have.
For example in Edinburgh, a young woman named Maggie Dickson was brought into the Scottish
capital for her date with the hangman.
She had been accused of murdering her child, however when the executioner placed the noose
around her it was very loose and despite appearing to be dead, Maggie Dickson then woke up a
while later inside her coffin.
She was known as Half Hangit Maggie for the rest of her life, and the authorities believed
she had lived through her death sentence and that as this had been carried out, she did
not need another date with the executioner.
Some believed that God had saved her that day, but there was another man in England
who who survived three attempts to hang him for murder.
But what is the story of this?
Join us today as we look at the botched execution of the man they could not hang, and remember
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John Babbacombe Lee was born in August 1864 in Devon in England, and after leaving school
he was employed as a servant by Emma Keyse who lived at the Glen in Babbacombe, a peaceful
seaside village.
He then after this went to enlist in the navy but was injured and then was released from
service three years later.
Following this, he then went to work for Colonel Brownlow who lived at Ridge Hill in Torquay,
but in 1883 he was convicted of stealing silverware worth £20 from his master, and for this he
was sentenced to six months hard labour at Exeter Prison after he pled guilty of the
crime.
When he was released, Miss Keyse who liked John when he worked for her gave him a second
change, and he employed her again.
But then on the 15th November 1884, shortly after John’s release from prison, there
was a fire at the house, and Emma Keyse was found dead with her throat slashed.
The fire had been started by the murderer in an attempt to burn her body, and destroy
the evidence.
John Lee was 20 years old, and as the only man in the house at the time he was arrested
for murder.
He held a grudge against Emma when she docked his wages and reduced his pay, and he did
have a cut on his arm when he broke the window of the dining room to let the smoke out.
But he was sent to inquest as he could not give a good enough alibi.
An inquest before jury was held and 25 witness statements were read, and the jury then declared
that Lee was responsible for Emma’s murder and death.
The coroner said that Wilful Murder by John Lee should be listed on her death certificate,
however it was presumed that John was guilty.
Because of this, he was tried in Exeter Guildhall on the 2nd February 1885 for murder.
The case was a sham, and it was suggested that Lee’s coat smelled of paraffin which
was used to ignite the fire, however there was suggestion that this evidence had been
tampered with.
The evidence against him was circumstantial, but the jury took 40 minutes to find John
Lee guilty and he was sentenced to death.
He said in response to being condemned, ’the reason I am so calm, is that I trust in the
lord and he knows that I am innocent.’
Executions in Exeter before 1868 were huge public occasions where thousands would watch
on to see the proceedings, and as many as 20,000 people would flock to watch the killing.
The method of execution was known as the long drop, and height and weight was used to calculate
the drop needed to break the neck.
John Lee was to be executed on the 23rd February 1885 and he wrote a letter to his half sister
12 days before that said, ‘There is no doubt that the truth will come out after I am dead.
It must be some very hard hearted persons to let me die for nothing; they have not told
six words of truth, that is the servants, and that lovely stepsister, who carries her
character with her.’
The night before the execution, Lee said he saw an angel that told him to not worry as
he would not be executed as he was innocent.
The scaffold used to take his life was situated in an old prison hospital building to begin
with, but it was then moved in the van house.
John Lee’s execution would be the first to take place in the new location, and the
drop had already been tested by the executioner James Berry.
It was said, ‘On the morning of Saturday 21st February, the apparatus was by my order
thoroughly overhauled, cleaned, and tested by the engineer officer, and a warder carpenter.
On the afternoon of the same day the apparatus was again tasted by the artisan warder and
Berry the executioner, the latter, after trying it twice over, reporting to me verbally that
he was satisfied with it for the present use.’
But John Babbacombe Lee would not die that day.
The remarkable and crazy events of his execution were described by a witness, the Chief Constable
of Devon.
He wrote, ‘On the prisoner reaching the place of execution he was placed by Berry,
the executioner, immediately under the cross-beam, over which was carried the rope; he was faced
outwards towards the door, with both feet standing transversely on the junction of the
two flaps or shutters which formed the drop.
The executioner, with considerable skill and rapidity (as it appears to me) strapped the
culprits legs above the ankles, drew the cap over his face, adjusted the noose round his
neck, stepped back and pulled the iron handle or trigger, to let fall the foot-boards, to
my intense astonishment, however, these latter deflected only about a quarter of an inch
and appeared to be tightly jammed together about the centre.
The executioner and some of the prison officials standing by endeavoured, by stamping on the
boards, to get them to move, but without avail.
After some seconds the prisoner's face was uncovered, and he was led away to an adjoining
cell or room in the prison.
In the meanwhile, the executioner and the prison officials did their best to ascertain
the cause of the machine not working.
My own impression was that, the morning being very wet and damp, the foot-boards had become
swollen, and were thus unable to free themselves when their top edges came in contact.
I consequently urged the use of a plane, and pointed out the spot which I considered caused
the impediment.
The prison engineer procured a plane and a tomahawk, and we eased the centre of the boards.
A prison warder was made to stand on them, holding on by both hands to the rope; the
trigger was pulled, and the boards fell.
The prisoner was then brought out again, and the execution proceeded as in the first instance,
but again the boards refused to fall.’
He then went on to say that, ‘That this third attempt having failed, I ordered him
to be removed to a cell near, myself attempting to take him into my reception ward through
which he had previously passed.
That I am reported to have said to the prison officials, "You may experiment as much as
you like on a sack of flour, but you shall not experiment on this man any longer".
That he was accordingly taken into a passage near; that presently the Governor informed
the chaplain and myself that the apparatus would not work; that I then desired that the
man should be taken back and the execution postponed; that the said condemned prisoner
was returned to his cell; that I offered the Under Sheriff a certificate, which he was
glad to accept.
That such certificate was drawn up in my office and signed by the Governor, chaplain, and
myself, for the information of Her Majesty's Secretary of State.’
So John Lee had been hanged three times and had not died.
There had been a vault on the scaffold and the gallows and It was said that, ‘They
discovered that the end of the long hinges was resting on one-eighth of an inch on the
draw-bolt at the crank.
They then tried to work the lever without any weight on the platform and found that
when the lever was drawn quickly the platform fell.
If drawn slowly, on one trial it remained fast, and on another trial it fell, but seemed
to bind or grate at the end of the long hinge.
They were then perfectly satisfied that the cause of the failure to act was due to the
fact that one of the long hinges rested on the draw-bolt one-eighth of an inch too much.
It is probable that in the re-fixing of the scaffold the two sides were placed one-eighth
of an inch nearer than they had been before, or that the long hinge had been very slightly
bent in some way at that time.’
But the Home Secretary heard of what had happened with Lee’s execution, and he commuted the
death sentence to life imprisonment.
John Lee was released from prison in 1907 after he had served 22 years in prison, and
he became known as the man they could not hang.
He became a minor celebrity, and he married in January 1909 and had two children.
But then he would abandon his wife for another woman, and he travelled with her to America
in 1911, and he settled there and lived until the age of 80, dying on the 19th March 1945.
But he was known as the man who survived shockingly three executions, and despite the fact there
was a fault in the scaffold and the device of death, he would live to see another day.
Some people at the time would have believed that he was saved by God, but interestingly
the Man they could not hang lived a life which was decades longer than it should have been.
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