The Black Country Dying Museum

It is difficult if not impossible to really know what a historical character was like – think of the polarised positions we take over Richard III, controversies over movie portrayals of Queen Elizabeth and Alexander the Great, and movie-makers themselves playing fast and loose with the historic record – Ridley Scott’s recent biopic Napoleon has certainly come in for some criticism on this score, not helped by the director’s dismissal of any historical criticism. But one Black Country character was, I think it can be said without any fear of debate, one of the nastiest and most unpleasant characters I’ve come across in a long time.

George Smith was born in Rowley Regis in 1805, where his father worked as a quarryman on Turner’s Hill. There’s a lot about him on-line, but hard to pin down many references to his early years. He is variously referred to as an agricultural labourer, cattle dealer, hob-nailer, nailer, but what we do know is he was in and out of prison on multiple occasions. For poaching, theft, drunkenness (including streaking through the streets of Wednesbury – the first Black Country streak I’ve come across!) debt and for neglecting his family. I’ve even seen it claimed that he was a bigamist! But it was his imprisonment in Stafford Prison for debt in 1840 that provided him with the career opportunity that was to make him famous – or perhaps infamous!

Fans of detective fiction may recall the Inspector Morse story ‘The wench is dead’ where Inspector Morse solves a Victorian canal side murder from his hospital bed. The murder was based on a notable real event, the murder in 1839 of Christina Collins by the boatmen James Owen and George Thomas. They were due to be hung on the morning of April 11th by the nationally known hangman William Calcroft (who over a 50 year career hanged over 400 individuals). Calcroft had travelled up from London the previous day, and with his assistant spent an evening carousing in one of Stafford’s many inns. At the public’s expense of course!

Come the morning of the 11th and Calcroft’s assistant was unable to go through with the hanging. The prison governor asked for volunteers from among his inmates, and George Smith stepped forward, on the proviso that his fee would be used to pay off his debts in full and he would, after the hanging, walk out of the prison a free man. The prison governor agreed.

Smith made such an impression that he was offered further work by William Calcroft, and soon the undersherrif of Staffordshire, responsible for arranging public executions, realised it was cheaper to employ Smith, a local man, to carry out hangings then pay for Calcroft to travel up from London. Over the next 30 years, Smith carried out over thirty executions, mainly in Stafford but also in Worcester, Warwick, Chester and Shrewsbury. This included most notably in 1856 the execution of Dr William Palmer of Rugeley, who although found guilty of only one murder, was widely believed to have poisoned at least 14 people including four of his own children and his mother in law, using life insurance payments to finance his not very successful interest in gambling on horse racing. Perhaps as many as 50,000 people attended Palmer’s execution, with prices of a guinea and more being charged for front row seats!

Unlike Calcroft, who was paid a retainer (and ultimately a pension) by the city of London as well as receiving a fee for each execution, Smith was paid only for each hanging. In the 1851 and 1861 censuses he lists himself as a labourer, but in 1871 he calls himself a public executioner. He crossed out the term ‘hangman’!

Smith supplemented his fee by acts of showmanship. He sold sections of rope used in each hanging (the more notable the hanging the more he charged, with sections from the rope used to hang William Palmer fetching a premium. He set up a fairground sideshow where, for a fee, you might watch a recreation of Palmer’s execution (using a life-size manikin) and always tried to make a show of the executions. Wearing a long white labourer’s smock and a tall black top hat, Smith carried out his executions by means of the ‘short drop’ technique, which resulted in a slow death by strangulation. Smith was not adverse to swinging off the legs of the victim to speed their journey into the next world. It’s likely he did this in his fairground show!

In 1866 (a probably rather inebriated) Smith was contracted to execute William Collier at Warwick, a poacher had killed a gamekeeper who also happened to be a local gentleman’s son. But Smith failed to attach the rope properly to the scaffold, and Collier fell through the trap and landed on the ground, bruised, dazed but very much alive. A second attempt 5 minutes later was more successful, but an angry crowd nearly rioted and tried to hang Smith on his own gallows! He was only saved by the intervention of the prison governor and the local constabulary.

This disaster, alongside legislation banning public executions (from 1868) and in 1872 replacing the short drop by the ‘long drop’ in which was designed to kill the victim instantaneously by breaking his neck rather than slowly by strangulation both seemed to have impacted on Smith’s subsequent career. His execution of William Collier was the last time he was in charge, although he continued to assist Calcroft up to 1872.

Towards the end of his life George Smith was said to frequent local pubs and taverns charging for people to shake his hand, offering them the opportunity to “. . . shake the hand of the great George Smith”. He died on April 4th 1874, although I can find no evidence that he committed suicide by hanging himself. That appears to be a local legend, but one with a wide enough circulation to have resulted in his death being commemorated by the building in the 1930s of The Hanging Tree public house, on Oakham Road in Tividale.