execution - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1915: Brides in the Bath Killer Hanged at Maidstone Prison

George Joseph Smith, operating under aliases including Henry Williams and John Lloyd, was convicted of drowning three women in their baths after marrying them bigamously and insuring their lives. His victims were Bessie Mundy, found dead at Herne Bay in 1912; Alice Burnham, drowned at Blackpool in December 1913; and Margaret Lofty, found dead in her bath at Highgate in December 1914. Each death was initially recorded as accidental, but Divisional Detective Inspector Neil and pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury determined that accidental drowning in any of those baths was effectively impossible.

Smith was tried in 1915, convicted of all three murders, and hanged at Maidstone Prison by executioner John Ellis on 13 August 1915.

Smith protested his innocence to the end.

George Joseph Smith Brides in the Bath murderer in the dock

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Blackpool England Europe Execution Fraud London Maidstone Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial UK

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1964: The Last Two Men Hanged in Britain, Executed Simultaneously 50 Kilometres Apart

At 8:00 a.m. on 13 August 1964, two gallows traps opened in unison across England. Peter Anthony Allen dropped at Walton Prison in Liverpool; Gwynne Owen Evans dropped at Strangeways Prison in Manchester. Both had been convicted of the capital murder of John Alan West, a 53-year-old laundry van driver from Workington, Cumbria, stabbed and beaten to death during a robbery at his home in the early hours of 7 April 1964.

Police traced the men within 48 hours through a medallion left at the scene, inscribed with Evans’ name. Tried together at Manchester Crown Court in June 1964, the jury found both equally guilty of capital murder committed in the course of theft. The judge, executioners Harry Allen and Robert Leslie Stewart, and the clock itself were all synchronised. When the traps fell, Britain’s era of capital punishment fell with them. No one has been executed in the United Kingdom since.

Silhouetted hangmans noose rope on orange backlit background

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Cumbria England Europe Execution Liverpool Manchester Murder Robbery Trial UK

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1895: Minnie Dean Hanged at Invercargill for the Murder of an Infant

Minnie Dean, a baby farmer operating out of The Larches cottage in Winton, New Zealand, was executed by hanging at Invercargill Gaol on 12 August 1895. Convicted of murdering infant Dorothy Edith Carter, she became the first and only woman ever hanged in New Zealand. Police had grown suspicious after discovering she had attempted to take out life insurance policies on children in her care. In May 1895, a railway guard reported she had boarded a train with a baby and a hatbox, departing with only the box. Three children’s bodies were later found buried in her garden, though investigators believed the true number of victims may have been far greater.

Born Williamina McCulloch in Scotland in 1844, Dean had emigrated to New Zealand and married Charles Dean in 1872. She took in unwanted infants for payment, a practice known as baby farming, at a time when illegitimate births carried severe social stigma. An 1891 inquest had found her premises inadequate but stopped short of criminal charges. Her arrest in 1895 ended a career that had taken in as many as nine children at a time under a veneer of respectability.

At the scaffold, Dean maintained her innocence to the last, stating: ‘I have nothing to say, except that I am innocent.’

Minnie Dean, photographed at the time of her marriage in 1872. | New Zealand Graphic, 20 July 1895, p. 63, via NZHistory. — New Zealand Graphic, 20 July 1895, p. 63, via NZHistory.

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Baby Farming Execution Murder New Zealand Trial

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1927: John Robinson Hanged for the Charing Cross Trunk Murder

In May 1927, a large black trunk deposited at Charing Cross railway station in London began to emit a foul smell. When police opened it on 10 May, they found the dismembered body of a woman, her limbs individually wrapped in brown paper. A laundry tag traced the victim to Minnie Alice Bonati, a domestic servant who supplemented her income through prostitution. She had gone to the Rochester Row office of estate agent John Robinson, 35, and died there following an argument over money.

Robinson claimed Bonati had attacked him, that he pushed her away and she fell and struck her head. Forensic pathologist Bernard Spilsbury contradicted this at trial, testifying she had been knocked unconscious and deliberately asphyxiated. Tried at the Old Bailey, Robinson was convicted on Spilsbury’s evidence and hanged on 12 August 1927.

Trunk in which Mrs Bonati body was found at Charing Cross station

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