I didn’t start writing “The Jack Ketch Society” in any particular order so this bit doesn’t follow straight on from the last extract. It’s the narrator recalling his first job as an executioner’s assitant under Jimmy Newman who was mentioned in the previous extract. The narrator is supposed to be from a non existant Witlshire town near to Chippenham hence his venomous comments about Calne. I though that he should have at least a bit of a misanthropic streak to be able to do his job. Judging people on things like regionality helps him dehumanise the condemned men and women and thus stay sane. Although he refers to “Uncle Albert” the narrator isn’t an actual nephew of Albert Pierrepoint. The diea was that his father was a prison officer who worked with Pierrpeoint on execution days and became very close to him. I pictured the narrator as a child listening to Pierrepoint’s stories sat on his knee and deciding to follow in his footsteps. Harry Allen and Jock Stewart referred to here are the last two chief executioners. I have presumed that they woudl have carried on for some time in their job in this reality where they were never made redundant. Also Peter Sutcliffe, The Black Panther and the arsonist Bruce Lee would have certainly been hanged in the 70s if captial punishment still existed. The word “sonner” that Newman uses is an archaic West Country verison of “mate” and rhymes with “gunner”. My Grandad and my Uncle Ken used to say it a lot when I was a kid and I sometimes end up using it myself because I like it’s unique West Countryness. The title refers to Jack Ketch who was an infamous executioner employed by Charles II and known for his clumsiness and barbarism. The idea was that the hangmen of this reality have their Christmas dinner booked under the name “The Jack Ketch Society” both as a dark joke about the job and as a cover.
I did my first job at Horfield 1992. I was assistant, Jimmy Newman was number one. I remember getting the letter, the way my old man was you’d think it was Christmas morning. I can remember the bloke’s name. Jason Smith. A lot of the names you forget cos you do so many. Uncle Albert used to keep a diary with all the names in and how much he gave them. Mine’s just got the location and dates and what I got paid. Like I said before, I hardly ever get any cases worth remembering. Albert’s diary’s full of German spies and all that. Mine would just be an endless list of druggies and luckless twats. This bloke Smith was about 25. Gets roaring drunk and glasses some bloke in the Jenny Wren in Calne. Gets the guy in the neck and he bleeds to death. Severed his jugular didn’t he the muppet. Now normally you wouldn’t get topped for that but this bloke he glassed was an off duty copper wasn’t he? Cop killers always go the distance. Even that Bentley kiddie that Uncle Albert did in the 50s got topped and he didn’t even do the shooting. So I got the train up to Horfield, I wore that one suit I had back then for weddings and funerals and suchlike. Three button, a bit like a tonic suit. I was worried that turning up dressed like Suggs might be a bit inappropriate until I clapped eyes on Jimmy Newman. He was dressed like a fucking gamekeeper. Tweed jacket and cream coloured trousers. He looked like the sort of bloke who’d knock on your door if you owed the Wurzels money. He had a tie on with the woman out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit on it. I Couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself, this specimen will be the last thing that Jason Smith ever sees. When we come through the door he’s going to be expecting the prison doctor to take off his wig and reveal himself as Jeremy Beadle and the whole thing is a big hilarious joke and he’s not getting topped after all. Maybe it’ll be a good thing , I thought. Maybe give him a bit of false hope. He might think he’ll go through the trap and land on the sofa in the studio next to old withered hand himself. And then the off duty copper who isn’t dead after all will be brought on and Jason Smith will be consumed with incandescent rage but will force himself to laugh along with the audience cos no one wants to be seen as not having a sense of humour do they? But it wasn’t a wind up. This was how Jimmy Newman dressed to break people’s necks for money. I still think there should be some kind of dress code for this job.
Anyway even though I immediately thought the guy was a cunt of the first order, I was still a true crime geek back then so I was kind of in awe of him a bit cos of the famous cases he’d done. The Black Panther and Bruce Lee, the arsonist not the Enter The Dragon bloke. Really those should have been Harry Allen’s but he was double booked when the Panther got done and Bruce Lee was the same day as Sutcliffe and there was no fucking way that good old Harry was going to pass up that one being born in Yorkshire . After I’d shaken Jimmy’s hairy banana bunch of a hand, he says
“Righto , let’s ‘ave a goosegog at this Smith kiddy then eh?”
The bloke’s enough of a cartoon character to be on a novelty tie himself, I thought. So we went with the Governor up to the landing to have a look through the spy hole at the accidental cop killer. From drunken thuggery to capital murder. I would have felt a bit sorry for him but I knew right from the start that thinking like that would fuck you up. Jimmy peered through the hole and sucked his teeth like a builder does at your attempts at DIY. After about two minutes he turns to me and tells me I’d better have a look. It was quite eerie looking through that hole at the bloke whose life we were going to end in the morning. He looked like a native of Calne right enough. Rat faced bloke in a shell suit. Roll up hanging out of his mouth and reading Fiesta. Class act.
“I reckons six foot two” said Jimmy “But then he’s wiry inne’? Strong. Stuck that pint pot clean through that copper’s throat he did. I need a closer look.”
What the fuck does he mean “a closer look”? I couldn’t believe what happened next. The Governor opens the door and walks into the cell. Jimmy follows him. I didn’t know what the fuck else to do so I just walked in behind them. Smith puts his noddy mag down and The two screws stand up. Jimmy steps forward and offers his hand and Smith probably confused as fuck just instinctively shakes it. Jimmy goes
“How you doing sonner?”
And Smith just gives him this look that says “how the fuck do you think I’m doing I’ve got about fourteen hours to live you big bearded cunt!”. But he just says
“I’m alright I s’pose. Nice tie matey”
Then the Governor says something about the chaplain coming at 7 to see him and we all walk out and the screws shut the door again.
“Strong handshake” Jimmy says “Very firm grip. Better make it six foot five”
Un fucking believable. Smith must have thought Jimmy was from the home office or something. I mean you wouldn’t expect your executioner to :
a) Dress like a farmer in a Two Ronnies sketch or..
b) have the gall to shake your fucking hand the night before
I was gobsmacked. I said to Jimmy about what Uncle Albert told me about judging it form looking through the hole.
“OId Albert had his ways, I gots mine” he snapped in that fucking Wurzel voice “You ain’t working with Uncle Albert youse working with me. Remember that sonner.”
Having been put in my place we went to get our quarters to put our bags down while they took Smith out for exercise so we could go back and set the drop next door to him. Our quarters, was a cell. Not as big a cell as Jason Smith’s. Not as nice either. The condemned cell’s actually pretty fucking sweet compared to all the others in the prison. It’s twice as big, you’ve got on suite toilet and shower so you don’t have to slop out or risk being bummed. You’ve got porn, unlimited baccy, a telly and video or DVD player nowadays. The one at Wandsworth’s even got internet. Everything you could possibly want to take your mind off of the inevitable. Our quarters had a telly, about four bottles of Budweiser and a pizza delivery menu. There was a bunk bed for us to sleep on. I knew right away that Jimmy was the sort of territorial twat to demand top bunk and I shuddered at the thought of him keeping me up all night with whatever horrible nocturnal habits this idiot had.
Our tame screw for the night asked us what kind of pizza we wanted. Jimmy asked for Farmhouse. Obviously. So we got to work setting the drop and all the chalk and copper wire shit you have to do every time. It’d be tedious in the extreme if the price of fucking it up wasn’t so high. These were the only times I ever saw Jimmy Newman act like a professional. Even a dipshit like him knew what would happen if Jason Smith was accidentally executed by beheading instead of hanging tomorrow. When we’d finished we went back to the cell and were basically locked in for the night.
As we sat watching Noel’s House Party, I couldn’t help thinking about the handshake. Surely he’d have asked the screws who the bloke with the nice tie was and they’d have had to tell him something. Maybe that’s why I thought it was so out of order, cos it was unfair on the screws who have to make up some story to cover up Newman’s act of blatant tawttery. Whatever they tell him will be exposed as bullshit at nine o clock tomorrow and Smith will go to the grave thinking they’re a pair of lying bastards. The fact that the governor opened the door straight away suggested that Jimmy did this a lot. Probably every time. Was he that shit at judging a man’s strength by looking at him or did he get off on shaking their hand knowing that the next time he touched them he’d be strapping their arms. Maybe it was common practice. Maybe Uncle Albert and Harry and Jock Stewart and all the others did it too and I’d been bullshitted to my whole childhood. It was starting to mess with my head and Jimmy’s running commentary during the Generation Game of what he’d like to do to Rosemary “What’s On The Board” Ford wasn’t helping me keep my pizza down. He wouldn’t talk about any of his cases. When I mentioned Bruce Lee he just moaned that he was conned out of doing Sutcliffe and that there was a conspiracy in favour of Northerners in this game and blah blah fucking blah. Twat.
I barely slept that night. Smith probably had more sleep than me. If it wasn’t nerves keeping me awake it was Jimmy Newman’s porcine snoring and ferocious wind breaking. Every time I was starting to drop off he’d let off a fart that sounded like the beginning of “Night Boat to Cairo” and wake me up, meaning I spent most of the night laying wide awake, thinking, in a cloud of horrible Farmhouse pizza guff gas. Thank fuck I had my walkman. Guns & Roses “Appetite for Destruction”. You might think that would be a weird choice to make you sleep but loud music has always relaxed me. As I was listening to Paradise City and the line
“Strapped in the chair of the city’s gas chamber, Why I’m here I can’t quite remember..”
It made me think of how much hassle those American gas chambers must be to operate. Once you’ve filled them up with gas you have to drain them apparently and get blokes in gas masks to clean it. What a pain in the arse that must be. Uncle Albert always used to watch executions if he got the chance when he was abroad on holiday and he told me he went to California with Auntie Annie and while she was looking at the Golden Gate bridge he managed to blag his way into San Quentin to see some bloke get the gas. He just phoned up apparently told them who he was and they gave him a pass or whatever. He reckoned it took the bloke about twenty five minutes to die. He was disgusted. He saw an electric chair job another time he said but he wouldn’t talk about it.
In about 95, me and Cheryl went to Orlando and I saw in the paper some bloke was getting the chair so I did the same as Uncle Albert. Blagged my way in and gave Cheryl some cash to go shopping at the mall with. The screws were all really nice, treated me like visiting royalty, but Jesus Christ, the actual execution. Horrible. There were sparks coming out of the poor fucker’s head. It’s meant to be death by electrocution but he clearly burned to death. The smell was appalling. Nearly on a par with Jimmy Newman’s pizza farts. I mean people shit themselves when they hang but it doesn’t cook. Any assistants who moan about the clean up after a job in Britain ought to be made to clean up after an electric chair job. I’d sooner be sat in the fucking thing. It took a lot of Disney World rides to put me right after seeing that I can tell you.
So anyway. Me and Jimmy get up at 7 the next morning. I had a wash and a shave and a bacon sandwich. Jimmy of course didn’t bother washing he just put the telly on and banged on about what he’d do to Lorraine Kelly. We went and checked everything in the chamber, reset the drop and closed the trap and then we went back to our cell and waited. My job that day was a piece of piss really. All I had to do was strap Smith’s legs together and get the fuck off the trap before beard face pushed the lever. Technically I’d have to be ready to take over if Jimmy dropped dead or something and there’s also the matter of what if Smith blows his top, which he’s clearly no stranger to having glassed a copper to death in anger. In training they told us about these what if? scenarios. The main thing is that whatever happens, the bloke has to go down the hole no matter what. If he passes out in the CC, then you’re supposed to strap him to the nearest chair and carry him. Would Smith conk out before we got him to the drop? He’s obviously big and brave with a skinful of whatever panther’s piss they drink in Calne, but what about stone cold sober? I mean they give them a drink first, big glass of brandy. But the tame screw was telling us that Smith did fifteen fucking pints that night so maybe a large brandy won’t have any effect on the sod.
Soon enough we’re stood on the landing, me, Jimmy, the Governor, the doctor, the Under Sherriff and a couple of other suits. There’s coconut matting on the floor so Smith won’t hear us coming. We rely on shock and surprise in this game. The more banjaxed the condemned man is the easier it is for everyone. If everything goes according to plan, the fucker won’t know what’s hit him. He’ll be sat on a cloud thinking to himself “what the fuck happened there?” I can see that Jimmy’s chewing gum of some kind. Not unusual really. Uncle Albert said that his Uncle Harry always used to suck a Werthers Original or some other kind of old school sweetie when he was waiting for the signal. About one minute later, this big fuck off blue bubble suddenly appears out of Jimmy’s face, expands to about the size of a watermelon, and then bursts. Some of it gets stuck in his bumpkin beard. What next from this utter tool? I’m amazed he doesn’t have a squirty flower in his buttonhole. They must be used to his bullshit at this nick cos no one’s batting an eyelid.
Then the Governor nods and the screw unlocks the door. Showtime at last. We walk in and Smith is already standing. Jimmy walks up to him and you can see his face lighten up for a second. Obviously being from Calne he hadn’t worked out who the mysterious handshaker from the night before was, even with a whole night to dwell on it. Then he sees the straps in Jimmy’s apeman hands and his face changes. He’s about to open his mouth when Jimmy says:
“Turn round and put your hands behind your back”
The screws are guiding him but he’s turning round by himself. He’s breathing heavy and clearly bricking it but he’s not going to give us any bother. As Jimmy spins him back round, Smith says
“I didn’t know he were Old Bill. Honest. I were fucking rat arsed. I didn’t fucking know!”
I don’t know why he’s saying this. As if we’re all going to go “Oh fair enough he didn’t know it was a copper when he glassed him to death. We’d better let him go then hadn’t we”. Fucking Calne-ites. Jimmy doesn’t answer he just says
“Follow me sonner. Don’t say anything else, just follow me. Ok?”
Smith nods shaking like a fucking leaf and the two screws push back the wardrobe. Now this is the clever bit. Smith must have seen at least one old movie with a hanging in it and he seems like the sort of bloke who believes everything he sees in third rate movies. Therefore, he’ll believe that he’s about to be taken outside for a long walk to some kind of shed where he’s going to be stood on the scaffold and asked if he’s got any last words and all that bollocks that they do in third rate movies. The reality though, is that he’s spent three weeks next door to where he’s getting topped. In between ogling the Fiesta Readers Wives and moaning to the screws about how he didn’t know the bloke was Old Bill, he’s bound to have wondered what the fuck the wardrobe is for. He’s only got a prison uniform and the clothes he’s going to be topped in and the screws aren’t trying on a dazzling array of outfits, so he must wonder what the point is of having it there. Well the point is that it’s covering the door that leads to the chamber. Smith is going for a walk but only a very short one. He’s been living next to the drop shop for the last three weeks. That’s the element of shock that helps us.
The floor of the chamber at Horfield was and still is nicely varnished and shiny. Why I have no idea. It’s not like the condemned man is going to write a letter of complaint to the prison board about the shabby appearance of the execution chamber. There’s a cross on the wall the condemned man faces too, as if anyone gives a fuck about any of that shit nowadays. The screws lead Smith onto the trap and Jimmy stops him on the chalk mark. This is my cue. As Jimmy’s getting the cap out of his pocket I get down and strap Smith’s quivering shell suited legs tightly together at the knees. This is firstly so he can’t use them to stop himself going down the hole and secondly if he shits himself, we don’t have to clean it up. Harry Allen once said to me thank Christ women started wearing trousers. When they all wore skirts it was well complicated apparently. Rubber knickers and all that. Anyway as soon as I’ve got him strapped I’m off the trap and stood with my arms by my side to let Jimmy know I’ve finished. Then Jimmy pulls out the cotter pin and pushes the lever.
The big varnished doors fall down and make a very loud crashing sound indeed which covers up whatever noise it makes when he drops. I had to look when he went down. I didn’t have to but if I was going to progress in this game I had to get used to it. Also I’d played my part in this so I should see what I’ve assisted in. It wasn’t pretty. How could it be he’s falling down a hole and being stopped six feet five inches down by a metal washer behind his ear. It knocks them out cold, it must do, but they’re not dead straight away. So the Doc goes down the steps into the pit and listens to his heart. The doctors really don’t like any of this. You can tell by their shitty attitude towards us. Pompous fuckers. We don’t sentence them to death, we don’t knock back the appeals there’s no reason to get shitty with us. Once the doctor’s confirmed he’s croaked you’d think that would be the job over, but you’d be wrong. It’s only half time. Now we have to wait an hour, just in case he rises from the dead like fucking Lazarus I suppose, and get him taken down off the rope and on the stretcher for coroner, who has the extremely difficult and perplexing task of working out how he’s died. Could it be hanging perhaps?
Anyway while we’re waiting we go and have a chat with the Governor. He asks after my old man and then asks if I’ve seen Uncle Albert lately. I say no, but I hear he’s not a well man at all. The Governor says that even though he never saw Albert at work he saw him at prison service Xmas dos and stuff when he was a screw. Everyone loves Uncle Albert. Everyone except Jimmy though, I get the impression. Although he’s clearly been told that me and the Master are close so he’s keeping his sub normal mouth shut on the subject but when Albert’s name is mentioned he’s got a face like a smacked arse. Why I don’t know, Albert quit in 1955 and Jimmy only got on the list in 68. I think he’s just threatened by everyone else who’s ever been on the list. Nowadays I don’t see much of Jimmy, thank fuck. He’s still number one for every job in the South West which is annoying because I’m pretty much unofficially the overall number one now and all the work right on my doorstep goes to that oaf. Mind you he’ll get unlucky one day. He’ll make some almighty fuck up that the screws can’t cover up out of sentimentality. No matter how horrible the crime perpetrated by one of Jimmy Newman’s customers, I always feel a bit sorry for them.
Wil Hodgson 