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profitable one for the young hangman. At the end of July he was at Derby to assist William Billington again. This time the condemned man was a labourer from Chesterfield who had used a poker to beat to death the woman he had been having an affair with after she refused to leave her husband for him. Two weeks later, again assisting William Billington, Pierrepoint was engaged in the execution of George Hibbs, a 40-year-old skilled mechanic from Battersea, who had killed his landlady, and sometime sweetheart, Miriam Tye. They had been out drinking and when they returned to their lodgings Hibbs tried to get her to pawn some items so they could buy more drink. When she refused he stabbed her to death. At the Old Bailey trial Hibbs said he blamed it all on the drink and hoped that his execution would serve as a lesson to others.
    At the end of September Billington and Pierrepoint carried out the first execution at Pentonville Prison, using the giantwooden beams that had previously been in place at Newgate. Twenty-three-year-old John McDonald was hanged on 30 September for the murder of John Groves, whom he stabbed to death after a quarrel over money.
    Six weeks later Harry was back at Pentonville, again assisting Billington, to hang Henry Williams, a 32-year-old former soldier, whom Pierrepoint later described as the bravest man he had ever hanged. Williams had slit the throat of his five-year-old daughter, Margaret, at their home in Fulham, in September. Having recently returned from serving in the Boer War to find his wife had been unfaithful, he had covered the body of his daughter with a union flag, then given himself up, telling police he had killed her so she wouldn’t grow up to be like her mother.
    He was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey and was hanged two months and a day after committing the murder. Recording the execution in his memoirs, Harry noted that Williams had walked bravely to the scaffold and stood erect on the drop while his executioners prepared him for execution. The memoirs then erroneously state that Harry placed the noose around the neck of the condemned man – an act always carried out by the chief and never delegated to the assistant. This was probably journalistic licence adding spice to the memoirs years after the event.
    In December, Harry was back at Strangeways Gaol for the hanging of another Bolton-born criminal, when he assisted William Billington at the execution of Henry McWiggins (aka Harry Mack), who had committed an horrific murder in nearby Oldham. The 29-year-old Mack, a foreman fireman and petty criminal, had been living with Esther Bedford since June 1902. Initially they had a happy relationship, but subsequently he had started to act violently towards her. On 2 August, their landlady heard noises from the front bedroom;on investigating, she found Mack dragging Esther around the room by her hair. He then struck her in the face and kicked her as she lay on the floor. A week later, as Esther slept, he woke her up by savagely kicking her, then hit her in the face with a shovel. Advised to call the police, Esther refused, saying that she didn’t want to cause trouble for Mack. In truth, she was terrified of him. On 13 August screams were heard coming from Mack’s room and Esther was found lying face-down on the bed in agony. Mack had thrown a kettle of boiling water at her before fleeing the house. Having spent the rest of the night drinking heavily, he returned at midnight and kicked Esther several times in the stomach.
    On the following morning, a doctor was called, quickly followed by the police. Esther was taken to hospital, where it was found that the brutal kicking had caused her bladder to rupture. The police were advised that Esther was unlikely to last the day, and statements were taken at her bedside. Again she was too terrified to testify against Mack: she denied the landlady’s claims that he had kicked her, and added that the scalding was an accident. She died the