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seen brandishing a revolver in a public house, claiming he was going to make the Chetwynds pay. In the early hours of the following morning, an armed and angry George Place returned to the house. Shots were fired and Eliza senior and the still unnamed child died instantly; her daughter died later from her injuries. Eliza’s brother heard three shots and saw Place come out of the bedroom holding the revolver.
    At his trial Place said that it had been his intention to commit suicide after he had killed the Chetwynds, but that he had changed his mind afterwards. His defence was insanity; it was unsuccessful. Pierrepoint and Ellis went to work, andEllis noted that Harry worked with assured confidence, as though he had been doing it for years. Place stood just an inch over 5 feet tall and was given a drop of 7 feet. A total of 25 executions were carried out in 1902, with Harry being involved in nine of them – bringing in a healthy income to supplement his salary from the furniture shop.

    1903 was also to be a busy year for Harry Pierrepoint. The first executions that took place were in Ireland, and were carried out by William Billington. The first date in Harry’s diary was to help at the double execution at Holloway of two nurses who had been convicted at the Old Bailey for the murder of a young child.
    Twenty-nine-year-old Amelia Sach ran a nursing home in East Finchley, London, where – for a hefty fee – unmarried mothers would be looked after until they had given birth and helped to find a suitable foster home for their newborn infants. Sach had a business partner, 54-year-old Annie Walters, to whom she would pass on the children for rehousing. On the occasions when she couldn’t place children with suitable parents, however, Walters would resort to administering a few drops of morphine-based drugs, which caused the babies to die from asphyxia, or to smothering them with a pillow.
    In August 1902, a Miss Galley gave birth to a boy at Amelia Sach’s nursing home. By now the police had become suspicious about the activities of the two women, however, and on 18 November, when Walters left her lodgings carrying a small bundle, she was followed to South Kensington railway station, where detectives stopped her. The bundle contained the dead body of Miss Galley’s child. Cause of death was found to be asphyxia; it appeared that the baby had beensmothered. Walters claimed she had been taking the child to Kensington to meet a potential foster mother, and that when the child began to cry loudly she had administered two drops of chlorodyne in milk. She claimed that she hadn’t realised the child was dead until she was stopped by the police.
    Amelia Sach denied giving children to Walters, but when her home was searched more than three hundred articles of baby clothing were found. Detectives deduced that this suggested more victims – there had been a spate of small bodies found in the River Thames, or uncovered on rubbish dumps, in recent years. The pair may have been responsible for around twenty deaths, and were now finally to face justice.
    Harry met up with both William and John Billington and travelled across to Holloway Gaol on the afternoon of 2 February 1903. The case had filled the newspapers since Mr Justice Darling had presided over the trial in December and as the date of execution became imminent crowds were already hovering around the gates of the prison, hoping to catch sight of the executioners.
    The three men managed to slip inside unnoticed and made their way along the long, narrow corridors and up two flights of cast-iron stairs until they reached the cells of the condemned. Each woman sat with two wardresses watching over her. A matron entered the cell at the request of the hangmen and got the prisoners to move to the other side of the table so that they could assess their build and general physique.
    Once William Billington had sized up the first of the condemned women, Harry followed and realised he was