Re: Tales from the mid 19th Century
The story of Ursula Lofthouse (part 11)
EXECUTION OF THREE MURDERERS AT YORK
Monday 6th April 1835
On Monday morning, at the hour of noon, the dreadful sentence of the law was carried into its full effect, upon the wretched criminals who had, during the preceding Friday and Saturday, been found guilty of atrocious murder. The three, namely Ursula Lofthouse, aged 26, for the wilful murder of her husband, Robert Lofthouse, of Kirkby Malzeard, by poison; William Allott, 35, for the murder of Martha Hardwick, his mistress at Upper Heeley, near Sheffield, by kicking and otherwise ill-treating her; and Joseph Heeley, 29, for the murder of James Lee, and Kirkburton, by stabbing him in the neck with a knife, underwent the extreme penalty of the law at the usual place behind the Castle.
A vast assemblage of persons, not fewer than 6,000, had congregated to witness the melancholy and ignominious end of those, who had offended unpardonably the laws of the land and the rights of society, and whose pangs, if it were possible, must have been heightened by the feelings themselves to be a loathed and horrid spectacle to their fellow beings.
The woman, Lofthouse, after her condemnation, when she was taken out of court in a state of insensibility, refused food and could scarcely be persuaded to take bodily support necessary to keep soul and body together for the short space that the law had allotted her to remain upon the earth.
Although she seemed to apply herself seriously and earnestly to prayer, and to derive comfort from the consolations of religion, she did not appear at first to have been brought to a full confession of her crime. She acknowledged, indeed, that she sought the arsenic which caused the death of her husband, but that it was at his request, and agreeably to his directions that she had done so; and that hers was not the hand that administered it. Her statement was to the effect that her husband had knowingly and voluntarily taken the poison, and that he threatened to accuse her of giving it to him, if she ever told; a tale so self-contradictory, that one shudders to think of it being uttered by one who was standing on the brink of eternity. Could the miserable woman have deluded herself to the last with the vain hope that her impending fate might even yet be averted?
On Sunday she eventually recanted this, as the hour which was to terminate her sufferings drew near, and fully and freely declared herself to be the only guilty person - that she, from the causes named on the trail, had suffered herself to be betrayed into one of those fits of jealousy which too often “haunt the mind” without reason, and in that hour she alone had determined upon the deed for which she was about to die. The confession appeared to relieve her considerably from the agonies which oppressed her, and prepare her to meet, with fortitude, the ordeal through which her body must shortly pass;- throughout the night, indeed, she appeared more composed. She partook, however, of but little food: embracing the promises of the holy word of God as her last and only consolation.
The culprit Heeley had never denied the crime for which he was about to suffer, and now admitted the justness of his sentence. -
Allott persisted in the same statement which he made to Cooper the keeper of the Sheffield lock-up, that he was innocent, or if he had done it, that he was drunk and soft at the time, and knew nothing about it. -
Both these unhappy men, it appeared from the evidence, were under the influence of intoxication when they committed the horrid offences which they this day expiated by an ignominious death.
The Rev. William Fowler, jun., chaplain to the Castle, was unwearied in his attention to the spiritual wants and consolation of the three condemned persons, during the whole of Saturday and Sunday, that period that intervened between their sentences and the execution.
The men, Allott and Heeley, who had destroyed life by other means, acknowledged the justice of their sentences - with cool, deliberate, and bloody hands, they had taken the lives of their fellow creatures - they had imbued themselves in blood - and they now fervently sought forgiveness from the only source whence it could be obtained. They as well as the female, appear to have lived up to this period in almost total darkness as to religion.
At half-past eleven o’clock, as the fatal hour approached, the two men, having had their arms pinioned in the condemned cell, were led into an apartment, in which the female had previously been placed, where they all partook of the holy sacrament, in the most devout manner. As the hour of twelve drew near, they were ushered along the gallery and on towards the place of execution.
Allott appeared first on the scaffold, walking with a firm step, but with agony apparent in his limbs. He wildly surveyed the thousands before him, but did not exhibit that extreme fear which is often observed in persons so awfully situated.
Heeley, was the next malefactor brought out. When brought upon the platform, he took little notice of the objects around, but seemed absorbed in meditation.
When they had knelt down with their backs towards the spectators, Ursula Lofthouse was brought from the condemned cell to her appointed place between them on the scaffold, being supported on one side by Holgate the turnkey, and on the other side by the matron, to prevent her from falling, till placed on her knees on the fatal platform besides her fellow sufferers. On beholding the crowd on her way to the scaffold she covered her face with a handkerchief. She was dressed in decent mourning, with a red and spotted handkerchief over her neck.
The chaplain then read the usual prayers, and the prisoners, particularly Allott, responded most fervently to them. He lifted his pinioned hands, as far as he was able, towards heaven, and shook in dreadful agitation upon his limbs.
Prayers being over, the culprits raised themselves erect. After this the executioner performed his last office, first placing the fatal ropes, around their necks, and then, drawing the fatal bolt, which launched them into eternity.
The woman was soon dead. Allott suffered very little, but an expiring shudder was long observable in his strong muscular frame. Heeley was occasionally much convulsed, and was considered to be longer in dying than usual.
After hanging the usual time of one hour, the bodies were cut down and consigned to the appointed officers, and on Tuesday were interred within the precincts of the Castle, according to the law’s direction. Thus did the miserable wretches expiate, by their lives, the crimes which they had committed.
Yorkshire Gazette, 11 April 1835
Leeds Times, 11 April 1835
Sheffield Independent, 11 April 1835
Newcastle Journal, 11 April 1835
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser,18 April 1835