Lantern Pike Murder.....
A scream rang out as the Derbyshire ‘Lonely Inn’ murderer took his last few breaths at
Nottingham Jail, where Derbyshire murderer George Hayward met his grisly end.
April 10th 1928, dawned warm and bright, a beautiful spring day – but for callous killer George Hayward, it would be the last morning of his life.
Hayward, a 32-year-old married man from Derbyshire, had an 8am appointment with hangman Thomas Pierrepoint.
In anticipation of the grim proceedings, a large crowd, estimated to number around 200 people, had gathered at the gates of Nottingham Prison.
Silently, they waited until the prison bell rang out, confirming that the sentence had been carried out and the murderer was dead.
At that point, one girl, overcome by the atmosphere, gave out a shrill shriek.
But otherwise, there was nothing to worry the small contingent of city policemen on duty outside the prison gates that morning.
Among the crowd was a reporter from the local Nottingham Post newspaper who wrote: “The birds sang sweetly, the only sound to be heard in an atmosphere of strained tenseness.
“Some minutes before 8 o’clock, a bell tolled ... and the spectators stirred as they realised that the doomed man was already on his way to the scaffold to expiate the crime of which he had been found guilty.
“Two minutes later, the prison bell again tolled deeply and, yet again, at a further interval of two minutes – at 8am – and a hush descended on the waiting crowds in recognition of the passing of a soul.
“Men doffed their hats, women hung their heads and the cry of an overwrought girl broke the stillness.”
No one realised it at the time, but George Walter Frederick Hayward would be the last person to be executed behind the grim walls of Nottingham Prison.
There was little doubt that Hayward was guilty of the murder of Mrs Amy Collinson, wife of the landlord of the New Inn (now called the Lantern Pike) at Little Hayfield in the Peak District.
The crime was discovered by Mrs Collinson’s husband when he returned home from working in Glossop on an October night in 1927 to find his isolated pub locked and in darkness.
When he got inside, he found his wife dead in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, her throat cut from ear to ear.
Evidence suggested she had been battered from behind as she cleared the fire grate, then dragged across the floor – out of sight of a window – where the killer had used a carving knife to finish her off.
About £40 – money used for the till float – was missing. At today’s values, Mrs Collinson was killed for around £2,000.
Jobless traveller George Hayward, a friend of the couple but a man saddled with debt, quickly fell under suspicion and, when police searched his house, they found money stuffed up the chimney.
They also found blood on his clothing, but the most crucial evidence was discovered thanks to a spider’s web.
A sharp-eyed constable, searching around a cistern in Hayward’s house, noticed a broken web.
He checked inside the cistern and there he found a piece of lead pipe. Hayward had used it to batter Mrs Collinson.
The case became known as “the lonely inn murder”.
Hayward’s trial was held in February 1928 at Derby Assizes in front of Mr Justice Hawke.
It was noted by the local reporters that, each morning, the judge had a vase of fresh flowers on his bench. On opening day it was white lilac and daffodils.
Onlookers had queued for hours to get a seat in the public gallery as Hayward, described as “a small, wiry figure with keen piercing eyes” pleaded not guilty to the crime.
The first witness to take the stand was Dr Lynch and, as he described in detail the knife wound suffered by the victim, a juror fainted.
It meant the trial had to be halted and a new jury sworn in.
This merely delayed the inevitable verdict of guilty and the sentence of death by hanging carried out by a member of a famous family of hangmen.
Born in Sutton Bonington, on the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border, Thomas Pierrepoint was an executioner for nearly 40 years, sending more than 290 killers and rapists to their deaths.
He was still active into his seventies and never officially retired, his name simply being removed from the official list of hangmen.
In most cases, he was assisted by his nephew, Albert Pierrepoint, who would go on to become the leading executioner up to the time of the death penalty’s abolition in 1965.
The last executions in England took place on August 13, 1964, when Peter Anthony Allen, was hanged at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester.
They had been found guilty of the murder of John Alan West on April 7 that year.
West was a 53-year-old van driver working for a laundry when he was killed by Allen and Evans.
The pair had gone to rob him at his home in Seaton, Cumberland.
Both murderers were unemployed and had a history of petty crime; they were arrested and charged within two days of the crime.
At the subsequent trial, each blamed the other, but the jury found both responsible.
Use of the death penalty had been declining up to this time and the decision not to reprieve the two came as a surprise.
Our thanks to Vivian Dubé for sending this report.
