James Billington (executioner)
| James Billington | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
James Billington December 13, 1847 Preston, Lancashire |
| Died | December 13, 1901 (aged 54) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Executioner |
| Years active | 1884–1901 |
| Known for | Several hangings in England. |
| Children | 3 sons, William Billington John Billington Thomas Billington |
| Parent(s) | James Billington Sr. |
| Relatives | Billington family |
James Billington (1847 – 13 December 1901) was a hangman for the British government from 1884 until 1901. He is the patriarch of the Billington family. Billington died at home from bronchitis in the early hours of 13 December 1901, one month after having executed Patrick McKenna, a man he knew well.
Billington was born in Preston, Lancashire, the son of James, a labourer from Preston, and Mary Haslam of Bolton. In 1859 he moved with his family to Farnworth, northwest of Manchester.
After leaving school he worked in a cotton mill for a time, but by the early 1880s he had become a Sunday school teacher and was running a barbershop in Market Street, Farnworth. He also worked for some time as a wrestler, miner and pub singer.
Billington had a "lifelong fascination" with hanging, and made replica gallows in his back yard on which he practised with weights and dummies and, it was rumoured locally, stray dogs and cats.
Following the death of William Marwood in 1883, a vacancy arose for the post of Executioner for the City of London and Middlesex. Of the more than 100 applicants, Billington was one of three short-listed to be interviewed, but the job was offered to Bartholomew Binns. Undaunted, Billington wrote to other English prison authorities offering his services as a hangman, an offer that was eventually taken up by the authorities in Yorkshire.
Billington's first engagement was the execution of Joseph Laycock at Armley Gaol in Leeds, on 26 August 1884. Laycock, a hawker from Sheffield, had been convicted of the murder of his wife and four children. In 1891, Billington succeeded James Berry as chief executioner of Great Britain and Ireland.
The 1896 execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge was immortalised by Oscar Wilde in his The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wooldridge, known as "C.T.W" in the poem, was a trooper serving with the Royal Horse Guards in Windsor who had killed his wife Laura with a cut-throat razor during a fit of jealous rage. Wilde recounts that the condemned man seemed resigned to his fate on the gallows, and Wooldridge even petitioned the Home Secretary requesting that he not be reprieved, despite a plea for clemency submitted by the jury at his trial and various petitions organised by the residents of Berkshire. He told the prison chaplain that he wanted to die in payment for his crime, and he was allowed to carry his regimental colours to the gallows. Given a drop longer than specified by the official Table of Drops, the force of his fall when the trapdoor was released stretched his neck by "an almost incredible eleven inches".
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