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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
National
Alan Weston & Emilia Bona

Faces of two men hanged together in Walton jail's first double execution

Some of Liverpool's most infamous executions took place at Walton prison - including the last ever hanging in Britain and a double execution.

Over a 64-year period, 62 men and women were sent to the gallows at HMP Liverpool for a list of gruesome crimes.

Landing two in I-Wing of Walton prison was the location of the gallows in a 10ft deep, 10ft wide and 12ft long chamber.

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The executioner placed a white hood over the head of the condemned, followed by the noose, and the convicted killer "dropped" as the hangman pulled the lever which released the trap doors.

Everyone executed at Walton was hanged for murder - and the convicted criminals who met their end in the gallows of Walton were responsible for some of the city's most heinous crimes.

Of the 62 people hanged at Walton, 60 were men and two were women.

With the help of Liverpool historian and author Steven Horton, the ECHO takes a look some of Liverpool's infamous executions.

Gustav Rau and Willem Schmidt: The first Walton double execution

Two Germans, Gustav Rau and Otto Monsson, and a Dutchman, Willem Schmidt, mutinied aboard the British ship Veronica in 1903.

Captain Alexander Shaw was shot dead by Rau and two crewmen were knocked unconscious and thrown overboard, before the mutineers set fire to the ship.

Mr Horton said: "After being picked up by the SS Brunswick, they gave a convincing story about being shipwrecked, but after the ship’s cook told them what had happened, Rau, Schmidt and two others were arrested on arrival in Liverpool. "

Rau, 28, and Schmidt, 30, were hanged together in June, 1903, in the first double execution at Walton, but 18-year-old Monsson escaped the gallows because of his age.

George Kelly: The innocent man sent to the gallows

The Cameo murders in Liverpool are one of the most famous unsolved crimes in British legal history - although an innocent men went to the gallows for the crime.

On the night of March 19, 1949, the old Cameo cinema in Wavertree became the scene of a brutal double murder - a crime which would prompt the longest trial in British history at the time.

Cinema manager Leonard Thomas and his deputy, Bernard Catterall, were shot and killed in a bungled burglary.

After the murders, 27-year-old George Kelly was arrested along with another man Charles Connolly, after police received a letter accusing the pair of the crime.

Despite insisting they had never met before and that they both had sound alibis, the pair were charged with the murders and stood trial at St George's Hall in 1950.

The trial was one of the longest in British legal history at the time, with the jury failing to reach a verdict and retrials being ordered.

Despite protesting his innocence, Mr Kelly was sentenced to death and executed on March, 1950.

Liverpool historian Steven Horton told the ECHO: "Kelly maintained his innocence until the end, saying he had spent the day drinking with his friend Jimmy Skelly.

"After extensive research by Jimmy's brother, George Skelly, evidence was discovered that had not been disclosed to the defence team prior to the trial.

"Kelly’s conviction was quashed in 2003 and his remains were exhumed from Walton jail and reinterred at Allerton cemetery."

Merseyside Police never reopened the investigation, so the true identity of the Cameo killers will probably never be known.

Lock Ah Tam: The dock worker turned triple-murderer who phoned police on himself

Lock Ah Tam was as a supervisor of Chinese sailors and dockers working on steamships coming in and out of the port.

In 1918, he suffered a head injury in a bar fight which would completely alter his personality, making him prone to violent mood swings.

One night in December 1925, Tam shot dead his wife and two daughters after a party at their family home.

After carrying out the killings, he called the police and asked them to come and arrest him.

He was executed on the morning of March 23, 1926.

Joseph Spooner: The man who cut his infant daughter's throat

Spooner, 42, killed his three-year-old daughter by cutting her throat after a disagreement with his estranged wife Catherine over maintenance payments.

Elizabeth Alice Spooner was found by a girl on her way home from school, in the rear yard of her home on Oliver Street, Edge Hill.

She was bleeding heavily but she was still alive.

Her father was arrested wearing blood stained clothes at his lodgings - and took the unusual step of pleading guilty prior to his trial.

Elizabeth died at the Royal Infirmary in the early hours of the following morning.

Catherine Spooner's sister Jane Horton told the Coroner's Court how Joseph was separated from his wife and had not complied with a maintenance order to pay for the upkeep of his six children.

He was sentenced to hang at Walton Prison in 1914.

Alfred Burns: Hanged for the murder of a Wavertree widow

Widow Beatrice Rimmer was battered to death in her Wavertree home, in a horrific killing that led to the execution of two men.

On August 19, 1951, Mrs Rimmer returned to her home on Cranborne Road after visiting her son in Madryn Street, Toxteth.

Mr Horton said: "The next day, when her milk remained on her doorstep and the morning paper was left stuck in the letterbox, neighbours became worried.

"When her son visited that night he saw his mothers body lying in a pool of blood, still clutching the flowers he had given her the previous day."

Alfred Burns, 21, and Edward Devlin, 22, were hanged in April 1952, in a controversial pair of convictions based on the testimony of supposed accomplices, rather than forensic evidence.

Mr Horton said: "There was no forensic evidence linking either to the crime scene and no murder weapon was ever found, but they were convicted on the strength of evidence given by supposed accomplices.

"Although there have been calls for the case to be re-examined, as the investigation and trial bore striking similarities to the Cameo case, the Criminal Cases Review Commission has so far refused to do so."

Peter Allen: The last execution in Britain

At 21 years of age, Peter Allen was sentenced to hang at Walton Prison for his part in the killing of a van driver.

Along with co-convicted Gwynne Owen Evans, he was the last man to be executed in Britain.

A father of two young sons, Allen struggled to keep down a job, and the killing of John Alan West was all part of a bungled burglary by Allen and Evans.

Originally from Wallasey, he was given the death penalty for his role in the killing.

On August 13, 1964, he was hanged at Walton Prison at the same time as Evans was executed at Manchester's Strangeways Prison.

The death penalty was abolished 15 months after they were executed.

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