Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the execution of Ronald Ryan. Just before 8 o’clock on the morning of February 3, 1967, Ryan declined a sedative but took a sip of whisky and walked calmly to the gallows trapdoor at Pentridge Prison.
Ryan addressed his executioner directly, “God bless you, please make it quick.”
Ryan’s supporters and opponents of the death penalty observed a three-minute silence. Protesters assembled outside Pentridge Prison in vigil.
The circumstances of his death at the hands of the state have led to great myth-making about Ryan. He has been variously painted as a bit of a larrikin, driven to crime by circumstance and little worse than a kite flyer (passer of bad cheques).
The truth is he was a career criminal and his crimes before his penultimate arrest, included what we would call today aggravated burglary and robbery in company.
His arresting officer on that occasion was Bryan Harding. I’ve known Harding for many years. He was an outstanding police officer and at various times headed up the Fraud and Homicide squads in Victoria. Harding is retired and now in his 80s; he remembers Ryan as a hardened criminal who showed little or no remorse for his crimes and gave nothing away under questioning.
Full column here.
I must say I am very surprised the cons here are not screaming foul play at razor’s inference that JTI’s battle for better health has somehow effected his judgment. Very poor form that. But not unexpected from razor. “Razor says:February 7, 2017 at 11:26 pm.” last paragraph.
I must say that it is pretty poor form of you to regurgitate a matter of no concern to you and then try and score an imbecilic political point from it. You should take on board Darren’s advice, it will be the best and politest you will get.
Milton highlighting your hypocrisy again. Well done for proving my point.
Milton. I think any underhanded attack on our host JTI is of all our concerns.
Where’s the hypocrisy? And i’m confident Jack can look after himself without your, or others, or my concern. Forgo your faux concern and have the balls to acknowledge this as you having a cheap shot at Razor. Grow up!
And you accuse me of brown nosing, idiot. And grub.
I believe this is the comment of razor’s where he claims crime is rising in Sydney due to certain ethnic groups. He also uses the Source Crime Statistics Authority for Victoria.
Razor says:February 6, 2017 at 8:54 pm “Crime committed by ethnic groups is up Bassy. Particularly Middle East (Sydney), African (Melbourne) and Asian (Everywhere)
Also crime overall on the eastern seaboard is trending up again. Those arrested for terrorism related matters in Australia are in the large majority of ME descent.”
I noted in a post on the blog at The Australian that I couldn’t recall Ryan’s hanging. I’ve tried a few times to post a question on the other blog about the hangman. I can’t get the question to ‘stick’, perhaps a browser issue or something to do with my VPN. I thought the hangman was a central figure in the narrative, and went looking for any comment he may have made, or perhaps a written memoir. Nothing to be found, I suppose to protect his anonymity. I was surprised to find a mention that because it had been a long time since Victoria’s previous hanging, Bolte had to ‘borrow’ a hangman from another State, and that this was suppressed at the time as it may have led to the hangman being identified. Have you heard anything about this?
Vague recollection this was covered in an old doco on the Ryan hanging, GW, but I had forgotten. Bolte would have gone to Saudi Arabia for an executioner if it suited him. BTW, I saw your comment on the Aus and replied.
It’s probably too late to post in this thread, but I’ve been reading deeply on this topic and the death penalty generally for the entire week. I haven’t been able to find any memoir or interview with Ryan’s executioner, or any other Australian hangman from any era. The nearest I was able to find was ‘The Hangman’s Journal’, a handwritten log of executions in Victoria, kept in the State Archive. It’s available online and has some chilling entries. I discovered, I suppose understandably, executioners are not able to speak to the press.
There’s no shortage of commentary by executioners of other nationalities however. The most fascinating and forthright of these was Albert Pierrepoint, an Englishman. Pierrepoint wrote his memoirs, and they were turned into a movie, ‘The Last Hangman’, with the lead played by the late John Hurt. Pierrepoint was not the last English hangman, nor was he the chief hangman.
I was surprised to find, there are no official hangmen. There is no legal or Constitutional position for a hangman, and the name does not appear anywhere in any legal sense. They are all referred to as ‘Assistants’, and they were on a list kept by the English Home Office. They assisted the County Sheriff, who arranged the hanging, and invited the hangman to attend. To get on the list they had to attend a one week course at Wandsworth Prison. They were not retained but paid ‘per job’. They all had ‘day jobs’. Pierrepoint was a publican, and he owned the ‘Help the Poor Struggler’ Hotel in Lancashire. Pierrepoint’s father Henry, and uncle Thomas, were also hangmen. A note to the sisterhood, there were no hangwomen, nor, for PC types, were there any hangpersons. No hangmen ever retired, they were simply de-listed. Henry Pierrepoint was de-listed for drinking on the job, Thomas was de-listed after a hanging went wrong. (Albert actually did retire, the only one who ever left the trade of his own choosing).
Pierrepoint officiated at between 400 and 600 hangings, including 17 women. Well over 200 of these were war criminals and he despatched the entire convicted staff of Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau concentration camps, and many others. He executed WIlliam (Lord Haw-Haw) Joyce and the traitor John Amery. One hanging affected him deeply though, and led to is retirement.
Timothy Evans was convicted, wrongly, for murdering his wife and daughter at their home in Notting Hill, London in 1949, and was hung in 1950. Police later caught the real murderer, John Christie, but it was too late for the unfortunate Evans. Pierrepoint officiated at the hanging of the real felon also, and it was one of his last jobs.
After he retired, Pierrepoint became an opponent of the death penalty. In a BBC interview (available online), and in his book, he said the death penalty was not a deterrent to violent crime and should be abolished. Later the British Parliament called him in when they were deciding whether to abolish. It was Evan’s hanging that brought them to this although it took another 10 years before it was wiped from the Statutes.
My attitude to the death penalty has changed. Last week, as my post in the Aus made clear, I was ambivalent about it, an easy position in a country where the penalty no longer exists, but this topic challenged me to examine my own beliefs. After a week of deep examination, and reading of the horrors of French beheadings, watching video of an Afghan stoning, reading descriptions of American gas chambers and electrocutions, Chinese shootings, listening to Pierrepoint’s interview, and Idi Amin personally beating people to death with a sledgehammer, I can’t hide in neutrality any more. I now oppose the death penalty for all crimes and in all circumstances.
Thanks for this topic Jack. Although it was a historical piece, I found some strong intellectual stimulation in it. And it wasn’t all bleak. We hear of ‘gallows humor’ but never encounter it. Pierrepoint was sizing up one of his clients before a hanging, and the condemned asked Pierrepoint ‘Will it hurt?’ The hangman replied, ‘I’ve never had any complaints’.
My New Year’s resolution is to read the entire works of Dickens, so I can get back to that for a while now. Dickens can be tough work, but it will be a light reading after this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint