The gallows itself was now finished; the rope dangled in the air above the trap. Pierce glanced at his pocketwatch. It was 7:45, just a short time before the execution itself.
In the square below, the crowd began to chant: “Oh, my, think I’m going to die! Oh, my, think I’m going to die!” There was a good deal of laughter and shouting and stamping of feet. One or two fights broke out, but they could not be sustained in the tightly packed crush of the crowd.
They all went to the window to watch.
Agar said, “When do you think he’ll make his move?”
“Right at eight, I should think.”
“I’d do it a bit sooner, myself.”
Pierce said, “He’ll make his move whenever he thinks best.”
The minutes passed slowly. No one in the room spoke. Finally, Barlow said, “I knew Emma Barnes— never thought she’d come to this.”
Pierce said nothing.
At eight o’clock, the chimes of St. Sepulchre signaled the hour, and the crowd roared in anticipation. There was the soft jingle of a prison bell, and then a door in Newgate opened and the prisoner was led out, her wrists strapped behind her. In front was a chaplain, reciting from the Bible. Behind was the city executioner, dressed in black.
The crowd saw the prisoner and shouted “Hats off!” Every man’s hat was removed as the prisoner slowly stepped up the scaffolding. Then there were cries of “Down in front! Down in front!” They were, for the most part, unheeded.
Pierce kept his gaze on the condemned woman. Emma Barnes was in her thirties, and looked vigorous enough. The firm lines and muscles of her neck were clearly visible through her open-necked dress. But her eyes were distant and glazed; she did not really seem to see anything. She took up her position and the city executioner turned to her, making slight adjustments, as if he were a seamstress positioning a dressmaker’s dummy. Emma Barnes stared above the crowd. The rope was fitted to a chain around her neck.
The clergyman read loudly, keeping his eyes fixed on the Bible. The city executioner strapped the woman’s legs together with a leather strap; this occasioned a good deal of fumbling beneath her skirts; the crowd made raucous comments.
Then the executioner stood, and slipped a black hood over the woman’s head. And then, at a signal, the trap opened with a wooden crack! that Pierce heard with startling distinctness; and the body fell, and caught, and hung instantly motionless.
“He’s getting better at it,” Agar said. The city executioner was known for botching in executions, leaving the hanged prisoner to writhe and dangle for several minutes before he died. “Crowd won’t like it,” Agar added.
The crowd, in fact, did not seem to mind. There was a moment of utter silence, and then the excited roar of discussion. Pierce knew that most of the crowd would remain in the square, watching for the next hour, until the dead woman was cut down and placed in a coffin.
“Will you take some punch?” asked Agar’s tart.
“No,” Pierce said. And then he said, “Where is Willy? ”
__________
Clean Willy Williams, the most famous snakesman of the century, was inside Newgate Prison beginning his escape. He was a tiny man, and he had been famous in his youth for his agility as a chimney sweep’s apprentice; in later years he had been employed by the most eminent cracksman, and his feats were now legendary. It was said that Clean Willy could climb a surface of glass, and no one was quite certain that he couldn’t.
Certainly the guards of Newgate, knowing the celebrity of their prisoner, had kept a close watch on him these many months, just in case. Yet they also knew that escape from Newgate was flatly impossible. A resourceful man might make a go of it from Ponsdale, where routines were notoriously lax, the walls low, and the guards not averse to the feel of gold coin and were known to look the other way. Ponsdale, or Highgate, or any of a dozen others, but never Newgate.
Newgate Prison was the most secure in all England. It had been designed by George Dance, “one of the most meticulous intellects of the Age of Taste,” and every detail of the building had been set forth to emphasize the harsh facts of confinement. Thus the proportions of the window arches had been “subtly thickened in order to intensify the painful narrowness of the openings,” and contemporary observers applauded the excellence of such cruel effects.
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