1961: Henryk Niemasz, the last hanged at Wandsworth
Add comment September 8th, 2018 Headsman
Wandsworth Prison hosted its 135th and final hanging on this date in 1961.
The star of the show was Henryk Niemasz, who became infatuated with a married woman and shot her dead when she refused to break up her marriage for him. Niemasz was also married himself, to a wife who surely deserved better given that Grypa Niemasz was willing to give her husband a fake alibi for the time he was off shotgunning his paramour.
The death penalty departed English shores in the 1960s, but the Wandsworth gallows was kept in working order until 1993, just in case. (It would have been in case of treason, which was the only remaining capital statute by then.)
The prison itself, which dates to 1851, remains in operation to this day. According to friend of the blog Another Nickel in the Machine, Wandsworth’s former condemned cell “is now used as a television room for prison officers.”
On this day..
- 1943: Julius Fučík, Notes from the Gallows - 2020
- 1873: James Connor - 2019
- 1306: Simon Fraser, William Wallace comrade in arms - 2017
- 1914: Thomas Highgate, the first shot in the Great War - 2016
- 1292: Johann de Wettre, medieval Europe's first documented sodomy execution - 2015
- 1971: Ishola Oyenusi, smiling to his death - 2014
- 1686: Jonathan Simpson, merchant turned highwayman - 2013
- 1812: Not Pierre Bezukhov, in War and Peace - 2012
- 1999: Double execution in Arkansas - 2011
- 1790: Johan Henrik Hästesko, Anjalaman - 2010
- 1820: John Baird and Andrew Hardie, for the Radical War - 2009
- 1642: Thomas Granger and the beasts he lay with - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,Milestones,Murder,Sex
Tags: 1960s, 1961, adultery, henryk niemasz, love triangle, september 8, wandsworth, wandsworth prison
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