THE HORRENDOUS STORY OF THOMAS BRIGGS
By BRIAN LEMINpage 4 of 4
The reporter from The Sporting Times said that “Far as the eye could reach to Ludgate Hill on the one hand and right away to Holborn on the other, the entire space, broad and distant as it was, presented an unbroken mass of human faces- types of every unholy passion that humanity is capable of- a seething sea of hideous brutality that had been surging over the space the livelong night, and was now almost still with expectation. The mouths of the myriad of grimy, yellow faces were open and all the thousands of eyes were upturned upon the spot where I stood, with intentness that was more appalling to me than the methodical movements of Calcraft (that is me!) and the unimpassioned attitude of Muller.”
I passed a strap around Mullers legs and buckled it, the noose I placed correctly around his head and under his left ear carefully tightening the slip knot. The other end I passed over a hook in the cross beam, leaving just the right length of rope loose ready for the fall. Having done that I slipped a rather dirty yellow bag over his head. Before I pulled the lever, Mullers’ Pastor from the German Lutheran church Dr Cappel, and Muller had a hurried conversation. I stepped aside and did not hear anything that passed between them. I pulled the lever, he dropped and with one convulsion it was all was over. I had done my job well.
Dr Cappel told the reporters that Muller had first maintained his innocence, but then at the very last minute said that he had done it.I ought to tell you that the deplorable circumstances at the hanging of Muller was the beginning of a movement to ban public hangings which was finally successful as the last public hanging was in 1868. But I still did my job inside the prision. The Lacemakers.
Enterprising Railway Companies had for some years run excursions to public hangings, for another famous hanging in 1849 some 20,000 people had taken advantage of the railway’s excursion to the hanging of Gleeson Wilson, and this was no exception. The case had stirred up such public interest that the lacemakers of Northamptonshire were all of a buzz about it. Indeed for weeks it was a topic of conversation over their busy pillows. Inevitably the topic of going on an excursion to London to see the execution was raised. The girls robbed their piggy banks, overcame the arguments of their parents and joined the train excursion at Northampton. The trip to London was so exciting. The conversation was that of “giddy” young girls who had just been “let free”. When they arrived they went to their lodgings and spent the evening seeing what they could of the London sights with the chaperoning of a brother of one of the lacemakers. They rose early the next morning and managed to get a horse drawn bus to the prison. When they arrived it was already crowded and they were quite rightly afraid. Some of them wanted to leave, but the crowds around them by then
were too great. Nothing bad happened to them except that most of them, whilst enjoying the experience of the excursion to London, hid there eyes at the time of the execution. But at least they had been to London and seen a hanging. Very few people in their village had ever been out of the village, let alone go to London. When they returned, the tales they had to tell kept the interest of the lacemakers going for a long time. Bobbin Brown
You will know me as a lace bobbin maker. I used to go around the villages every month with my bobbins. I made a great variety of bobbins but when something like the Muller hanging occurred, I knew I had to make a number of these as memorials to the event. I had heard that some of the girls from the county had gone on one of the excursions, so I took these bobbins to them first. Well, I made a killing (excuse the pun) but all that I had made were bought up in just one day. I made quite few more over the next few weeks but soon the craze had died down and I went back to ordinary bobbin making. We bobbin makers had to have an eye for the “market” and hanging bobbins sold well. I think there are about 6 murderers memorialised on lace bobbins. Mathias and William Lilly 1829, Sarah Dazeley 1843, Joseph Castle 1860, William Worsley 1868 William Bull 1871 and of course Franz Muller 1864.
Endnotes. The facts of this case are essentially correct, that is the circumstances around the murder, the trial and hanging. They have been gleaned from three articles in a Legal Journal that were sent to me and for which I do not have a correct reference. As soon as I can find it I will acknowledge the Journal. The articles were written anonymously as there are no author’s names on any of the articles. I have tried to weave the facts into something of a series of “first person” narratives. Whilst it is quite true that the railway companies ran excursions to hangings, I do not have any evidence that some of the lace making girls joined such an excursion. They could have of course! Bobbin Brown was a maker of a Franz Muller hanging bobbin.