The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw the building of new County Gaols throughout Britain to replace the small and often unsuitable jails and lockups that were commonplace.
The County Gaol for Cornwall stands in three acres adjacent to Berrycoombe Road in Bodmin (the county town).
It was completed in 1779, built by French prisoners of war working under the supervision of Sir John Call, J.P., M.P., to the design of Philip Stowey and Thomas Jones of Exeter.
As built, it was an attractive two-storey building with a three-storey entrance lodge.
It had accommodation for one hundred persons, including male and female debtors, male and female felons, and bridewells (lockups) for minor criminals of both sexes.
Three condemned cells were included in the north-west corner of the buildings.
Over time, the buildings were modified and enlarged as required, and a naval prison wing was added in 1878, which continued to house naval prisoners until 1922.
In the early part of the 20th century, the number of inmates fell rapidly.
By 1908 there was only one female prisoner, and this part of the facility was closed in March 1911.
The last male prisoner was transferred to Plymouth (in Devon) in July 1916.
The prison finally closed in 1927.
The governor’s and the chaplain’s houses were sold off, and part of the prison roof was removed, allowing some of the structures to decay.
It was bought in a semi-derelict state by the Wheten family in 2004.
Over the next six years, over £1,000,000 was spent on renovating the structure and creating a museum, a process that continues as proceeds from visitors allow.
Bodmin Jail allegedly stored the Domesday Book, various state papers, and the Crown Jewels for safekeeping during the First World War.
Executions at Bodmin Gaol
A total of 32 executions took place at the Gaol between 1802 and 1909, comprising 28 men and four women.
One woman and three of the men were executed in private after the abolition of public hangings in 1868, as detailed in our gazetteer of execution sites from the late 18th century to abolition in 1964.
The first confirmed hangings carried out at the Gaol, rather than on Bodmin Moor (the previous county place of execution), were those of John Vanstone, age 37, and William Lee, age 60.
They had been convicted of burglary in the dwelling house of Walter Oke in the parish of Poughill on the 25th of February 1802.
They stole a pocketbook, other goods, and money with a value of 2 pounds and 2 shillings, two £2 notes, a knife, plus other goods and money with a value of 10 shillings and 7 pence belonging to Elizabeth Trewin.
They were hanged on a New Drop style gallows in front of the Gaol on Wednesday the 1st of September 1802, departing from the older cart methods seen in the short drop method.
Public Executions on the Gatehouse (1813–1862)
Arson, Petty Treason, and Early Capital Felonies
Elizabeth Osborne was condemned for arson, having been convicted of setting fire to a mow of corn belonging to Mr. John Lobb.
She was hanged on the 6th of September 1813, and the event was reported in the West Briton newspaper.
Arson was a capital felony under the Bloody Code, and reprieves were quite rare.
There was little in the way of insurance at this time, so a serious fire would lead to major consequences for the owner of the property.
The crime of setting fire to a hayrick or mow of corn was separately defined as one of several individual offences of arson.
In this case, Mr. Lobb may have had difficulty finding food and bedding for his animals during the winter of 1813/1814. (The last hangings for arson in the UK took place in 1836).
The next female execution at Bodmin was that of 37-year-old Sarah Polgrean, who had been convicted at the Summer Assizes of poisoning her husband, Henry, with arsenic.
At the time, this crime was still classified under English law as Petty Treason, and therefore she had to be drawn to the gallows on a hurdle prior to her execution on Saturday the 12th of August 1820.
Once on the scaffold, she made a speech to the crowd imploring them to take note of her fate, recited the Lord’s Prayer, and gave the signal to the hangman to release the drop, which fell a little after midday.
She was anatomically dissected after death. A broadside was printed about her case, as was standard practice.
Another arsonist to die on Bodmin’s gallows was 21-year-old William Axford on the 7th of April 1825, who had also set fire to a hayrick.
The official bill for Axford’s hanging recorded:
- £1 15s. (£1.75) for a coffin;
- 12s. (60p) for six bearers from the scaffold to the grave;
- £1 5s. (£1.25) for erecting the gallows.
The hangman’s fee was not recorded. As Axford had not committed murder, he was permitted burial in consecrated ground.
Highway robbery was still a capital offence in 1827, and 29-year-old James Eddy was executed for robbing and violently assaulting Jane Cock on the King’s Highway.
The hanging took place before a huge crowd on Thursday the 19th of April 1827.
Although Eddy admitted to having a criminal past, he proclaimed his innocence of the specific crime for which he suffered.
Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Commins was one of six women hanged in Britain during 1828.
She was executed for the murder of her infant child on the 8th of August of that year.
Although few details survive, it is probable that Elizabeth was destitute and unable to care for the child.
Young unmarried women were often abandoned by their partners if they became pregnant, with the workhouse being the only resource, making infanticide tragically commonplace in the early 19th century.
Fifty-seven-year-old William Hocking was executed on the 21st of August 1834 for the crime of bestiality.
The gallows was erected on the old gatehouse roof, described by the Royal Cornwall Gazette as:
“a permanent erection over the southern door of the gaol”.
Hocking was convicted of bestiality, which fell under the same statute as sodomy and remained a capital offence in Britain until 1861.
It would seem that Hocking was suffering from some severe form of mental aberration.
A year after Hocking’s death, 29-year-old John Henwood suffered for parricide (the murder of his father), executed on Monday the 30th of March 1835.
Notable Public Murder Trials
The Lightfoot Brothers (1840)
Five years passed before the next executions at the gaol.
These took place at noon on Monday the 13th of April 1840, when brothers James Lightfoot (23) and William Lightfoot (36) were hanged side by side for the murder of Mr. Nevill Norway.
This execution was carried out by George Mitchell from Ilchester and is believed to be his first in Cornwall.
The brothers had severely beaten Mr. Norway and robbed him of his purse on the night of Saturday the 8th of February 1840.
They came to trial at the Lent Assizes on Monday the 30th of March 1840 before Sir Thomas Coltman, the jury taking just five minutes to convict them.
The double hanging attracted an immense gathering, including passengers on trains that had stopped on the railway line running directly alongside the south side of the gaol.
George Mitchell carried out two further executions at Bodmin: Matthew Weekes in 1844 and 61-year-old Benjamin Ellison on Monday the 11th of August 1845 for the murder of Mrs. Elizabeth Ruth Seamour (also recorded as Seaman).
Matthew Weekes and Charlotte Dymond (1844)
Twenty-two-year-old Matthew Weekes was a farm labourer at Lower Penhale Farm near Bodmin.
He was reportedly physically unattractive, with a badly pockmarked face, missing teeth, and a limp.
The farm also employed an 18-year-old milkmaid named Charlotte Dymond, who was popular and flirtatious with many local young men.
Weekes was infatuated with Charlotte, though he felt insecure about his prospects with her.
On Sunday the 14th of April 1844, he persuaded Charlotte to go for a walk on Rough Tor on Bodmin Moor, and along the road towards Camelford.
As they walked, Charlotte spoke of her affection for other local men.
Weekes grew intensely jealous and rebuked her; when Charlotte retorted that she would do as she pleased and wanted nothing more to do with him, Weekes drew a pocketknife and slashed her throat.
He hid her body and discarded the knife, but both were discovered two weeks later, leading to his arrest.
Weekes was hanged on Monday the 12th of August 1844.
Local residents funded a stone monument to Charlotte Dymond at the site of the crime on the moor, and legend claims her ghost still haunts Lower Penhale Farm.
William Nevan (1856)
William Calcraft received a substantial fee for the execution of William Nevan on the 11th of August 1856.
The official county voucher shows he was paid £21 plus 5 shillings for his rail fare from London.
Forty-four-year-old Nevan had been convicted of the murder of Sergeant Major Benjamin Robinson on the 1st of June 1856.
Nevan was a marine corporal under Robinson aboard the prison ship Runnymede, anchored in Plymouth Sound.
When ordered by Robinson to locate an absent prisoner, Nevan levelled his musket and shot the Sergeant Major dead on deck.
At his trial on the 28th of July, Nevan claimed the weapon discharged accidentally, but the jury rejected this after ten minutes of deliberation.
He was executed on top of the gatehouse roof on Monday the 11th of August 1856.
The 1856 Rebuilding Program
Because the original 1779 prison had become severely overcrowded, a major rebuilding project commenced in 1856 and continued until 1861 at a cost exceeding £40,000.
Local Cornish granite was quarried and dressed by prisoners sentenced to hard labour.
John Doidge: The Last Public Hanging (1862)
The final public execution in Cornwall was that of 28-year-old John Doidge, hanged by William Calcraft on Monday the 18th of August 1862 for the murder of Robert Drew.
Drew, aged 57, was a grocer in Launceston reputed to keep large sums of cash on the premises.
On the night of Saturday the 7th of June, Drew visited his local pub, where John Doidge was seen brandishing a heavy billhook.
Drew was found battered to death inside his ransacked shop the following day.
Doidge, who lived nearby and was unemployed, was questioned, and blood traces were discovered on his billhook.
He was convicted after a two-day assize trial.
The West Briton described the scaffold preparations on the 22nd of August 1862:
“About half-past eight on Monday morning, the carpenters commenced the erection, on the principal floor of the female department of the gaol, steps and a platform inside the southern wall of the prison, the platform being on a level with the grating floor of the drop on the exterior; and at ten o’clock these preparations were completed.
The drop has the same southern aspect, and is nearly over the same site as that of the old gaol: and, consequently, the fields sloping down from the northern side of the street at the western part of the town, the ‘Bodmin highlands’ afford the same facilities for view of the dread spectacle that have been available to so many thousands at previous executions.
We understand that it had been intended, in the building of the new gaol, to erect the drop at the northern part; but this purpose was abandoned because of the comparatively small assemblage of the public to whom the execution of a capital sentence could be made visible.”
Private Executions Inside Bodmin Gaol (1878–1909)
Following the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, four private hangings took place within the prison precincts:
| Execution Date | Condemned Name | Age | Hangman / Assistant | Crime and Victim |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15/08/1878 | Selina Wadge | 28 | William Marwood | Murder of son Harry (2) in well at Altarnun |
| 13/11/1882 | William Bartlett | 46 | William Marwood | Murder of infant daughter in mine shaft at Lanlivery |
| 09/07/1901 | Valeri Giovanni | 31 | James & William Billington | Murder of Victor Baileff aboard the Lorton |
| 20/07/1909 | William Hampton | 24 | Henry & Thomas Pierrepoint | Murder of Emily Trevarthen Tredrea (16) at St Erth |
Selina Wadge (1878)
There were no executions at Bodmin between 1862 and 1878.
On the 15th of August 1878, 28-year-old unmarried mother Selina Wadge was hanged by William Marwood for the murder of her two-year-old partially crippled son, Harry, by throwing him down a three-fathom well at Altarnun.
Wadge claimed that her lover, James Westwood, had promised to marry her on condition that she get rid of the child.
For her execution, a balcony-pattern scaffold was erected over an internal archway normally used for loading kitchen provisions, and she was brought out through the door above it.
Marwood applied his newly developed scientific tables from the evolution of the long drop in the 20th century.
William Bartlett (1882)
Forty-six-year-old quarry manager William Bartlett was hanged by William Marwood on the 13th of November 1882 for the murder of his illegitimate newborn daughter at Lanlivery.
Bartlett had seven children with his pregnant wife while conducting an affair with a local nurse.
When the nurse gave birth, Bartlett took the infant under the pretence of finding an adoptive home, but instead strangled her and dropped her down an abandoned tin mine shaft.
Contemporary newspaper accounts noted:
“The drop was erected in an angle of the outside of the prison facing up the lane to Town Wall and down towards Dunmere. It was a wooden erection, looking at a distance like a roadman’s hut.
There was nothing else to be seen, but at 8 a.m. a black ball was run up by the big chimney, which spread out to be the black flag.”
Bartlett was in a state of absolute terror; it was widely claimed that his hair turned from black to pure white during his weeks in the condemned cell.
The Restored Victorian Execution Shed
Valeri Giovanni (1901)
Thirty-one-year-old Italian sailor Valeri Giovanni was executed on the gallows inside a newly constructed execution shed on Tuesday the 9th of July 1901.
This was an enclosed brick room set into the north-east corner wall running along Bodineal Road.
Giovanni had fatally stabbed fellow crewman Victor Baileff aboard the vessel Lorton while bound for Falmouth.
He was executed by James Billington, assisted by his son William.
William Hampton: The Final Execution (1909)
The final execution in Cornwall took place in the same execution shed on Tuesday the 20th of July 1909.
Twenty-four-year-old William Hampton had been convicted of the murder of his 16-year-old girlfriend, Emily Barnes Trevarthen Tredrea, at St Erth on the 2nd of May 1909.
When Emily broke off their engagement, Hampton strangled her in her bedroom while her mother Grace was out of the house.
The crime was witnessed by Emily’s nine-year-old brother, William.
Hampton confessed that evening at Hayle Police Station.
At trial before Mr. Justice Phillimore, the jury convicted him of murder with a recommendation to mercy, but Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone declined to intervene.
Hampton was hanged at 8:00 a.m. by Henry Pierrepoint, assisted by Thomas Pierrepoint, in an execution witnessed by the Mayor of Bodmin.
Subsequent County History and Museum Preservation
Following Hampton’s execution in 1909, prisoners under sentence of death in Cornwall were transferred to Exeter Prison in Devon.
The final execution for a capital crime committed in Cornwall occurred on the 17th of December 1963, when Russell Pascoe (aged 23) and Dennis John Whitty (aged 22) were hanged simultaneously at Bristol and Winchester respectively for the murder of farmer William Garfield Rowe at Nanjarrow Farm near Falmouth.
Parliament permanently discontinued the death penalty under the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, completing the abolition of capital punishment in Britain.
The execution shed at Bodmin Gaol used for the Giovanni and Hampton executions has been carefully restored and is the only Victorian execution shed still surviving in Great Britain.
A complete set of working trapdoors and release gearing has been reinstalled over the original 13-foot-deep pit, with the original operating lever returned to the site.
Today, Bodmin Jail operates as a heritage museum and hotel, open to the public with preserved cell blocks, naval wings, and execution exhibits.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Bodmin Gaol built?
Bodmin Gaol was constructed in 1779 on Berrycoombe Road by French prisoners of war, under the supervision of magistrate Sir John Call to designs by Philip Stowey and Thomas Jones. It underwent major enlargement in Cornish granite between 1856 and 1861.
How many executions took place at Bodmin Gaol?
A total of 32 judicial executions were carried out at Bodmin Gaol between 1802 and 1909: 28 public hangings (1802–1862) and four private hangings (1878–1909).
Who was Charlotte Dymond, and why is her case famous?
Charlotte Dymond was an 18-year-old milkmaid murdered on Bodmin Moor in 1844 by farmhand Matthew Weekes in a fit of jealousy. Weekes was publicly hanged at Bodmin Gaol, and a stone memorial remains at the site of the killing on Rough Tor.
Why was Sarah Polgrean drawn on a hurdle in 1820?
Sarah Polgrean was convicted of poisoning her husband with arsenic. Under English law prior to 1828, the murder of a husband by his wife was classified as Petty Treason, legally requiring the condemned woman to be drawn to the scaffold on a sledge or hurdle before being hanged and anatomically dissected.
What is unique about the execution shed at Bodmin Gaol today?
The execution shed at Bodmin Gaol, erected around 1900, is the only authentic Victorian execution shed still standing in the United Kingdom. It has been restored with its original 13-foot brick-lined drop pit and mechanical release lever.
Who was the last person executed at Bodmin Gaol?
William Hampton, aged 24, was the final person executed at Bodmin Gaol on July 20, 1909, hanged by Henry and Thomas Pierrepoint for the murder of 16-year-old Emily Tredrea.
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