The construction of Holloway Prison, to the designs of James Bunstone Bunning, began in 1849 and was completed in 1852 to form the City of London House of Correction, opening in October 1852.
As built, it had three wings for males and one for females and juveniles.
It was the main prison for the City of London and had cost 91,547 pounds, 10 shillings, and 8 pence.
There were 436 cells: 283 for males, 60 for females, 62 for juveniles, 18 refractory cells, 14 reception cells, and 14 workrooms.
In the period 1881–1882, B & C Wings were extended to provide 340 new cells, and in 1883–1884 a new hospital wing was constructed.
Remand prisoners were sent there, and perhaps the most famous of these was Oscar Wilde.
Female suffragettes were also imprisoned in Holloway.
The prison was known locally as “Camden Castle” for obvious reasons, given its castellated Gothic exterior.
The ending of transportation and the closure of Newgate Prison necessitated more places for female prisoners, and so Holloway was refurbished and became a purely female prison from 1903.
In this format, it had capacity for 949 women.
An additional wing (DX Wing) was added in 1905, boosting capacity by a further 101 inmates.
As a prison, Holloway housed remand and convicted women prisoners and those sentenced to death in London.
Previously, London’s female executions had been carried out at Newgate, as detailed in our gazetteer of execution sites from the late 18th century to abolition in 1964.
Reprieves, Treachery Acts, and Condemned Prisoners
These inmates included the only women to be sentenced to death for spying under the Treachery Acts of 1914 and 1940.
During the First World War, Swedish-born Eva de Bournonville was convicted of spying, but was reprieved and served six years in prison.
Men were not so fortunate: 11 were shot by firing squad at the Tower of London and one was hanged for spying during this war.
In 1941, Dorothy Pamela O’Grady was caught walking in areas of the Isle of Wight that were sensitive and from which the public had been banned.
She was also accused of cutting an army telephone line and possessing a document with information on defence measures.
She was tried at the Old Bailey, the jury taking just over an hour to find her guilty.
The death sentence was mandatory under the Treachery Act 1940.
However, hers was also commuted, after her appeal, and she served 14 years in Holloway.
Another “lucky” lady was 18-year-old Elizabeth Maude (also given as Marina) Jones.
Jones came from Neath in South Wales and was working as a barmaid, waitress, and cinema usherette, before becoming a striptease artist in London under the stage name of “Georgina Grayson.”
She met up with a young Swedish-American army deserter, 22-year-old Karl Gustav Hulten, who passed himself off as Second Lieutenant Ricky Allen and impressed Jones with his claims to being a gangster from Chicago.
For a short while, they both engaged in robberies and other minor crimes.
On October the 7th 1944, Hulten and Jones got into a taxi driven by George Edward Heath at Chiswick in London.
Hulten ordered Heath to drive around before shooting him in the back and stealing his money and the car.
Heath’s documents were found on the body, and a description of the Ford V8 car was circulated.
Two days later, police found the car in London’s Fulham Palace Road and lay in wait to see whether anyone would come for it.
A little later, a man dressed as an American officer approached the car and was arrested.
He gave the name of Richard John Allen.
He was interrogated by the American Army CID, to whom he revealed his correct name.
Although he had gone absent without leave and had stolen a pistol, it was decided by the American authorities to hand him over to the British civil authorities for trial on the much more serious murder charge.
Hulten denied the shooting and implicated Jones, who had told a friend:
“If you had seen somebody do what I have seen done you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
This was reported to the police and she too was arrested, making a statement saying Hulten had shot Heath.
He in turn stated that she had been an active and willing participant in the crime.
They both stood trial at the Old Bailey from the 16th of January 1945 for six days.
The jury found them equally guilty and the inevitable death sentences followed.
Hulten was hanged at Pentonville Prison on Thursday, the 8th of March 1945.
Jones was in the Condemned Suite at Holloway and would presumably have been hanged at the same time on that Thursday, had she not been reprieved two days earlier.
Her sentence was commuted to life, and she remained in prison until 1954.
It is thought that her youth was a major factor in the decision to spare her. She served 9 years and 1 month before being released on licence.
In all, 47 women spent time in Holloway’s condemned facility.
Of these, 40 were reprieved, and this figure included 18 who had killed their infant children and nine who had killed their older sons or daughters.
One case was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal, and one woman was found insane and sent to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
Twenty-two-year-old Elsie Yeldham was convicted in 1922 of a robbery-murder and had to live through the hanging of her husband, to whom she had only been married for three months, in nearby Pentonville, although she herself was reprieved two weeks before his execution and served nine years of her life sentence.
The Gallows at Holloway
When the prison was converted for female use, and with the closure of Newgate, there was a requirement for an execution facility.
An execution shed, as was then the fashion, was erected at the end of B Wing.
This shed contained the gallows, which could accommodate two prisoners side by side, operating under the principles of the evolution of the long drop in the 20th century.
At this time, the press could still be admitted to executions, although there is no record of this happening at Holloway.
By the 24th of February 1937, a new condemned suite had been created on the first floor of the prison in E Wing, formed from five ordinary cells, and was quite spacious.
It comprised a visiting cell with a glass partition to separate the prisoner from the visitor, a bathroom, and a day cell (Cell 17).
The lights were kept on 24 hours a day, and the prisoner was guarded round the clock by at least two wardresses.
On one wall of the day cell, there was a bookcase or wardrobe which normally hid the door into an empty cell between the day cell and the execution chamber (Cell 19).
The execution chamber itself was just 15 paces from the day cell and contained the gallows set over the cell below, which was the drop room or “pit”.
A metal ladder in one corner provided access to the cell above, containing the beam, for setting the drop, and there were stairs to the “pit” below.
There was an autopsy room adjacent to this cell.
Executions took place at 9:00 a.m., and afterwards there was an autopsy and a formal inquest before the women’s bodies were buried in unmarked graves within the grounds at lunchtime on the day of execution.
Executions at Holloway (1903–1955)
Five women were put to death at Holloway between 1903 and 1955.
This represents 33.3% of all 20th-century female hangings in England and Wales:
| Name | Age | Execution Date | Crime and Victim | Executioner / Assistant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amelia Sachs | 29 | 03/02/1903 | Baby farming murders (Hertford Road) | William Billington & Henry Pierrepoint |
| Annie Walters | 54 | 03/02/1903 | Baby farming murders (Hertford Road) | William Billington & Henry Pierrepoint |
| Edith Jessie Thompson | 28 | 09/01/1923 | Murder of husband Percy Thompson | John Ellis & Albert Copley |
| Styllou Pantopiou Christofi | 53 | 15/12/1954 | Murder of daughter-in-law Hella Christofi | Albert Pierrepoint & Robert Stewart |
| Ruth Ellis | 28 | 13/07/1955 | Shooting murder of David Blakely | Albert Pierrepoint & Royston Rickard |
Case Records of Executed Women
Amelia Sachs and Annie Walters: The Finchley Baby Farmers (1903)
Amelia Sachs and Annie Walters were the first women to be hanged here, and theirs was the last double female hanging in Great Britain.
They were executed for the horrible crime of baby farming by William Billington and Henry Pierrepoint on Tuesday, the 3rd of February 1903.
Sachs operated a lying-in home in Claymore House, Hertford Road, East Finchley, advertising that babies born to unwed mothers could be taken for adoption for a fee of 25 to 30 pounds.
Walters acted as the nurse who took the infants away, dosing them with lethal quantities of chlorodyne before disposing of their bodies.
It is thought that they may have murdered as many as 20 infants.
Both women were convicted at the Old Bailey and hanged simultaneously on the double gallows in the B-Wing shed.
Edith Jessie Thompson (1923)
Edith Jessie Thompson, aged 28, was carried to the gallows some 20 years later, at 9:00 a.m. on the 9th of January 1923, to be hanged by John Ellis in the old execution shed.
At the same moment, less than half a mile away, her lover Frederick Bywaters was being hanged in Pentonville Prison for the murder of Edith’s husband, Percy Thompson.
Her execution caused considerable public disquiet, as many doubted her active guilt and questioned the true legal meaning of the passionate love letters that passed between her and Bywaters.
While Edith was in the Condemned Cell, there was another woman under sentence of death at Holloway: 36-year-old Daisy Wright, who had been convicted of murdering her two-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and was subsequently reprieved after spending just 12 months in prison.
Styllou Pantopiou Christofi (1954)
After a gap of over 31 years, in which no women were executed at Holloway—although 25 women had occupied the condemned cell—there were to be two hangings in eight months.
The first was that of Styllou Pantopiou Christofi, a 53-year-old Greek Cypriot woman.
By 1953, she had not seen her son, Stavros, for 12 years and had saved up sufficient money for the passage to Britain in July of that year.
Stavros had married a German girl called Hella Bleicher, and they lived together in Hampstead in London.
He worked as a waiter and she as a shop assistant, and they had three children and a happy marriage.
All of that was to change with the arrival of his mother.
Styllou continually picked on Hella and found fault with everything she did, until the point was reached where Hella decided to go to Germany with the children for a holiday, on the understanding that Stavros would get his mother to return to Cyprus before she returned.
Before Hella could get away, tragedy struck.
On the night of the 29th of July 1954, Hella went to take a bath, having put the children to bed, when her mother-in-law came into the bathroom and hit her over the head with a heavy ash pan from the boiler.
Having knocked Hella unconscious, Styllou dragged her into the kitchen and strangled her.
In an effort to dispose of the body, she poured paraffin over Hella and lit it, setting fire to the house in the process.
In panic and fearing for her grandchildren, she ran into the street and raised the alarm.
The police and fire brigade arrived to find Hella’s partly burnt corpse in the kitchen.
One of the police officers noticed the marks of strangulation on her neck, and Styllou was arrested.
She told him:
“Me smell burning, me come down, me pour water, but she be died.”
A neighbour had seen Styllou set fire to the body but had not realised it was a human body, thinking instead that she was trying to burn a tailor’s dummy.
She was charged with murder and put on trial at the Old Bailey on the 28th of October 1954.
Her counsel put forward a defence of insanity, which the jury rejected.
She was sentenced to death and returned to Holloway to be hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on Wednesday, the 15th of December 1954.
She asked for a Maltese Cross to be placed on the wall of the execution chamber opposite where she would stand, and this wish was granted; it remained there until the room was dismantled in 1967.
Her motive for the killing appears to have been jealousy over what she saw as Hella replacing her in Stavros’s affections.
It is thought that she had also committed an earlier murder in Cyprus.
Ruth Ellis: The Last Woman Hanged in Britain (1955)
Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be executed in Britain when she was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Holloway on Wednesday, the 13th of July 1955, for the murder of her abusive boyfriend, racing driver David Blakely.
He had refused to see her over the Easter holiday, so she lay in wait for him outside the Magdala public house in Hampstead, and when he emerged on Easter Sunday evening, shot him five times with a revolver.
She was arrested immediately by an off-duty policeman and was convicted by an Old Bailey jury after just 20 minutes of deliberation.
Her execution caused a storm of public controversy, both at home and abroad, intensifying nationwide debate over deterrence and the death penalty.
Pierrepoint remarked to waiting journalists afterwards that, for all their intense interest in Ruth Ellis, they had shown scant interest the previous year when he had hanged Styllou Christofi.
Only one more woman after Ruth Ellis was to spend time in Holloway’s condemned cell: Freda Rumbold, convicted of murdering her husband in November 1956.
All death sentences were being commuted at this time as the Homicide Act 1957 was being finalised, and she was reprieved and given a life sentence, serving 8 years and 11 months in prison.
Capital punishment in Great Britain was subsequently abolished under the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, completing the abolition of capital punishment in Britain.
Exhumations and Modern Rebuilding
The rebuilding of Holloway Prison in 1970 required that the bodies of the five executed women buried in the grounds be exhumed and moved.
Amelia Sachs, Annie Walters, Edith Thompson, and Styllou Christofi were reburied in unmarked graves at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, as their families could not be traced or did not want the remains returned to them.
Ruth Ellis’s body was exhumed and reburied at St Mary’s Parish Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Edith Thompson’s grave at Brookwood has since received a formal memorial stone, erected on the 13th of November 1993, and in 2018 her remains were reinterred alongside her parents at the City of London Cemetery.
The rebuilt Holloway Prison opened in 1977 with a capacity of 532 women, housing both convicted and remand prisoners and featuring a mother-and-baby unit, before closing permanently in July 2016.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Holloway Prison built?
Holloway Prison was designed by James Bunstone Bunning as the City of London House of Correction, built between 1849 and 1852 at a cost of over 91,000 pounds. It operated as a mixed prison until 1903, when it was converted into a dedicated female facility.
How many women were executed at Holloway Prison?
Between 1903 and 1955, five women were executed at Holloway Prison: Amelia Sachs and Annie Walters (1903), Edith Thompson (1923), Styllou Christofi (1954), and Ruth Ellis (1955).
Where were the gallows located within Holloway Prison?
From 1903 to 1937, executions took place in a gallows shed at the end of B Wing. In February 1937, a modern execution suite was built on the first floor of E Wing, where the execution chamber (Cell 19) was situated just 15 paces from the condemned cell (Cell 17).
Who was the last woman executed in Great Britain?
Ruth Ellis was the last woman executed in the United Kingdom, hanged at Holloway Prison on July 13, 1955, by Albert Pierrepoint for the fatal shooting of David Blakely.
What happened to the remains of executed women buried at Holloway?
When Holloway was completely rebuilt in 1970, the remains of the five executed women were exhumed. Sachs, Walters, Thompson, and Christofi were reinterred at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, while Ruth Ellis was reburied in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Support the Archive
If you have found this article useful and would like to help preserve and maintain this historical archive, please consider supporting the site.
1 thought on “Holloway Prison, London: Execution History, Gallows, and Case Records”
Comments are closed.