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EXECUTIONS AT WANDSWORTH PRISON IN SOUTH-WEST LONDON [1878-1961] looks at the 135 hangings carried out there - the stories are approximately 300 words and where the cases have been done fully in other titles a note has been made at the end. The prison had opened in 1851 - the same year as the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park - and was originally known as the Surrey House of Correction. But when the Prison Act of 1877 brought all penal establishments under the control of the Home Office, the prison became HMP Wandsworth. As another consequence of the Act, the hanging prison for Surrey and the parts of south London that used to be in that county, Horsemonger Lane in Kennington, central London, was to close. Now Wandsworth would have to have a set of gallows. Since the abolition of public executions less than a decade earlier, in May 1868, hangings had usually taken place in a prison courtyard or in outbuildings such as stables. Wandsworth would be the first new prison to have a purpose-built gallows in its own execution shed. Wandsworth didn't have to wait long for its first execution, that of Thomas Smithers, on October 8th, 1878. Of the 134 who followed Smithers, just one was a woman and 12 were executed for offences related to spying and treason. Wandsworth saw its first double execution - that of the Stratton brothers - on May 23rd, 1905. Other famous prisoners to die there would include William Joyce, Jean-Pierre Vaquier, John Haigh, Derek Bentley, Gunter Podola and the last man to be hanged at Wandsworth (and in London), Hendryck Niemasz in 1961. Over the years there would be additions and modifications to Wandsworth's apparatus of execution. Astonishingly, it maintained a gallows in working order until 1993 when the apparatus was set up, tested and the trap-doors fell open for the last time, as in theory the death penalty was still available for High Treason and under military law, and remained so until 1998. ....

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