ELIZABETH Pearson of Gainford, William McHugh, of Barnard Castle and Michael Gilligan of Darlington were up at six on the morning of August 2, 1875.

The two Irishmen were accompanied by their Catholic priests, Lizzie by the prison chaplain, although she seems not to have been as immersed in prayer as her co-executees.

READ THEIR STORIES FIRST:

There would have been four of them, but the 'Brandon murderer' George Plummer who had killed his partner, Sarah Forster, in the colliery village to the west of Durham had been found not guilty at the Assizes on the grounds of insanity and had been sent to Broadmoor.

Durham Jail, where the notorious killer Mary Ann Cotton was hanged in 1873 and where three more were executed in 1875So at 7am the three had a mutton chop, buttered white bread and a cup of tea for breakfast. Lizzie and Gilligan ate heartily; McHugh contented himself with his rosary. At 8am, they were due to meet executioner William Marwood on the gallows.

He was the pioneer of the 'long drop' in which the neck of the guilty party was broken instantly and they lost consciousness immediately. It was supposed to be more humane than the 'short drop' and Marwood used it to kill 176 convicted criminals in his nine year career.

Executioner William Marwood. Picture: wikipediaHowever, this execution was the first at Durham to be held completely behind closed doors. “No representatives of the press were allowed to be present, and every precaution was taken to keep the whole matter secret,” said the Echo. It said “two gentlemen of the Spanish press, from Barcelona” had travelled from Newcastle expressly to witness the English method of capital punishment so they could compare it with those methods in France and Spain.

“The foreigners, however, met with no kinder reception at the gaol doors than their English brethren of the press,” said the Echo.

Despite the secrecy, the papers’ reporters gleaned enough colour to write a detailed report.

"The three prisoners were led forth from their respective cells to the pinioning room, where their limbs were securely tied," it said. "Hence they were taken by the warders to the quadrangle, in which the gallows were erected, and where Marwood stood ready to perform his task."

Lizzie went first.

The D&ST reported: "She walked to the scaffold without assistance and, indeed, throughout the whole proceedings remained the most self-possessed of the three."

"A minute after the hour, a thud was heard, which was believed to be the sound occasioned by the falling trapdoor, and a little more than three minutes after eight, the black flag was hoisted to announce to the outside world that the judicial tragedy was complete, and that the Durham summer murder crop had been reaped," said the Echo.

"At nine o'clock the three bodies, which had been hanging in the air for an hour, were cut down. The corpses were laid in plain black coffins, which were covered at the bottom with shavings.

"The head of each was covered with a cap, leaving the face and neck free, the countenances of the deceased were remarkably placid and betokened only the quietest of deaths."

From The Northern Echo of August 3, 1875Debate about the guiltiness of Lizzie Pearson continues to this day. There was certainly much circumstantial evidence that she was guilty, from the acquisition of the poison to the removal of the furniture.

But the Leeds specialist Mr Scattergood admitted there was not enough strychnine in poor James Watson's stomach to have killed him, and no one saw Lizzie administer it.

The quality of her defence was lamentable, probably because her brief was allowed less than a day to acquaint himself with her case.

What furniture had Lizzie been entitled to claim as her own? Why had she never been charged with theft if she had made off with goods that belonged to someone else? And why had the lodger George Smith disappeared into thin air?

But by her fate, if not her crime, her name is inextricably linked with Britain's most notorious mass-murderess as that morning the Gainford poisoner was buried in an unmarked grave in Durham Gaol immediately to the right of where Mary Ann Cotton – the most notorious poisoner in British history – had been laid two years earlier.

There are even greater question marks hanging over the execution of Michael Gilligan, who is believed to have direct descendants still in Darlington.

Portland Place, Darlington, by the traffic lights with Bondgate. The upper windows of the building in the centre are supposed to be the attic where Michael Gilligan's widow lived after his execution. Picture: Google StreetViewAs the clock neared 8am that day his wife took her rosary beads and climbed the stairs to the attic of their home at No 1, Portland Place, at the top of Bondgate.

For Irish immigrants, it was a large house. Perhaps, as Gilligan was described in court as a quiet, thoughtful man, he was more than just an uneducated rogue, or perhaps the property acted as lodgings for the Fenians who flitted from one town to another.

There in the Portland Place attic, Mrs Gilligan prayed as, in the name of justice, she was made a widow, her husband – himself comforted by a priest – submitting to the executioner without a struggle.

For much of the remainder of her life Mrs Gilligan stayed up there, a recluse until she died aged 82 in 1935.

It has been said by descendants that the state came to recognise it had wrongly executed her husband and she was offered compensation. She turned it down, too proud to take it and wise enough to know that however much money it was, it could not bring back the hanged man she loved.