The dark history of the hangman's noose looms large over Birmingham’s Winson Green Prison. Crime Files delves into the archives to look at some of those to meet their end at the gallows.

1. WHEN Henry Kimberley inched his way to the gallows at Winson Green on March 17, 1885, to face executioner James Berry, he was about to become a sad footnote in the history books.

Kimberley was the first person to face capital punishment in the Victorian jail.

A report in the Birmingham Daily Post the following day said the event “acquired greater interest than commonly attaches to the hangmen’s duties” because it was the first execution in the borough since the beginning of the century, when capital punishment was inflicted publicly.

Three months earlier, Kimberley was arrested for the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s best pal.

At the end of 1884, the screw-tool maker had split up with his lover Harriet Stewart.

Boiling with rage, he confronted Harriet two days after Christmas at the White Hart pub in Paradise Street, where she was staying with her best friend, Emily Palmer.

Newspaper reports at the time said Kimberley had gone to the pub to try and win her back round but when she refused he pulled out a revolver and shot her at point-blank range. Amazingly, the shot did not kill Harriet, but her friend Mrs Palmer. She was hit in the neck by a second shot as she tried to defend her.

When Mrs Palmer died on January 8, 1885, Kimberley was charged with her murder.

A report said the hanging took place at 8am, adding: “But at a considerably early hour a crowd had assembled outside the gaol and as time wore on, and the fatal moment more nearly approached, there were many additions to the assemblage, until at the hoisting of the black flag it was estimated that there were at least 15,000 persons present.”

All they saw was a “grim-looking bunch of black bunting” which was unfurled when the sentence was carried out.