Murder on November 16th

"Never open the door to the lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it"

Abraham Levine was an elderly jeweler who owned a small shop called the Albion Watch Depot in Leeds city centre. About 10am on 16th November 1949 two men entered his shop and produced guns and demanded money. Mr. Levine tackled the two robbers and grabbed the younger of the two by the collar. He was forced to release him as he was struck several times by the butt of a revolver. Two shots were fired and the assailants ran across Albion Street firing as they went. Levine staggered out of the shop onto the pavement where he collapsed. He was taken to Leeds Infirmary and despite his critical injuries he managed to give an account of the robbery. Later that evening he was also able to give the police a description of the attackers. However he eventually succumbed to the wounds he received and he died the following afternoon from what turned out to be a stomach wound..

West Yorkshire police initiated a widespread search for the attackers and secured the co-operation of surrounding forces in the investigation. Meanwhile a post mortem held at Leeds University Hospital under Professor C.J. Poulson found that the bullet that killed Abraham Levine was a .31 cattle killer bullet and that it had probably been fired from a .38 revolver. These findings were linked to a theft from Linsley's gunshop (Albion Street) of four revolvers and ammunition that had occurred earlier that month .

The extra police from the West Riding and from Bradford were given the following descriptions to assist in their search for the two men. They were described as being from 20 to 25 years of age, between 5ft 7" and 5ft 9" in height, one slightly taller than the other, clean shaven, of average build, both wearing fawn raincoats, with ordinary suits underneath, and no hats.

On Friday morning 18th November Detective Inspector Booth and Detective Booth of Southport CID spoke to two youths who had been picked up for loitering. Asked for their names and addresses the youths stated that they were Walter Sharpe,a surgical boot maker aged 19, of Brooklands Close, Seacroft, Leeds and Gordon Lannen, aged 17, of Throstle Lane, Middleton, Leeds. The fact that they were from Leeds immediately aroused suspicions and when they were questioned further, Lannen indicated that they knew details of the Leeds murder. Lannen, was interviewed separately and stated that

Lannen then said that they had burnt their raincoats and thrown the two revolvers a Colt and a Webley together with ammunition into a river near Southport. Faced with this admission and the fact that Sharpe was found to have ammunition in his jacket pocket, police were convinced that they had found the murderer's of Abraham Levine. The two youths were returned to Leeds by train but a hostile crowd outside the main police station forced the police to hold the two in a suburban police station until they appeared for their remand hearing the following day.

"Two men who were arrested at Southport yesterday will be charged at Leeds magistrates Court today with the murder of Mr. Harry Levine, who was shot in his jeweller's shop in Albion Street, Leeds on Wednesday. The two men were arrested by a detective constable of the Southport Borough Police who saw them in Cambridge Road, Southport"

On 9th March 1950 they both appeared at Leeds Assizes before Mr. Justice Streatfield. At the trial, Lannen (left on the above photograph) pleaded guilty against the advice of his counsel but Justice Streatfield ordered that a plea of not guilty be entered. Their defence was that the guns had gone off accidentally in the struggle with the shopkeeper. Sharpe incidentally had admitted the theft of the guns from the gun-shop. Sharpe's counsel also pointed out that Sharpe had been influenced in his actions by frequently watching violent movies at the cinema. The jury was not at all convinced by the defence and took just twenty minutes to find both men guilty of murder. Sentence was passed first on Lannen

Lannen was then removed from the dock and then Justice Streatfield went through the prescribed ritual of sentencing Sharpe to death. The judge then commended Detective Greenwood of Southport police who had arrested the two killers and the three Leeds men who had pursued them knowing that the two were armed.

Sharpe was hanged at Armley Jail, Leeds on 30th March 1950, twenty days after the sentence was passed. He was the last person to be hanged in the old execution shed that was on "A" Wing. Lannen for his part served less than eight years in custody before he was released. I do not know any details of his life after his release.

Age:-	20
Occupation	Surgical Bootmaker
Date of Execution:-	Thursday, 30th March, 1950
Location of Execution:-	Leeds
Hangman:-	Steve Wade
Assistant:-	Harry Allen
Tried At:-	Leeds
Trial Dates:-	9th - 10th March, 1950
Trial Judge:-	Mister Justice Streatfeild
Crime:-	Murder
Victim:-
Name:-	Abraham Harry Levine
Age:-	49
Location of Murder:-	132 Albion Street, Leeds
Date of Murder:-	Wednesday, 16th November, 1949 (Died Thursday, 17th November, 1949)
Method of Murder:-	Battered/Shot
Relationship to Killer:-	None

Incidentally Walter Sharpe was one of eighteen men who were executed in 1950. The most famous execution of the year took place three weeks prior to Sharpe's in Pentonville Prison when Timothy John Evans was executed for the murder of his wife and daughter in 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. He was later given a posthumous pardon after it was later shown that the murder was carried out by John Reginald Christie.

Period in office - 1941 - 1955
A Doncaster Motor Coach dealer, Wade first applied for the post when he left the army in 1918. Told he was too young at 21 for the post, he made successive applications before he was eventually accepted in 1940. Steve Wade worked initially as an assistant to Tom and Albert Pierrepoint but in March 1946 he replaced Tom as the hangman for Durham prison and the following year was appointed as number one hangman at Armley prison. He eventually succeeded Albert Pierrepoint as the chief executioner in 1955 but a combination of ill-health and a temporary moratorium on executions led to an early retirement in 1956. He died in December of that year aged 59. In total, Wade assisted on 31 occasions and carried out 28 executions in his own right. His last "job" incidentally was that of Alec Wilkinson whom he and Robert Stewart hanged at Armley jail, Leeds on the 12th August 1955.

Period in office - 1941 - 1964
After Albert Pierrepoint's resignation in 1956 Steve Wade and Harry Allen took over the job as joint Chief Executioners. However business was slowing down with a general reduction in hangings partially due to the Homicide Act of 1957. Allen performed 29 executions and assisted at around 40 others. He also worked in Cyprus on a number of occasions.
Perhaps his most controversial case was that of James Hanratty who was convicted of the A6 murder and hanged at Bedford prison on the 4th of April 1962. Allen's last job was the hanging of Gwynne Owen Evans at Strangeways Prison at 8.00 a.m. on the 13th of August 1964, whilst his accomplice, Peter Anthony Allen, was suffering the same fate at Walton. Allen and Evans were the last men to be hanged in Britain.

Since 1850 all judicial executions in England have used what is known as the long drop method of hanging that was devised to give the recipient a more humane death. The long drop method was designed to break the prisoners' neck by allowing them to fall a pre-determined distance and then be brought up with a sharp jerk by the rope. At the end of the drop the body is still accelerating under the force of gravity but the head is constrained by the noose which delivers a massive blow to the back and one side of the neck which combined with the downward momentum of the body, breaks the neck and ruptures the spinal cord causing instant deep unconsciousness and rapid death. The later use of the brass eyelet in the noose tended to break the neck with more certainty. Due to its position under the angle of the left jaw, the head is snapped backward with such force that the posterior aspect of the foramen magnum cuts the spinal cord superior to the top vertebra and just a little inferior to the brain stem.
The accurately measured and worked out drop removed most of the prisoner's physical suffering and made the whole process far less traumatic for the officials who now had to witness it in the confines of the execution cell instead of in the open air.
The drop given in the nineteenth century was usually between 4 & 10 feet depending on the weight and strength of the prisoner. The weight used to calculate the correct drop is that of the prisoner's body, less an allowance of 14 lbs. for the weight of the head. Up to 1933 the length of drop was calculated to provide a final "striking" force of approximately 1260 lbs. force which combined with the positioning of the eyelet caused fracture and dislocation of the neck usually at the 2nd and 3rd or 4th and 5th cervical vertebrae. This is the classic "hangman's fracture". The length of the drop was worked out by the formula 1260 foot pounds divided by the body weight of the prisoner in pounds = drop in feet. After 1933 other factors were also taken into account and the drop was reduced to give a force of around 1000 lbs. The Home Office issued a rule restricting all drops to between 5 and 8 feet as this had been found an adequate range.