I have to admit, when I first saw the file for
this, for this deep dive, I actually thought
it was a typo. I can see why. I mean, we look
at a lot of strange history, but statistically,
this just shouldn't exist. You have a machine
designed for one thing. To be infallible. Exactly.
To end a life efficiently, and it fails not once.
Not twice. But three times, all in the span of,
what, 20 minutes? It sounds like an urban legend,
doesn't it? I mean, if you wrote this in a movie
script, the studio would send it back and say,
come on, make it believable. Right, because in
Victorian England, they didn't really do mistakes
with this stuff. It was a science. It was a cold,
calculated engineering process. The executioner
we're going to talk about, James Berry, he thought
of himself as a man of science. Right, he had
formulas for the drop length and all that. Exactly,
based on weight, height. So for the machine to
just... blink three times. It goes beyond a simple
malfunction. It becomes, you know, folklore.
And that is exactly what we are unpacking today.
We're doing a deep dive into the life and the
just incredibly stubborn survival of John Henry
George Lee. Better known as John Babacombe Lee.
Or even better, the man they could not hang.
It's a title that has stuck for, what, over a
century now? But what I love about this story
is that when you peel back the The miracle part
of it, you find this amazing cross -section of
Victorian justice, bad engineering, and a really
surprising second act that most people just don't
know about. Oh, that's the part I'm most excited
to get to. The where are they now part of this
story is just wild. It is. But before we get
to the gallows, we have to talk about the man
himself. Because usually when you hear a story
like this, you kind of assume the person was
innocent, right? That's the go -to narrative,
isn't it? God saved him because he was innocent.
Yeah. But the reality here is a lot. Much murkier.
Much murkier. To get why he was there in the
first place, we have to go back to 1884. We're
in Babacombe Bay near Torquay. In Devon, right.
Beautiful coastal area. Beautiful, quiet. And
John Lee is a 20 -year -old footman working for
an elderly woman named Emma Keys. And this wasn't
exactly a happy household from what I've read.
No, it was tense. Emma Keys was wealthy. She
was religious, very strict. And Lee was. Well,
Lee was a bit of a loose cannon. Okay. He'd been
in the Royal Navy but was discharged. And he
had a history of theft. He'd actually done time
for stealing silverware from a previous employer.
So he's already got a rap sheet. Not a good look.
Not at all. And then on the morning of November
15, 1884, the house is found on fire. And when
the smoke clears? They find Emma Keyes. And it
wasn't the fire that killed her. She'd been brutally
murdered. Her throat was cut. She had head wounds.
It was an incredibly violent attack. And the
police probably didn't have to look too far for
a suspect. They didn't look far at all. Lee was
the only male in the house. In 1884, that alone
was practically enough to close the case. But
there was more, right? Oh, yeah. He had an unexplained
cut on his arm. He claimed he got a breaking
a window to get to the fire, but the glass was
found outside the window, not inside. Ugh, the
physics of broken glass. Always a giveaway. Always.
And then there was motive. Kesey had recently
cut his wages, which were already low. And she
was threatening to fire him. So you have a disgruntled
employee with a criminal record of violent temper
opportunity. It's an open and shut case for a
Victorian jury. But I have to ask, was there
any hard evidence? I mean, no DNA, no fingerprints.
It was entirely circumstantial. Nobody saw him
do it. No murder weapon was ever. you know, forensically
linked to him. If you tried that case today,
a good defense lawyer might get reasonable doubt.
But this was 1884. This was 1884. You're the
help. The mistress is dead. You've got a cut
on your arm. You're going down. He was convicted
quickly. Okay. But I think you wanted to flag
something here because it kind of changes how
we view the whole miracle thing. Right. Yeah.
This is really important. In 2021, the BBC has
a show, Murder Mystery and My Family. Oh, I've
seen that. They get modern barristers to re -examine
old cases. That's the one. And they looked at
all the original evidence for John Lee's case.
Their conclusion. The verdict was safe. They
believe he almost certainly did it. So just to
be crystal clear for everyone listening, the
man we are about to see saved by fate is, in
all likelihood, a brutal murderer. That seems
to be the uncomfortable reality, yeah. Which
makes what happens next even more baffling. Completely.
Okay, let's go to the day. February 23rd, 1885.
Exeter Prison. The executioner is James Berry.
He mentioned he was a pro. He was far from some
hooded thug. James Berry was a celebrity in his
own right. He wrote memoirs. He was a businessman.
He prided himself on the quote unquote humane
hand. He was meticulous. Incredibly. So he gets
to Exeter Prison and he checks the equipment
thoroughly. He tests the trap door with sandbags
that weigh the same as Lee. Works perfectly.
The doors swing open. The bags drop. He tests
it again just to be sure. Perfect. So the stage
is set. It's raining. It's cold. They bring Lee
out. He's strapped. The white cap goes over his
head. The noose is adjusted. Yeah. Barry pulls
the lever. Nothing. The bolt draws back with
a thud, but the doors don't fall. They're just
stuck. Solid. Now, in a movie, this is where
the crowd gasps and the governor steps in, but
that's not what happened, is it? Not even close.
It was just chaos. Yeah. The warders are confused.
Lee is still standing there, hooded. Probably
terrified out of his mind, they hustle him off
the trap door. And then they start doing DIY
on the gallows. You're kidding me. While he's
watching. While he's standing a few feet away,
Barry is furious. He's literally stomping on
the doors trying to loosen them. You get an axe
and a saw. A saw? Yes. They are planing down
the edges of the wood, thinking maybe the damp
weather made the timber swell up. That is a level
of psychological torture I just can't process.
You're listening to them saw the machine that's
supposed to kill you. It's horrific. So they
think they fixed it. They test it again without
Lee on it. The doors fall open. Boom. Works fine.
So they put him back on. They put him back on.
Attempt number two. Barry pulls the lever. And
stuck. Again? Again. The doors move maybe an
inch and then just lock up tight. At this point,
the tension must have been just unbearable. Oh,
absolutely. The prison chaplain was apparently
on the verge of fainting. The medical officer
is getting visibly agitated. But the law is the
law. The warrant says hang the man until dead.
So they're going to try again. Believe it or
not, they try a third time. Three times. And
the same result. The trap door refuses to open
when John Lee is standing on it. So what happens?
Finally, the medical officer just steps in and
says, stop. He refuses to let it continue. He
effectively overrules everyone. They take a very
much alive John Lee back to his cell. OK, we
have to pause here and get into the how, because
a trapdoor is not a complicated machine. It's
just hinges and gravity. Right. Why did it work
for the sandbags, but not for John Lee? This
is where the official investigation comes in.
The home office was, you know, deeply embarrassed
by this. So they sent an architect to figure
it out. And what did the architect find? It all
comes down to the drawbar and the frame. See,
the gallows had been moved from the prison infirmary
to the coach house just for this hanging. And
when they reassembled it, the frame was slightly
twisted, just a little out of alignment. Like
when you hang a door badly in your house and
it sticks. Exactly that. It was subtle. So when
the drawbar, the metal bolt holding the doors
up, was pulled, the hinges were supposed to swing
down. But because the frame was warped, The hinges
were binding against the frame. But wait a minute.
Why did the sandbags work? They weighed the same
as Lee. That is the million -dollar question.
And the best theory is about the difference between
live weight and dead weight. Okay. A sandbag
is just dead weight. It sits in the center of
the trapdoor, a compact mass. John Lee was a
person. He was standing, straddling the seam
between the two doors. And he was probably rigid
with terror. Tensing every single muscle. pushing
back with his feet. The theory is that his specific
stance, his rigid posture pushing outward toward
the edges, created just enough extra friction
against that warped frame to lock the whole mechanism.
So his own fear, the act of him tensing up, might
have physically saved his life. It's very likely.
If he'd gone limp or fainted, the weight might
have shifted to the center and the doors would
have dropped. He literally stood his ground against
gravity. That is... That's just wild. It's just
physics, but it feels like something else entirely.
It does. Now, I know there was another theory,
the sabotage theory. That one sounds a lot more
exciting. Oh, it's much more cinematic. This
theory came from a writer named Ernest Bowen
Rawlins. He claimed that another prisoner, one
who helped to build the scaffold, secretly inserted
a small wooden wedge into the mechanism. A wedge,
like a doorstop. Basically, yeah. And the story
goes that this prisoner would slip the wedge
in. only when Lee was on the scaffold and then
secretly pull it out when they were testing it.
That sounds incredibly risky. I mean, Berry and
the sheriff are standing right there. And that's
why most historians reject it. James Berry was
meticulous. The idea that someone could sneak
a wedge in and out three separate times without
being seen, it's highly, highly unlikely. It's
a good story, though. It's a great story. But
the boring truth is probably the right one. It
was the banality of bad carpentry that saved
him. So the execution is called off. Lee's back
in his cell. What happens legally? Can't they
just fix the gallows and try again the next day?
Legally, they could have. The warrant was still
valid. But you have to think about the Victorian
mindset. They could be brutal, but they were
also deeply superstitious and obsessed with public
decency. And three failures in a row looks a
lot like divine intervention. Exactly. The news
spread like wildfire. The public was already
saying it was the hand of God. It would have
been a PR nightmare for the government to drag
him out a fourth time. It would look like they
were fighting God. So the home secretary has
to step in. Sir William Harcourt, yes. He commutes
the sentence to life imprisonment. He basically
says, look, we tried to kill him. It didn't work.
Let's just lock him up forever. And so Lee goes
to prison for a long, long time. 22 years. He
was a modern prisoner, apparently. And he keeps
petitioning for his release, year after year,
arguing he already paid for his crime on the
scaffold. And eventually, they let him go. Finally,
in 1907, the government gives in. They release
him. Okay, and this is where the story usually
ends, right? John Lee was released and faded
into obscurity. But that's not what happened
at all. Not even close. This is where the story
gets its second wind. For decades, everyone thought
he died poor in a workhouse in Tavistock during
World War II. It was a neat, tragic ending. But
that was wrong. Completely wrong. About 20 years
ago, a couple of researchers, Holgate and Waugh,
really started digging. And they found out John
Lee didn't fade away. He went on tour. He did.
He cashed in on his fame. He was the man they
could not hang. He gave lectures, stood on stage,
and told his story over and over. He made money.
There was even a silent film made about him.
Talk about monetizing your trauma. You said it.
But then around 1911, he does disappear from
the British records. And this is where the new
research dropped the bombshell. He didn't die
in a workhouse. He got on a boat. And where did
he go? The United States. He didn't just visit.
He settled. Let me guess. New York. Los Angeles.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Get out of here. Milwaukee.
Of all the places for a Victorian folk legend
to end his days. He left his wife and kids behind
in England, which is a whole other side to his
character, and started a completely new life
in the American Midwest under the name James
Lee. Did anyone there know who he was? It seems
like almost nobody knew. He worked for an automotive
company, lived a quiet life. He was just this
old British guy with a past he didn't talk about.
This blows my mind. He's living in Milwaukee
through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression,
World War II. He lived until 1945. He was 80
years old when he died. Think about that. He
was born in the age of public hangs and he died
in the age of the atomic bomb. And they actually
found his grave. They did in 2009. He's buried
in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, it's confirmed.
Yeah. The man who was supposed to die at 20.
lived another 60 years because a wooden frame
was twisted by a few millimeters it really recontextualizes
him he's not just a victim of fate he's a survivor
and maybe a bit of a con man too leaving his
family behind to start over it definitely complicates
the simple folk hero narrative and yet popular
culture still loves that narrative the band the
men they couldn't hang, the Fairport Convention
album, Babacombe Lee. We just love the story
of the guy who beat the system. Even if the system
was trying to punish him for a murder he likely
committed. That's the tension, isn't it? If that
trap door had opened, John Lee would just be
a statistic, a name in a dusty ledger. Because
it stuck, he became a legend. It really brings
up an uncomfortable question, and it's what I
want to leave our listeners with today. We've
spent this whole time fascinated by his escape.
We find ourselves rooting for him. Right. You
want him to live. But why? If he really did kill
Emma Keyes, and the evidence suggests he did,
why does surviving the punishment somehow absolve
the crime in our imagination? Why does a simple
mechanical failure feel like a kind of redemption?
That is the ultimate question. Is justice about
the process or the outcome? And when the process
fails so spectacularly, does the original crime
even matter to us anymore? Something for you
to think about next time you have a sticky door
in your house. Just remember... That same simple
physics saved a man's life. And sent him to Milwaukee.
And sent him to Milwaukee. Thanks for diving
deep with us today. Always a pleasure. We'll
catch you on the next one. Stay curious.