Hanging in Liverpool Walton was Liverpool's second major prison and was built between 1850 and 1854 on the then fashionable Panopticon (radial) principle. It was designed by Messrs. Charles Peirce and J. Weightman and constructed in Hornby Road, Liverpool with an initial capacity for 1,000 inmates. It took both male and female prisoners, who had been sentenced at the Liverpool Assizes, and was one of the largest and most modern prisons in England in its day. The gallows at Walton. Strangely for a few years, both Walton and Kirkdale prisons had execution sheds and it would seem shared the same gallows which was transported between them. After the failure of the trapdoors to open at the hanging of John Lee at Exeter in 1885, the Home Office commissioned Lieutenant Colonel Alton Beamish to design a standard gallows for use throughout the country. This consisted of two uprights with a cross beam in 8 inch section oak. The beam was long enough to execute three prisoners side by side and was set over a 12 foot long by 4 foot wide two leaf trap set level with the surrounding floor. The trapdoors were made from three inch thick oak and were released by a metal lever set into the floor of the execution chamber. This was a great improvement over some of the older designs and considerably speeded up the execution process. The first person to die on the new style "step free" gallows was Matthew William Chadwick on the 15th of April 1890 at Kirkdale. It is widely reported that 26 year old American born Florence Maybrick, who had been condemned for poisoning her husband, heard the gallows being erected and tested at Walton in 1889 and was greatly distressed by the sounds. However, she never got to see it as she was reprieved four days before her execution date. From 1892, the gallows remained at Walton and later a standard execution facility was constructed within I wing, containing the condemned cell and the gallows, which was to remain in use until 1964. Hangmen at Walton. James Berry carried out the first execution here, and was then succeeded by the Billington family who between them accounted for the next 15 executions. Like the Pierrepoints, they were very much a "family firm."

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