Wandsworth prison: A colourful and cold past

Cold and intimidating, Wandsworth Prison has stood for more than 150 years, its faded Victorian frontage giving little away as to the goings-on inside.

Wandsworth Prison: Facts and stats

Through its dark doors have passed every walk of life. It has been a temporary home for a raft of notables - including Oscar Wilde and the assassin of Martin Luther King - and a final home for 135 people executed there.

During the wars it was sequestered by the military and it has been at the heart of at least two films - Let Him Have It, the story of David Bentley, who was wrongly executed for murdering a policeman in the 50s, and Pierrepoint, a portrait of Albert Pierrepoint, the most prolific British hangman of the 20th century.

Ronnie Kray served time there in the 50s and Frank Bruno, Elton John and Michael Parkinson have also been inside - albeit as visitors.

Before an execution, a prisoner's weight was taken and calculated into a formula to ensure the prisoner's death was as humane as possible. The inmate's weight determined the speed at which the prisoner dropped.

Trap doors below the condemned opened and the drop, stopped only by the length of rope, caused the rope to sharply tighten around the neck, snapping the spine between the second and third vertebra.

In Wandsworth, the first execution was that of Thomas Smithers, the Battersea Murderer, on October 8, 1878. The Reverend John Pitkin was working at the jail at the time. He recalled: "A sense of gloom pervaded all the corridors and wards of the prison.

"The prisoners heard the tolling of the bell, and imagined all that was taking place in the courtyard below. The death sentence was carried out without a hitch and the lifeless body, after a coroner's inquest, was buried within the precincts of the prison."

The only woman to be executed was Catherine Webster after murdering her elderly boss in 1879. Today she is known as the "grey lady" and some believe she still haunts the prison.

During the First World War a number of so-called deserters were executed, but the execution of spies was more expedient during the Second World War.

The famous German propoganda broadcaster Lord Haw-Haw was executed at Wandsworth and one German spy, Karl Richter, saw the gallows and put up a fight with Pierrepoint after slipping out of one of his wrist straps.

Richter was eventually overpowered and executed and Pierrepoint was given the strap as a souvenir - during his career he was estimated to have executed 433 men and 17 women, including 200 Nazi war criminals after World War II.

In 1949 John Haigh, the "acid bath murderer" was executed after being convicted of dumping one victim in sulphuric acid to destroy evidence.

About 1,000 protesters massed at the prison the morning of Bentleys' execution on January 28, 1953.

Controversially, Bentley was executed for his part in the murder of police officer Sidney Miles. His accomplice, who actually shot Miles, was Christopher Craig. Craig was only 16 - too young to be executed.

In 1993 Bentley was pardoned for the sentence - 40 years too late - and today the famous double-meaning in the "let him have it Chris" is still controversial.