Last execution in Inverness takes place in 1908
ARMY deserter Joseph Hume was executed at Inverness Prison in March after being convicted of the murder of Lhanbryde road contractor John Smith.
The 25-year-old had battered his elderly victim during a robbery at his home the previous September.
Although a petition, urging the death sentence be reduced to life imprisonment, was signed by 7000 people and supported by various MPs, the Secretary for Scotland decided a reprieve could not be granted.
The executioner was Henry Pierrepoint, from Huddersfield, the first of a brief dynasty of chief executioners.
On the morning of his execution, Hume wrote some farewell letters to friends, having written to his mother and brother the previous night, and ate a substantial breakfast of fish and egg. He declined to confess to the crime.
An official account of the execution by depute town clerk George Smith Laing stated: "Hume walked steadily along the corridors. At the steps to the scaffold platform, he slightly faltered and was assisted by the warders.
"He stood erect on the platform and said, 'Goodbye father. Don't blindfold me.'
"He seemed to get overcome on the scaffold by thoughts of the dreadful fate that was about to overtake him. The executioner dispensed with the precaution of strapping the legs of the prisoner together.
"Hume was about to collapse when Pierrepoint with quick and unerring certainty pulled the white cowl over the prisoner's head and almost at the same instant pressed the lever behind."
The account concluded that death was painless and instant.
It turned out to be the last execution in Inverness.
