MEGAscene • Issue 3 November 2015
SA PARANORMAL
Words and Photos by Allen Tiller A siren mourned woefully at 8am in the north-west end of Adelaide city, marking the moment of the final throes of life of executed man, Glen Sabre Valance at Her Majesty’s Adelaide Gaol. This was the 45th execution within the gaol walls, and the last hanging undertaken inside the gaol. Forty-four men and one woman lost their lives via hanging in the gaol for various crimes since the establishment of the gaol in 1841. From 1841 until 1988, The Adelaide Gaol held over 300,000 prisoners and was Australia’s longest serving continuous gaol. It housed men, women and children, and sometimes lunatics. The first Governor was William Baker Ashton, who was actually appointed two years before the gaol opened. William and his wife Charlotte The Adelaide Gaol (who acted as the Gaol Matron until 1850) had 6 children, with three of them being born during their time at the gaol. Adelaide Gaol, Elizabeth Woolcock. In 1854, William, a very large man, died unexpectedly in the upstairs office of the gaol. The narrow staircase could not accommodate the size of his dead body, so he had to be lowered down through a window to the ground below. Another infamous character of the Old Adelaide Gaol is the resident hangman, Mr Benjamin Ellis. Ellis acted as executioner for 10 years at the gaol, and lived onsite at the time to help protect his identity. Not much is known about the man, except that he was very good at his job, and undertook it in a precise and serious manner. His lodgings were directly underneath the female dormitories, where he is said to haunt until this day.
Mrs Woolcock had been found guilty of poisoning her husband with mercury and sentenced to death. There are to this day, many who claim she was not guilty of the crime, but that did not stop her execution on December 30th 1873. The second hanging, and possibly Ellis’ last, was that of Charles Strietman in 1877. Ellis went about his work in the serious manner that he always conducted his business, but for some reason, on this occasion, he forgot to secure the man’s ankles and feet. When Strietman fell through the trap door, his feet hit the trap, and he was able to pull himself back up onto the platform. One of the 13 witnesses present then pushed Strietmens legs off the trap, until he fell and hung. It was reported in the newspapers the following day that it then took Strietman over 23 minutes before he died from hanging.
Ellis would eventually leave his profession after two hangings that haunted him. The first was the only hanging of a female in the Ellis, who is described as an ugly man with a 54