Though it’s hard to believe that huge crowds often turned up to watch executions it is without dispute that they most certainly did.

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When Samuel Bonsall, William Bland and John Hulme were hanged for murder in 1843, the Derby Mercury estimated that around 35,000 to 40,000 people were in attendance. In fact, so many people wanted to attend that special trains had to be laid on to accommodate the crowds arriving from places such as Belper and Chesterfield. The execution of George Smith – who had murdered his own father in 1861 - is thought to have attracted an even larger crowd.

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The crowd of 20,000 people who watched the execution of Richard Thorley in 1862 was therefore not considered to have been that large of a crowd. There was, however, something ultimately significant about this execution – it was Derby’s last ever public execution.

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Twenty-six-year-old Thorley had been born in Leather Bottle Yard off Osmaston Street – now Osmaston Road. Receiving very little education and put to work from an early age, Thorley found labouring work in the foundries. The work helped him develop a good physique which, in turn, led to him trying his hand at boxing and prize fighting.

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His fighting earned him something of a notorious reputation – whether he was in the actual fight or not. In 1858, when constables tried to break up a prize fight between William Tarr and Henry Smith, they found themselves assailed by part of the watching crowd. The crowd included Thorley who was arrested and given the choice of being fined 10s plus costs or facing a month’s imprisonment. The Sergeant of the constables very presciently described Thorley as the ‘most violent man of the lot.’

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Though Thorley eventually married – a marriage that seems to have had a positive effect on him – his wife died early, and this preceded a spiralling demise full of public houses and heavy drinking.

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The other player in this tragic tale was Eliza Morrow – a young mill worker. Eliza had known Thorley and his wife for quite some time. She had often visited them and continued to visit Thorley after the death of his wife. Ultimately, they ended up in a ‘relationship’.

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It was a volatile relationship at best and a relationship that Thorley thought was more serious than Eliza did. A friend of Eliza’s – Ann Webster – would later describe her as a ‘single woman’.

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Thorley, however, was a very jealous man and often argued with Eliza if her saw her talking to other men – oblivious to the fact that she had every right to do so. In particular, he was angered by an Irish soldier that Eliza had regularly been seen speaking to on Ford Street. At one point, he even challenged to him a fight but given Thorley’s reputation the soldier wisely declined.

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By the time February 13, 1862 came around, Thorley had been on a drinking spree that had lasted for several days. With what would turn out to be a lethal combination of alcohol and jealousy inside him, he made a decision that would ultimately end up with him on the gallows – to go and see Eliza.

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Standing outside her window shouting, he demanded to know whether she had the soldier in bed with her, but receiving no satisfactory reply, he stormed home. At home he collected a razor and then returned once more.

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Upon his return, multiple witnesses observed him to be talking with Eliza. One of the witnesses – ten-year-old Charles Wibberly – described how he firstly saw them talking but then observed Thorley with his arms around Eliza’s neck. Charles – along with his ‘playfellows’ - was asked by Thorley what they wanted and had run away thinking he would come after them.

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They’d returned very shortly after to see Thorley banging Eliza hard against the shutters of a house and recalled hearing her screams. Wibberly went on to describe that he saw Eliza stagger across the yard and fall to the ground with Thorley falling on top of her before he immediately got up and ran away. When Charles glanced at the shutters he saw that they were covered in blood. As Eliza was taken into the house by some neighbours, he heard her say: “Lord have mercy upon my soul” shortly before she died.

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Charles himself had bravely run after Thorley whilst shouting for the police, but Thorley escaped and ran all the way to the Old Spa Inn on Abbey Street – a regular drinking haunt of his.

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Thomas Chapman – the landlord – observed that he was ‘very much agitated’ and his face was 'all over blood’. When he asked Thorley what was wrong with him, Thorley replied that he’d been in “an Irish row” at The Abbey Public House. Noticing Thorley’s hand was bound with a handkerchief he’d enquired about that and was told by Thorley that he’d ‘cut it with a glass.’

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Thorley stayed less than half an hour before leaving and when he did leave, he said a very solemn goodbye to everyone in the pub and Chapman described how that ‘from his manner we thought that there was something the matter.’

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Thorley was ultimately apprehended in the Canal Street area by Detective Sergeant Vessey. When Vessey approached him and spoke to Thorley, telling him that Eliza was dead and he was to be charged with her murder, he immediately confessed to the crime saying: “I’ve done it – I can’t help it now, I am sorry.”  The now-arrested Thorley was then taken to the Lock-Up off the Corn Market before being transferred to the gaol in Vernon Street.

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There was no dispute at the trial that Thorley had murdered Eliza though his defence did try to argue that the offence should be manslaughter contending that ‘the number of wounds showed that the perpetrator was not acting coolly and deliberately’ and was, in effect, in a fervour and frenzy. However, the judge – Mr Justice Williams – advised the jury that this was not a crime of passion but a simple cold-blooded murder.

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With this advice, Thorley’s fate was sealed and he was duly found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on April 11, 1862. In the time in between sentencing and the execution itself Thorley was described as being ‘prepared to meet his ignominious fate, and is understood to be perfectly satisfied with the justice of his sentence’.

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On Thorley’s last day, he rose early and, alongside the Rev. R. Robinson, prayed earnestly before attending the condemned service in the prison chapel at half past nine. Immediately after twelve noon, he walked onto the scaffold. Standing to the left of the beam, he raised his eyes to heaven and offered earnest prayers that begged for forgiveness before walking up two steps under the beam. With the rope placed around his neck, the bolt was withdrawn and Thorley was launched into eternity as the last person ever to be publicly executed in Derby.