for clemency. O'Meagher Condon's sentence was commuted on the eve of his execution. Execution A crowd estimated at 8,000–10,000 gathered outside the walls of Salford Gaol on the evening of 22 November 1867 to witness the public execution of the three convicted men the following morning. A platform had been built about above ground, through the outside wall of the jail facing New Bailey Street, to support the gallows. The spectators were "well supplied by the gin palaces of Deansgate and the portable beer and coffee stalls". According to Father Gadd, one of the three Catholic priests who attended to the men: The authorities took considerable pains to discourage any rescue attempt. Over 2,500 regular and special police were deployed in and around the prison, augmented by a military presence which included a detachment of the 72nd Highlanders and a squadron of the Eighth Hussars. All traffic in and out of the city was stopped. The Times newspaper reported that by the time the hangings took place, shortly after 8:00 am, "the mob were quiet and orderly", in contrast to the previous night and early morning. The executioner, William Calcraft, was the most famous of the 19th century, but was reportedly nervous of executing Fenians, because of threats he had received. He was also "particularly incompetent", and was "notoriously unable to calculate the correct length of rope required for each individual hanging; he frequently had to rush below the scaffold to pull on his victim's legs to hasten death". Most accounts claim that Allen died almost instantaneously from a broken neck, but Larkin and O'Brien were not so fortunate. Father Gadd reported that: Father Gadd refused to allow Calcraft to dispatch O'Brien in the same way, and so "for three-quarters of an hour the good priest knelt, holding the dying man's hands within his own, reciting the prayers for the dying. Then the long drawn out agony ended." The bodies of the three men were buried in the New Bailey Prison graveyard, from which they were transferred to Strangeways Prison Cemetery when New Bailey Prison closed in 1868. In 1991 their remains were among those of 63 executed who were exhumed from Strangeways following rebuilding work, cremated and reinterred at Blackley Cemetery in Manchester. Aftermath Most of the British press had demanded "retribution swift and stern", not just because the men were Irish, but because they were Fenians; "the public