THE BALLAD OF HERBERT LEONARD MILLS
Hanged in Lincoln Prison aged 18, in December 1952

Nottingham that city,
By the swirling River Trent.
Nottingham folks – are kind and decent enough
But some lives seem cursed and bent.

This tale of a eighteen-year-owd Nottin’ham lad.
Is a sad little story but true.
For they hung him up by the neck until dead
Back in 1952.

For we have lived the cruel and bitter times
Year when laws were trying hard to match the crimes
Match the mindless cruelty, the violence, the futility
With indifference to the misery left behind

He was born club-footed was Herbert.
He alus’ did limp when he walked
But for a kid from The Meadows, left school at fourteen
He sounded quite posh when he talked.

Herbert was dead set on being a poet
Like Shelley and Keats,   or The Bard
But when you can’t walk proper, and talk a bit different
Down The Meadows, your life can get hard.

For we have lived the cruel and bitter times
Those were the years when laws tried hard to match the crimes
Match the mindless cruelty, the violence, the futility
With indifference to the misery left behind

He were in’t pictures the night he met Mabel
There in the flicks in the dark
They made a date to see each other
They would meet at the gates of the park.

But Mabel was thirty years older
Though dolled up on that evening so warm
I reckon in’t long grass of the allotments
Young Herbert just couldn’t perform.

I’m guessing, but perhaps she said something
That filled him with anger and shame.
He strangled Mabel, told rozzers he’d just found a body
Acting like it all was some daft game.

And we have lived the cruel and bitter times
Year when laws were trying hard to match the crimes
Match the mindless cruelty, the violence, the futility
With indifference to the misery left behind

Herbert then sold his story to the News of the Screws
And when all that money was gone.
He called up their top crime reporter
And confessed to the killing he’d done

But Herbert said he were this great master criminal
A bloke with a reet evil plan
So they wheeled out the pantomime of judges and lawyers
And they all condemned the young man.

For we have lived the cruel and bitter times
Year when laws were trying hard to match the crimes
Match the mindless cruelty, the violence, the futility
With indifference to the misery left behind

Albert Pierrepoint was the master hangman
For twas Albert that hanged the great dope
And Herbert’s young heart it stopped beating after
Half an hour on the end of a rope.