[12] A typical account of the cause of his deformity states: "The facial disfigurement was the result of an accident – a kick from a vicious horse, which literally smashed the nose beyond the possibility of repair".

It was said that ladies from upper-class Sydney suburbs "shrank from employing him" because of his facial deformity, and he began to suffer cruel jibes from fellow cabmen, leading to his determination to "change his mode of obtaining a livelihood".

[21][22] In April 1876 Franks was discovered in Hyde Park in a moribund condition; he was taken to the Sydney Infirmary where he died, aged 26 years, from "intermittent fever and debility" brought about by "habits of drunkenness and dissipation".

On the morning of the execution Pitt was brought from his cell, accompanied by the Deputy Sheriff and the attending Anglican minister, and followed by the hangman, William Tucker, and his assistant, Robert Howard.

The offender was arrested and, when his identity and profession was revealed, the police organised for a special court to be held before a justice of the peace so Tucker could be "summarily dealt with so as to enable him to proceed on his business".

After a drinking bout and further socialising, Tucker's "conduct came under the notice of the police, when it was discovered to the horror of those brought in contact with him that the obtrusive visitor was the public executioner of the colony".

In regard to the assistant hangman, Howard, the journalist wrote that his "naturally repulsive appearance was heightened by the absence of any nose", which proved "a very fitting foil" to Tucker's immaculate attire.

[46][33] In the condemned cell, on the morning of the execution, as the hangman and his assistant were securing Newman's elbows with rope, the prisoner whispered to the clergymen who were present: "Don't let them hurt me".

[49][50] In May 1878 Howard travelled to Goulburn for the execution of Ing Chee, a Chinese hawker who had been convicted of the murder of a boarding-house keeper named Li Hock, whose premises also served as a gambling-house.

On April 24 Alexander Medcalf and Charles Gillespie (alias Wilkinson) were convicted in the Bathurst Circuit Court for the rape of 16 year-old Amelia Smith and both young men were sentenced to death.

The article included an unflattering description of Robert Howard: "The hangman, 6ft 2in in height, broad shouldered, spider-legged, with arms like a gorilla, a flat face without a nose, and huge feet, presented a spectacle to be seen nowhere else out of Hades".

The path to the door of his cottage was "over-arched by vines laden with ripening grapes", with Howard describing his garden as "the prettiest... in Paddington – the biggest cabbages and the finest flowers".

The prisoner was shivering violently as he stood on the scaffold erected within Dubbo Gaol; Howard had to support him as the rope was adjusted and the white cap drawn over his face.

[77][79] In early June, a fortnight after the hanging in Dubbo, Howard and his assistant travelled to Tamworth to supervise the execution of Dan King, a Chinese tin-miner, convicted of the murder of Elizabeth ('Lizzie') Hart.

The report of Dan King's execution in the Tamworth News made the following observation: "The whole of the horrible business was conducted with the utmost decorum, and the fearful work of the executioners was done with all the satisfaction possible under the painful circumstances attendant on their duties".

[79] William Brown was a farmer at Yappa Brush within a wide bend of the Manning River called The Bight, opposite Wingham township on the mid-north coast of New South Wales.

[91][41] At the trial on April 4 at the Court of Quarter Sessions at Darlinghurst, evidence presented by Howard's defence counsel highlighted MacLean's "quarrelsome disposition" and his drunken state on the night of the incident.

A woodcutter named George Ruxbourne was arrested several days later at Tamworth, where he was attempting to cash a bank deposit receipt that had been issued to Jimmy Young.

[106] Ruxbourne was tried at the Armidale Circuit Court in April 1883; the jury returned a guilty verdict and he was sentenced to death for the crime described by the judge as "a cold-blooded, deliberate, planned, mercenary murder".

[130] In November 1886 eleven young men were tried for the gang-rape of sixteen year-old Mary Jane Hicks on 9 September 1886, in bushland near the suburb of Waterloo (a location known as Mount Rennie).

The report of the incident in the Evening News cited the case as an example of the "larrikin nuisance" occurring at Bondi, carried out by young men "whose numbers and audacity seem to increase and grow in exact proportion to the laxity of the police supervision".

In Howard's case his assailants appeared to "have a prejudice against" the hangman's profession and resented "his having exercised it on some of their friends" (a probable reference to the executions of the Mount Rennie rapists in January 1887).

On September 8 the New South Wales Premier, Sir Henry Parkes, sent a telegram to the Governor, Lord Carington, on a visit to Broken Hill, asking whether he had any intention of exercising the Royal prerogative.

[150] Suspicion was aroused when doctors attending the patient realised that the man's symptoms and manner of death was similar to that of Louisa's first husband, Charles Andrews, who had died in February 1887.

[154][155][156][157] After extensive newspaper coverage of the case over a six-month period, there was widespread public debate regarding the death sentence imposed on Louisa Collins, with arguments both for and against a reprieve.

The condemned man was fitted with a "hobble strap... made fast to each ankle", an innovation introduced by Howard which allowed the prisoner to walk but would prevent the legs from swinging during the drop.

[10] He kept a horse at his Bondi cottage, which was used for drawing a trap in which Howard routinely rode from his home "across the sandhills" to the tram stop, or "drives into town when occasion requires".

[228] In January 1901 Howard and his assistant travelled to Dubbo to carry out the execution of Jacky Underwood, an Aboriginal man who had participated with Jimmy Governor in the murder of four members of the Mawbey family and a schoolteacher named Ellen Kerz at Breelong in the Gilgandra district in July 1900.

[246] Throughout Howard's career journalists were allowed to attend executions in New South Wales, so newspaper accounts of hangings included descriptions of the manner in which the condemned person died.

[249][250] An unsuccessful or bungled hanging culminated in the condemned person dying from asphyxiation, being strangled with their arms pinioned at the end of the rope, a process that could be both painful and prolonged.