davita wroteJoe .....I can tell you must be a prolific writer because of your amazing experience and expressions of life and times.
Did you, perchance, have acqaintance with the Pierrepoint family from Nottingham....
[I]Pierrepoint, who was born in 1905, learned his trade assisting his uncle Tom.
The younger man was never called to carry out any executions at Nottingham because the city's last hanging was on April 10, 1928 – four years before he was first employed as an executioner.
But his father, Henry, founder of the Pierrepoint family dynasty of hangmen, carried out two executions in the city – those of Edward Glynn on August 7, 1906 and Samuel Atherley on December 14, 1909.
Like his son, Henry diligently kept an execution diary, noting details of the victims' names, ages, heights and weights and giving a brief description of the condition of the condemned prisoners' neck – although when Albert started keeping a diary, he dispensed with this detail as he thought it distasteful.
Henry Pierrepoint died in 1922, 10 years before Albert embarked upon the same career. Little did he know that his son would become the most prolific hangman in British history.
Albert is credited with the quickest hanging on record. Assisted by Syd Dernley, he executed James Inglis in only seven seconds on May 8, 1951 at Strangeways Prison in Manchester.
Pierrepoint's first hanging as chief executioner was at Pentonville prison on October 17, 1941, when the condemned man was gangster Antonio "Babe" Mancini.
During the Second World War, Pierrepoint assisted or was the principal hangman when 16 American soldiers were executed at Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset for murder and rape.
After the war, Albert made several visits to Germany and on December 13, 1945, he hanged 13 German war criminals at Hameln jail, including the "Beast of Belsen" Josef Kramer. He is thought to have hanged around 200 Nazis in all.
Other famous cases involved "Lord Haw-Haw" (William Joyce), whom Pierrepoint hanged at Wandsworth prison for treason on January 3, 1946.
John George Haigh, the notorious "acid bath murderer", was also executed on August 10, 1949, also at Wandsworth.
One controversial case in which Pierrepont was the executioner was the hanging of Derek Bentley – a 19-year-old with a mental age of 11 – on January 28, 1953, at Wandsworth, for his part in the murder of a policeman.
Pierrepont also hanged Timothy John Evans on March 9, 1950 at Pentonville for the murder of his wife at 10 Rillington Place – the home of John Reginald Christie. Christie admitted killing seven women in total. He was hanged on July 15, 1953 at Pentonville Prison. In 1966 Evans was granted a posthumous pardon.
On July 13, 1955, at Holloway Prison, Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
Pierrepoint resigned over a disagreement about fees in 1956.
He had gone to Strangeways on a cold day in January 1956 to hang Thomas Bancroft, only to find that Bancroft was reprieved. Pierrepoint claimed the full fee of £15 (around £200 at today's prices), but was offered just £1 in out-of-pocket expenses by the Under-Sheriff of Lancashire. After appealing to the Prison Commission, who refused to get involved, the Under-Sheriff sent him a cheque for £4 in final settlement. But this was a huge insult to his pride in his position as Britain's chief executioner.[/I]
Civil Servants....Gotta luv 'em!
Read more: Hangman executed his duties with noose and hood as tools of trade | Nottingham Post
