Along with all other Western democracies except the United States, Britain no longer uses the death penalty; it was abolished for all crimes except treason in 1971. It seems likely that Albert Pierrepoint, the man who executed more criminals in Britain than any other hangman, would not have minded losing his part-time job.
For the Pierrepoints Execution was a Family Business
Albert Pierrepoint followed in the footsteps of his father Henry and his uncle Tom, both of whom held the post of Official Executioner in Britain. In his 1974 autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint, he wrote that he believed “I was chosen by a higher power for the task which I took up, that I was put on this earth especially to do it.”
In 1932, he applied for and was appointed to the position of Assistant Executioner.
Pierrepoint made his living as a delivery man being paid about three dollars to assist at an execution. He became Chief Executioner in 1940.
Execution of Nazi War Criminals
At the end of the Second World War Pierrepoint was called upon to perform his duties in Germany. The Pierrepoint Collection says “he was responsible for executing around two hundred Nazi war criminals including the ‘Beast of Belsen,’ Josef Kramer.”
In a report in The Guardian (March 31, 2006) Marcel Berlins writes that Pierrepoint hanged “Irma Grese, the cruellest woman concentration camp guard of them all.” She was one of 13 Nazis he executed on the same day.
It was Pierrepoint who ended the life of William Joyce, the British traitor whose propaganda broadcasts in English on behalf of Hitler earned him the sobriquet Lord Haw-Haw.
Pierrepoint a Quiet and Unassuming Man
Pierrepoint gave up the delivery business in favour of running a pub called Help the Poor Struggler close to Manchester. It is said that the irony of the pub's name would not have been lost on Pierrepoint.
His reputation was of a man who took his work as an executioner very seriously. His hangings were described as quick, humane, and dignified.
The Pierrepoint Collection comments: “Never the showman he refused all offers of TV appearances and viewed his role as a necessary part in the machinery of justice but one that should be performed with dispassionate respect.”
He hated talking about his part-time occupation and it was several years before he told his wife Anne about what he was up to on those occasions when he spent a night away from home.
Hangman Thought Death Penalty Pointless
While he practiced his craft, Pierrepoint never made any comment about his views on the appropriateness of the death penalty.
However, in his autobiography, which came out after capital punishment was abolished in Britain, he commented on its use. As someone who had been with the condemned at their last moments he said that the prospect of being executed “did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.”
He, thereby, self-defined his part-time occupation, from which he retired in 1956, as futile. Pierrepoint died in 1992.
See also: Execution by Hanging
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