Albert Pierrepoint

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This article is about the executioner. For the film, see Pierrepoint (film).
Albert Pierrepoint

Born March 30, 1905(1905-03-30)
North Bierley, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England
Died July 10, 1992 (aged 87)
Southport, Lancashire, England
Occupation Executioner

Albert Pierrepoint (30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) is the most famous member of a Yorkshire family who provided three of Britain's Chief Executioners in the first half of the 20th century. He lived at Clayton, Bradford, Lincoln, Oldham and the Merseyside seaside resort of Southport.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Albert Pierrepoint was by far the most prolific British hangman of the twentieth century. In office between 1932 and 1956, he is credited with having executed an estimated 433 men and 17 women, including six U.S. soldiers at Shepton Mallet and some 200 Nazi war criminals after World War II. Contrary to newspaper articles quoting him as a source, he claimed, in his autobiography, never to have given a precise number of his executions, not even when giving testimony to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment of 1949.

Steve Fielding lists in Appendix 2 of his book[1] 435 executions performed by Albert Pierrepoint, a list for which he claims to have examined the Prison Execution Books (National Archives LPC4) for the majority of prisons in Great Britain. These carry all details on hangmen and assistants. For lack of an official number, Fielding's total therefore seems to be the minimum.

Albert Pierrepoint was born at North Bierley, Bradford, the middle child and eldest son of Henry and Mary Pierrepoint. He was plainly influenced by the side-occupation of his father and uncle: as an 11-year old he wrote, in response to a school "When I grow up..." exercise, "When I leave school I should like to be the Official Executioner..."[2] He spent his school summer holidays at the home of his uncle Tom and aunt Lizzie in Clayton, his own family having moved to Huddersfield when Henry ceased to be an executioner, and he became very close to his uncle. While Tom was away on business, his aunt would allow the boy to read the diary Tom kept of his executions. In 1917, at the age of twelve and a half, he began work at the Marlborough Mills in Failsworth, earning six shillings a week. Following Henry's death in 1922, Pierrepoint took charge of Henry's papers and diaries, which he studied at length. Towards the end of the 1920s he changed his career, becoming a horse drayman for a wholesale grocer, delivering goods ordered through a travelling salesman. In 1930 he learned to drive a car and a lorry to make his deliveries, earning two pounds five shillings (£2.25) a week. On 19 April 1931 Pierrepoint wrote to the Prison Commissioners offering his services as an Assistant Executioner to his uncle should he or any other executioner retire. Within a few days he received a reply that there were currently no vacancies.[3]

In the autumn of 1931 Lionel Mann, an assistant of five years' experience, resigned when his employers informed him that his sideline was affecting his promotion prospects, and Pierrepoint received an official envelope inviting him to an interview at Manchester's Strangeways Prison; his mother Mary, having seen many such envelopes in Henry's time as an executioner, was not happy at her son's career choice. After a week's training course at London's Pentonville Prison, Pierrepoint was added to the List of Assistant Executioners on 26 September 1932. At that time, the assistant's fee was £1 11s 6d (£1.57½) per execution, with another £1 11s 6d paid two weeks later if his conduct and behaviour were satisfactory. Executioners and their assistants were required to be extremely discreet and conduct themselves in a respectable manner, especially avoiding contact with the press.

There were few executions in Britain in the summer and autumn of 1932 and the first execution Pierrepoint attended was in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, on 29 December 1932,[4] when his uncle Thomas was chief executioner at the hanging of Patrick McDermott and engaged his nephew as assistant executioner, even though Pierrepoint had not yet observed a hanging in England and thus, despite being on the Home Office list of approved Assistant Executioners, was not yet allowed to officiate in England. His first execution as chief executioner was that of gangster Antonio Mancini at Pentonville prison, London, on 17 October 1941, who said "Cheerio!" before the trapdoor was sprung.

On 29 August 1943, Pierrepoint married Anne Fletcher, who had run a sweet shop and tobacconists' shop two doors from the grocery shop where he worked, and they set up home at East Street, Newton Heath, Manchester. The couple did not discuss Pierrepoint's "other career" until after he had to travel to Gibraltar in January 1944 to conduct a double execution; although Anne had known about it for many years she refused to ask him about it, waiting for him to discuss the subject.

Following World War II, the British occupation authorities conducted a series of trials of concentration camp staff, and from the initial Belsen Trial eleven death sentences were handed down in November 1945. It was agreed that Pierrepoint would conduct the executions and, on 11 December he flew to Germany for the first time to execute the eleven, plus two other Germans convicted of murdering an RAF pilot in the Netherlands in March 1945. Over the next four years, he was to travel to Germany and Austria 25 times to execute 200 war criminals. The press discovered his identity and he became a celebrity, being hailed as a sort of war hero, meting out justice to the Nazis. The very substantial boost in income provided by the German executions allowed Pierrepoint to leave the grocery business, and he and Anne took over the running of a pub on Manchester Road, Hollinwood, between Oldham and Manchester, named somewhat memorably "Help the Poor Struggler", which allowed for plenty of journalistic puns. He later moved to another pub, the "Rose and Crown" at Hoole, near Preston.

Pierrepoint resigned in 1956 over a disagreement with the Home Office about his fees. In January 1956 he had gone to Strangeways Prison, Manchester, to officiate at the execution of Thomas Bancroft, who was reprieved less than 12 hours before his scheduled execution, when Pierrepoint was already present making his preparations - the first time in his career that this had happened in England. He claimed his full fee of £15 but the under-sheriff of Lancashire offered only £1, as the rule in England was that the executioner was only paid for executions carried out – in Scotland he would have been paid in full. Pierrepoint appealed to his employers, the Prison Commission, who refused to get involved. The under-sheriff sent him a cheque for £4 in full and final settlement of his incidental travel and hotel expenses (Pierrepoint having been unable to return home that day because of heavy snow). The official story is that Pierrepoint's pride in his position as Britain's Chief Executioner was insulted, and he resigned; however, there is evidence that he had already decided to resign, and had previously been in discussion with the editor of the Empire News and Sunday Chronicle for a series "The Hangman's Own Story" revealing the last moments of many of the notorious criminals he executed, for a fee equivalent to £500,000 in today's' money[5]. It is no coincidence that the year Pierrepoint resigned, 1956, was the only year before abolition where not a single execution took place — he was the only executioner in British history whose notice of resignation prompted the government to write to him begging him to reconsider, such was the reputation he had established as the most efficient and swiftest executioner in British history, although on learning of the proposed newspaper series the Home Office did consider prosecuting Albert under the Official Secrets Act before deciding it would be counterproductive; they did however pressure the newspaper publishers so that the series eventually fizzled out. [6]

Albert Pierrepoint is often referred to as Britain's last hangman, but this is not true — executions continued until 13 August 1964 when Gwynne Owen Evans was hanged at 8.00 a.m. at Strangeways Prison by Harry Allen, while Peter Anthony Allen was hanged simultaneously at Walton Prison, Liverpool by Robert Leslie Stewart, both for the murder in a robbery of John Alan West. He was, however, the last official Chief Hangman for the United Kingdom (and, for a time, the unofficial one for the Republic of Ireland, along with his uncle, Thomas).

Albert and Anne Pierrepoint retired to the seaside town of Southport, where he died on 10 July 1992 in a nursing home where he had lived for the last four years of his life.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The story of Albert Pierrepoint, and the execution of Ruth Ellis are retold in the stage play Follow Me, written by Ross Gurney-Randall and Dave Mounfield and directed by Guy Masterson. It premiered at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh in 2007 as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

A film about Pierrepoint's life was made in 2005. Timothy Spall stars as Pierrepoint. The film went on general UK release in April 2006 under the title Pierrepoint and was released in the US under the (factually inaccurate) title The Last Hangman. The film also claims before the closing credits that Pierrepoint conducted 608 executions.

In November 2006 a documentary 'Executioner Pierrepoint' premiered on the Crime and Investigation Network, part of the History Channel group. Made by Dreamscope Productions this film looks at Albert Pierrepoint's life, the infamous and regularly controversial executions, and delves deep into the psyche of the man himself to understand how such a mild-mannered individual could maintain such a macabre second life. It is regularly shown on both the Crime and Investigation Network and the History Channel in the UK and selected countries. It also includes the revelation that Pierrepoint actually carried out 435 executions, widely believed to be the correct number - as opposed to many other estimates.

[edit] Notable executions

Among the notable people he hanged:

  • 13 German war criminals - Irma Grese, the youngest concentration camp guard to be executed for crimes at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz (aged 22), Elisabeth Volkenrath (Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz), and Juana Bormann (Auschwitz), plus 10 men including Josef Kramer, the Commandant of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. All were executed at Hameln on 13 December 1945 at half-hour intervals, the women being hanged individually, the men in pairs.
  • John Amery, son of wartime Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, and the first person to plead guilty to treason in an English court since Summerset Fox in May 1654. He was described by Pierrepoint as "the bravest man I ever hanged", and greeted his executioner with the words "Oh! Pierrepoint." The executioner, however, took the proffered hand only to put the pinioning strap on, and replied nothing. (This is disputed, as Pierrepoint himself later stated in interview that the two men spoke at length and he felt that he had known Amery 'all his life', and there is a story that Amery greeted Pierrepoint with "Mr Pierrepoint, I've always wanted to meet you. Though not, of course, under these circumstances!"). Hanged at Wandsworth Prison, London, 19 December 1945.[7]
  • "Lord Haw-Haw", William Joyce, controversially convicted as a traitor and executed at Wandsworth, 3 January 1946.
  • John George Haigh, the "Acid-bath murderer" executed at Wandsworth on 10 August 1949.
  • Derek Bentley, controversially executed at Wandsworth on 28 January 1953 for his part in the death of Police Constable Miles. The execution was carried out despite pleas for clemency by large numbers of people including 200 Members of Parliament, the widow of Miles, and the recommendation of the jury in the trial. After a long campaign, Bentley received a posthumous pardon in July 1993. An article written by Pierrepoint for The Guardian, but withheld until the pardon was made, dispelled the myth that Bentley had cried on his way to the scaffold. Right until the last, he believed he would be reprieved. In 1998, the Court of Appeal ruled that Bentley's conviction was "unsafe" and quashed it.
  • Timothy John Evans, hanged at Pentonville Prison on 9 March 1950 for the murder of his daughter (he was also suspected of having murdered his wife). It was subsequently discovered that Evans' neighbour John Reginald Christie, a self-confessed necrophiliac, was a serial killer who was also executed by Pierrepoint on 15 July 1953 at Pentonville. Timothy Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966 for the murder of his daughter.
  • Michael Manning on 20 April 1954 the last person to be executed in the Republic of Ireland.
  • Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, on 13 July 1955, for shooting her lover. Contrary to myth, Pierrepoint had no regrets about her execution — in fact it was one of the few times he spoke publicly about one of his charges, and he made it abundantly clear he felt she deserved no less.
  • James Inglis, the fastest hanging on record - only seven seconds from being led out of his cell until the trapdoor opened to send him on his fatal drop.

[edit] Later Opposition To Capital Punishment

Pierrepoint allegedly became an opponent of capital punishment. The reason for this seems to be a combination of the experiences of his father, his uncle, and himself, whereupon reprieves were granted in accordance with political expediency or public fancy and little to do with the merits of the case in question. He had also been forced to hang James Corbitt on 28 November 1950; Corbitt was a regular in his pub, and had sung "Danny Boy" as a duet with Pierrepoint on the night he murdered his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy because she would not give up a second boyfriend. This incident in particular made Pierrepoint feel that hanging was no deterrent, particularly when most of the people he was executing had killed in the heat of the moment rather than with premeditation or in furtherance of a robbery.

Pierrepoint kept his opinions to himself on the topic until his 1974 autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint, in which he commented:

"I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off."

However, further evidence has come to light to throw doubt on his true feelings in the matter. In particular, a 1976 interview with BBC Radio Merseyside (available on the BBC website) shows that Pierrepoint was at that point uncertain on his stance. In addition, his former Assistant Executioner Syd Dernley stated in his autobiography "The Hangman's Tale" that he believed the change of heart was merely a publicity hook to help sell the book (this however may have been sour grapes on Dernley's part, as he also admits in the book that he was the assistant Pierrepoint said he'd "blistered" in "Executioner: Pierrepoint" for showing disrepect to the corpse of a prisoner). One of Albert's biographers, Steve Fielding, has taken an identical view, however the material from this book was primarily taken from Dernley's book and other materials already in the public domain.

[edit] Father & uncle

[edit] Henry Albert Pierrepoint

In 1901 Henry Pierrepoint (1878 – 1922) was appointed to the list of executioners after repeatedly writing to the Home Office to offer his services. He later persuaded his elder brother Thomas to join the family business and influenced his son Albert to do the same. In his nine-year term of office Henry carried out 105 executions. His career was finished when he arrived the day before an execution at Chelmsford prison "considerably the worse for drink", and fought his assistant John Ellis. Ellis reported the incident to the Home Office which decided, after receiving confirmation by the warders' account of the matter, to strike Henry from the list of approved executioners.[8]

[edit] Thomas William Pierrepoint

Thomas Pierrepoint (1870 – 1954) worked as a hangman for 37 years until his mid-seventies in 1946. He is credited with having carried out 294 hangings in his career, although no precise figure has been verified, as some of these were in Ireland. During World War II he was appointed as executioner by the US Military and was responsible for 13 out of 16 hangings at the Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset of US soldiers for crimes involving murder and/or rape, in most cases assisted by his nephew Albert who was, in turn, "Number One" for the remaining three executions.

In 1940, his medical fitness for the job was questioned by a Medical Officer who called him "unsecure" and doubted "whether his sight was good". The Prison Commission discreetly asked for reports on his performance during executions in the following time, but evidently found no reason to take action, although one report said that Thomas Pierrepoint had "smelled strongly of drink" on two occasions when reporting at the prison. This however appears to clash with Thomas Pierrepoint's instruction to Albert when the latter acted as his assistant not to take a drink if on the job, and never to accept the drink customarily given to all witnesses at executions in the Republic of Ireland.

Henry was never officially "dismissed" or Thomas "retired", rather their names were removed from the list of executioners and invitations to conduct executions ceased to arrive. Albert formally demanded that his name be removed from the list, thus he "resigned".

[edit] Statistics

See: Locations of executions conducted by Albert Pierrepoint

[edit] References

  • Albert Pierrepoint Executioner: Pierrepoint (2005), Dobby, ISBN 1-85882-061-8 (Reprint of the 1974 Harrap edition)
  • Steve Fielding Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners (2006), John Blake Publishing, ISBN 1-84454-192-4
  1. ^ Fielding, ibid., pp. 294-303
  2. ^ Fielding, ibid., p. 127
  3. ^ Fielding, ibid., p.126
  4. ^ Fielding, ibid, pp.137-141
  5. ^ Fielding, ibid. p.272
  6. ^ Fielding, ibid. p.274
  7. ^ Fielding, ibid. pp.193-194
  8. ^ Fielding, ibid. p. 96-98

[edit] See also

[edit] External links