Albert Pierrepoint

Albert Pierrepoint (1905 - 10 July 1992) is the most celebrated member of a Yorkshire family who provided three of Britain's Chief Executioners in the first half of the 20th century. He resided in Clayton, Bradford.

In 1901 Henry Pierrepoint (1874-1922) was appointed to the list of executioners after repeatedly writing to the Home Office to offer his services. In his nine-year term of office Henry carried out 107 executions before being dismissed in July 1910 for arriving for an execution at Chelmsford prison "considerably the worse for drink", and having fought fellow hangman John Ellis the previous day. He did however persuade his older brother Thomas and son Albert to carry on in the family business.

Thomas Pierrepoint (1870-1954) worked as a hangman for 37 years before retiring in his mid-seventies in 1946. He is credited with having carried out 300 hangings in his career, although no precise figure has been verified, as some of these were in Ireland, Germany, Cyprus, and elsewhere. During the Second World War he was appointed as executioner by the US Military and was responsible for the hanging at the Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset of several US soldiers for murder or rape, assisted by his nephew Albert.

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 16 US soldiers at Shepton Mallet and some 200 Nazis after the Second World War.

Albert's first execution as "Number One" was that of gangster Antonio Mancini at Pentonville prison, London, on 17 October 1941, who said "Cheerio!" before the trap was sprung.

Among his notable clients were:

• 13 German war criminals - Irma Grese, the youngest concentration camp guard to be executed for crimes at Belsen and Auschwitz (aged 22), Elizabeth Volkenrath (Belsen & Auschwitz), and Juana Bormann (Auschwitz), plus ten male prisoners 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.
• Lord Haw-Haw, the traitor William Joyce, executed at Wandsworth Prison, London, 3 January 1946.
• John George Haigh, the Acid-bath murderer executed at Wandsworth on 10 August 1949 despite Mrs Durand-Deacon's gallstones and dentures being the only part of her not dissolved in acid.
• Derek Bentley, controversially executed at Wandsworth on 28 January 1953 for his part in the death of Police Constable Miles, despite his having already been under arrest at the time of the fatal shot. 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, but conditional, pardon in 1998. An article written by Pierrepoint for The Guardian newspaper, 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.
• Timothy John Evans, hanged at Pentonville Prison on 9 March 1950 for the murder of his daughter (and suspected murder of his wife). It was subsequently discovered that Evans' neighbour John Reginald Christie, a self-confessed necrophiliac, was a multiple murderer, who had an appointment with Albert 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 the 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 being pronounced dead

Albert 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 only to find that Bancroft had been reprieved. He claimed his full fee of £15 but the under-sheriff of Lancashire offered only £1. 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. Pierrepoint's pride in his position as Britain's Chief Executioner was insulted, and he resigned. 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.

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 simultaneously Peter Anthony Allen was hanged 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).

What is true is that, ironically, he was an opponent of capital punishment. The reason for this seems to be a combination of the experiences of his father, his Uncle Tom, 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, "Help The Poor Struggler", and had sung "Danny Boy" as a duet with Albert on the night he was to murder his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy because she would not give up a second boyfriend she had. This incident in particular made Albert feel that hanging was no deterrent, particularly when most of his clients were those that had killed in the heat of the moment rather than premeditated or in furtherance of a robbery.

But 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."

References

• Albert Pierrepoint Executioner: Pierrepoint (1974), Harrap, ISBN 0245520708de:Albert Pierrepoint