Executioner Pierrepoint: An Autobiography

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After leaving the Struggler in the fifties, Pierrepoint ran another pub, the Rose and Crown in Much Hoole, Lancashire. He died in Southport in 1992 at the age of 87 - having come to the view that executions ‘solve nothing’ and ‘are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge’. If death were a deterrent,” he wrote in his 1974 autobiography Executioner Pierrepoint, “I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them at the last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. A group of horses caused traffic chaos after getting loose and going for a gallop on a busy part of the M60 The meeting marked the point at which Albert Pierrepoint’s two worlds - jovial Oldham publican by night, clinical state hangman in his spare time - collided.

A Very English Hangman: The Life and Times of Albert Pierrepoint

Such was Pierrepoint’s esteem as a hangman - he could finish the job in eight seconds - the Home Office urged him to reconsider. But Pierrepoint was not to be persuaded to return to the task which had been his curious destiny. He had a fine voice, and was usually joined in the singalong at the piano - a fixture in post-war pubs - by a man who called him ‘Tosh’, who he called ‘Tish’ in return. The siblings were prolific hangmen in the early twentieth century, but both were eventually removed from the list amid concerns over their fitness for the role - in each case following allegations they had turned up for work after a drink. Hanging must run in the blood,” Albert Pierrepoint said after his retirement. “It requires a natural flair. The judgment and timing of a first-rate hangman cannot be acquired.” John ‘Reg’ Christie, who murdered at least eight women, including his wife, at his flat in Notting Hill. The victims also included the wife and daughter of Timothy Evans, who also lived at the property. Before Christie was revealed to be a serial killer, Evans was convicted for killing his wife and daughter after making a false confession. Evans was sentenced to hang, and was executed by Pierrepoint in March 1950. Three years later Pierrepoint hanged Christie as well. ‘I hanged John Reginald Christie, the Monster of Rillington Place,’ he wrote, ‘in less time than it took the ash to fall off a cigar I had left half-smoked in my room at Pentonville.’

Albert Pierrepoint’s Yorkshire-raised father, Henry, had been an executioner before him. Soon after he married a Manchester woman, Mary Buxton, at Newton Heath, the elder Pierrepoint was added to the Home Office’s approved list of hangmen, having written to them repeatedly to volunteer his services. Between 1932 and 1956, at least 433 men and 17 women died at the end of his rope. His personal record included 17 hangings in one day - of which he said, ‘was my arm stiff!’ verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ John Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer. Hanged in 1949, Haigh murdered six people for their property and pensions before dissolving their bodies in acid. His victims included Dr Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie, whose brother was a hotelier from Withington’s Hartley Estate.

The smiling Yorkshire pub landlord who killed over 400 people

The young Albert had grown up reading his uncle Tom’s diaries of the job, while his dad had recommended it as a sideline with opportunities for continental travel. And while Pierrepoint would not retire from his grim business for another six years, executing Corbitt, his friend from the pub, is said to have haunted him. Michael Manning, who raped and murdered a 65-year-old nurse and in 1954 became the last man to be hanged in Ireland. Pierrepoint reputedly said afterwards: “I love hanging Irishmen – they always go quietly and without trouble. They’re Christian men and they believe they’re going to a better place.” Read More Related Articles

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The Struggler, supplied by defunct Salford brewery Groves & Whitnall, was on Manchester Road in Hollinwood - on the old tram route to the city - but was pulled down in the nineties to make way for the M60. It 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.”