Death Penalty News

Albert Pierrepoint had a calling for the profession from a young age, and went on to become Britain's chief executioner who delivered some of the most controversial hangings in British history A pub landlord had a part-time job that meant he took the lives of more than 400 prisoners. Photographs show Albert Pierrepoint, who was born in 1905 in Bradford, can be seen smiling and laughing as he stands behind the bar in his pub, the Help the Poor Struggler. But Albert had another job, one that was part-time and that he hid from his wife until after they were married - he was Britain's most famous (or infamous) executioner. Within a 25-year period, it estimated that he had taken the lives of 435-600 people, Yorkshire Live reports . His father had also been a hangman, and from a young age he had felt a desire to follow in his footsteps. “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...

The terrible miscarriage of justice in the case of Timothy Evans would feature prominently in the campaign to end the death penalty in Britain In 1950 a young Welshman was hanged for a heinous crime – the murder of his wife and daughter in the London flat where the family lived. The main prosecution witness in the trial had been another tenant in the property, a seemingly mild-mannered post office clerk and former police special constable who told the court about the bitter rows he had heard between the accused and his partner. After a trial lasting just three days Timothy Evans was convicted and subsequently executed. The man whose testimony had played such a large part in securing the conviction was John Christie – a man who would later be unmasked as a serial killer and necrophiliac. And among his victims had been Evans' wife, Beryl, and the couple's 14-month-old daughter Geraldine. The wrongful conviction and hanging of Evans would go on to play a maj...

✔ Click here to Google translate this article into your own language Albert Pierrepoint trabajó la mayor parte de su vida como dependiente en una verdulería y en un bar de su propiedad. Pero fue su otro trabajo, el que realizaba de manera eventual y sin un cargo oficial, el que lo hizo pasar a la historia. Pierrepoint fue el verdugo más prolífico del Reino Unido: ejecutó a más de 400 personas, lo que le llevó a ser considerado por el gobierno inglés “el verdugo más eficiente”, aunque con el tiempo Pierrepoint se volvió un férreo crítico de la pena de muerte. Durante 24 años este ejecutor repitió una misma rutina. Miraba fijamente a los condenados, después los inmovilizaba de pies y manos, para luego cubrir su rostro con una capucha. Finalmente, rodeaba su cuello con la soga y accionaba la trampa que ponía fin a la vida del condenado. Tras la ejecución, inspeccionaba la herida y registraba todo en su diario. La limpieza y eficacia de su trabajo ...

A MACABRE but important piece of British Indian history comes up for auction on June 5 – the leather-bound personal notebook of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s most prolific executioner, who hanged Udham Singh at Pentonville Prison in London on July 31, 1940.  There have been many mentions of Singh this year since April 13, 1919 marked the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which up to a thousand people were shot dead in Amritsar on the orders of Brig-Gen Reginald Dyer. His actions were endorsed by the military governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who was shot dead by Singh at a public meeting in Caxton Hall in Westminster on March 13, 1940.  On April 1, 1940, Singh was formally charged with murder and remanded in custody at Brixton prison where he was force fed after going on a 42-day hunger strike. He also insisted on giving his name as “Ram Mohammad Singh Azad” to emphasise India’s religious plurality.  He was tried at the Old Bailey wh...

Execution was the family business for Albert Pierrepoint Those that drank in his pub had no idea. They were totally unaware that the man serving them a pint of ale after a hard day’s graft had killed more than 400 men and women. It wasn’t something that Albert liked to talk about. He was no serial killer, he was Britain’s most prolific hangman, and from as far back as he could remember, he always wanted to put people to death. He hanged seven people in Wales in just six years, between 1948 and 1954, including the last person to be hanged in Cardiff, and the last person to be sentenced to death in Carmarthen. So what made Albert Pierrepoint the most feared and respected hangman in the land and the last man to hang a woman in Britain? Well, killing was a family business. Albert's father Henry and his uncle Thomas were the last people to hang a woman in Wales, and they put five people to death in Cardiff, alone.. Henry Pierrepoint was born in 187...

Recently, a large volume of writing has taken place discussing the merits and demerits of executing the death penalty imposed upon prisoners languishing in the country's jails for committing a variety of capital offences. When I read those comments my mind immediately went back to the note of resignation submitted by Her Majesty's executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, which he later had included as a preface to his Autobiography. In that note he wrote" I do not believe that anyone of the 400 executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future acts of murder. Capital Punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge". Aside from any number of ethical, religious or such other reasons for decrying the execution of Capital penalties there is a Constitutional hurdle that one has to leap before legally, a noose is put around the neck of a human being, in Sri Lanka. Article 11 of the Sri Lanka's 1978 Constitution reads: "No person...

A MACABRE collection of items from the career of Britain's most famous executioner has been discovered. The archive belonging to Albert Pierrepoint includes logbooks he kept on his hangings, with notes on the neck size of the condemned person and the height of the drop they required. Pierrepoint performed over 400 executions between 1932 and 1956. Now a number of his possessions have emerged for sale for an estimated 40,000 pounds. Aside from the 2 chilling 'execution books', the archive includes a plaster cast of Pierrepoint's own death mask and hands taken after he died in 1992 aged 87. His watch strap and a number of photographs complete the collection that has been owned for several years by a 'legal beagle' who gave lectures on crime. Pierrepoint came from a family of hangmen with his father Henry and uncle Thomas both working in the trade. The book which is now set to sell was also used by Henry and coldly lists the exact details...

Andrew Anderson Bagley Jeannette Hensby spent her working life in the NHS but in retirement she has become a writer and crime sleuth. Andy Smart looks at her 1st cold case. Notts-born Andrew Anderson Bagley died on Tuesday, February 1, 1937. He was hanged by the neck in Armley Jail in Leeds for the brutal murder of his 16-year-old step-granddaughter. Despite trial judge Mr Justice Goddard - a notorious figure dubbed "the hanging judge" in the Press - sentencing him to death on "evidence which could leave no doubt ..." Bagley maintained his innocence from the moment of his arrest in Hucknall Library only 3 months earlier, to his final steps towards the gallows. No one believed him and at 9am on that cold winter morning executioner Thomas [Pierrepoint] sent the 62-year-old convicted man to his death. But in her fascinating 1st book "The Rotherham Trunk Murder", ex-NHS director Jeannette Hensby argues that Bagley, born a policeman's s...