Product Description

"The Executioner's Bible" tells the story of these working-class men who carried out this gruesome profession until its abolition in the late 1960's. Despite often being unassuming and quiet professionals, men like Albert Pierrepoint, William Billington and many other Chief and Assistant executioners made a name for themselves in a world hungry for salacious and gruesome news. Read about the bungling hangmen sacked for incompetence; drunken executioners dismissed for brawling; one hangman driven to suicide and another who 'got out just in time', to the last men to pull the lever at the height of the swinging sixties. They were the last of their kind: the hangmen of the 20th Century. And this is their fascinating sometimes repugnant, always enthralling story. The secrets of over six controversial decades of capital punishment are finally revealed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111793 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 292 pages

Customer Reviews

At the End Of Their Rope


Some years ago I worked in the civil service with a man who had applied to be added to the list of public executioners. He was disappointed when capital punishment was abolished before his application was considered. Having read this account of those who carried out the duties of public executioner I am far from convinced that his easy going personality would have been suited to the task.

Even the SS found there was only so much direct killing one could carry out without being sickened by it. Many executioners found their task equally as sickening. A number plied themselves with drink before undertaking the task. John Ellis, who had been present at two hundred hangings, was so disturbed by the distressed state of Edith Thompson when she was executed in 1923, that he drank heavily and attempted suicide the following year. He finally succeeded in taking his own life in 1932.

Albert Pierrepoint developed a reputation for speed and efficiency that few could match, although many tried. In 1926 William Willis was so anxious to get an execution over with that he almost noosed one of the prison guards. He was removed later that year having been characterised by the Governor of Pentonville prison as being "offensive, over-bearing, ostentatious and generally objectionable in his manner".

Rivalries were fierce and in 1909 Henry Pierrepoint was sacked for assaulting John Ellis while both were on duty at Chelmsford prison. In addition, there were numerous complaints from those appointed about not getting their "fair share" of executions.

Hangmen were very poorly paid and were always complaining about being out of pocket in performing their public duty. Indeed, expenses was the issue on which Albert Pierrepoint resigned in 1955, although Fielding suggests it was to enable him to write his memoirs for a Sunday newspaper. However, Pierrepoint's autobiography did not appear until 1974 and when it did there were none of the sensational criminal last minute confessions expected.

Pierrepoint is often referred to as The Last Hangman although that dubious honour belongs to Harry Allen and Robert Stewart who simultaneously executed Gwynne Evans at Manchester and Peter Allen at Liverpool respectively on August 13 1964. Had not hanging been abolished current lifers such as Ian Brady and Harry Roberts would surely have followed.

In 1890 Samuel Herbert Dougal applied to become an executioner (a post that did not exist in law as all executions were the responsibility of the local sheriff). He was turned down because of his criminal record. Thirteen years later he had a first hand encounter with the rope when he himself was hanged.

The book itself was depressing. Not because of the accounts of the hangmen (no women were employed) but because of the continuous catalogue of crimes which they were ordered to punish. Some of the crimes are well known others have been dragged up from the depths of forgotten history as a none too glorious example of humankind's disregard for the sanctity of life.

Fielding sets his study in historical context, noting that the last public execution took place as recently as 1868. However, although the names of executioners and their assistants are provided from 1900 onwards and the book is full of interesting and fascinating stories it lacks an index which, given the substantial content, is a major omission.

Over the years there have been numerous attempts to characterise hanging as an uncivilised way of dealing with crime. None have ever come close to matching George Orwell's brief essay "A Hanging" which remains, even after almost seventy years, a classic statement for the abolition of the death penalty.

All you need to know, and maybe more
Steve Fielding really knows his stuff and has managed to bring together a truly comprehensive account of every British executioner of the 20th century. This is not an easy undertaking, since relatively little is known of many of them and organising it by individual story makes for a confusing chronology.

What emerges most clearly - whether or not intentionally - is that the trade attracted many bunglers, blabberers and others who were simply not up to the job and not all of them were weeded out in the application process. There are plenty of snippets to back up my increasing impression that Albert Pierrepoint was a creepy, mean-spirited backstabber with a ghoulish interest in what he did, though his competence was undeniable.

This book probably won't change your mind on the subject of capital pubishment but it is essential if you are interested in how it was applied in Britain in modern times.

A very interesting and compelling read that serves as a fine companion piece to Pierrepoint's autobiography. It can be and often is a little dry at times, especially when the author goes into detail about the crimes that led many to face their death at the hands of the men the author has meticulously researched. It certainly should be commended for keeping Albert Pierrepoint's career in perspective alongside his colleagues, as the former has been written about perhaps a little too often. Probably worth the price alone for the story of the executioner who, too preoccupied with speed and pace, accidently pushed the lever without checking to make sure his assistant was clear of the trapdoors...