Many people are familiar with the names Ruth Ellis, Derek Bentley, Timothy Evans, John Christie and Lord Haw Haw. We know of their trials and their eventual fate at the gallows. What is not so well publicised is that they all met their maker at the hands of the same man. His was the last voice they heard and the last pair of eyes they looked into. That man was Albert Pierrepoint.

Albert was the last of the Pierrepoints to serve as Official Executioner of Great Britain and Ireland. Serving as assistant to his uncle, Thomas Pierrepoint, Albert started his career in 1932 and became Chief Executioner in 1940 at the age of thirty-three. The most prolific hangman in British history, he was credited with hanging over 400 people. The majority of these took place in Great Britain but he also found himself performing his services in Egypt and Germany where he was responsible for executing around two hundred Nazi war criminals including the 'Beast of Belsen', Josef Kramer.

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