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. That man was Albert Pierrepoint.
Albert was the last of the Pierrepoints to serve as Official Executioner of Great Britain and Ireland. Albert started his career in 1932, serving as assistant to his Uncle Tom, and became Chief Executioner in 1940 at the age of thirty-three. The most prolific hangman in British history, he hanged over 400 people. The majority of these took place in Great Britain but he also took his services to Egypt and Germany where he was responsible for executing around two hundred Nazi war criminals including the 'Beast of Belsen', Josef Kramer.
As well as being the most prolific executioner he was also considered the most efficient, having been responsible for the swiftest execution on record. It took place at Strangeways Prison in Manchester in 1951. On the 8th May of that year James Inglis was led from his cell and pronounced dead just 7 seconds later.
The position of executioner was unsalaried and Albert, along with his predecessors, was paid per job. In his spare time he kept a pub with his wife, Anne, just outside Manchester curiously named 'The Poor Struggler'.
Albert was committed to his work and sought the most humane and dignified means in ending the lives of all those he executed. Never the showman, he refused all offers of TV appearances and viewed his role as a necessary part in the machinery of justice but one that should be performed with dispassionate respect.
Albert resigned in early 1956 over a dispute about payment and died in 1992, having carried out more judicial sentences of death than any British executioner in history.
