Maid Marian
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Joined: 15 Jan 2007
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Location: Robin Hood Country
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 Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 9:42 pm Post subject: Secret diaries of hangman Henry Pierrepoint revealed |
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I'm not surprised he turned to drink 
| Quote: | He was once seen as the most feared, ruthless executioner in Britain.
But today - nearly a century later - hangman Henry Pierrepoint is exposed as a callous brute who turned to drink to ease the horror of his job.
In one shameful incident he came to blows with an assistant who reckoned he was too worse for wear to dispatch one of his victims.
The unseemly gallows brawl led to him being struck off by the Home Office - and he died in disgrace 12 years later in 1922 at just 44.
Now Pierrepoint's hang 'em high secrets are finally revealed as his secret diaries go up for auction next week.
They show his slide into drunkenness as his writing gets scruffier over the years. His logs contain gruesome details of all his executions from 1901 to 1910 - including the strength of a prisoner's neck, listing them as strong, weak, thin or ordinary.
Also up for sale is a 12ft tape measure "in well used condition" which Henry used to measure the drops.
Henry's log has been handed over for sale to Marshall's auctioneers in Knutsford, Cheshire - just two weeks after a similar diary by Harry Allen, one of Britain's last hangmen, was also put up for offers.
Both will go under the hammer next week and together are expected to fetch more than £8,000.
Henry was first of three members of the Pierrepoint family to be appointed official hangman to the UK.
Despite his eventual fall from grace, he persuaded his son Albert and brother Thomas to take up the grisly profession - with Albert becoming the most prolific hangman in British history.
Bizarrely, as an 11-year-old Albert wrote in response to a school careers exercise: "When I leave school I should like to be the Official Executioner."
He kept his word and continued the family tradition - becoming our most prolific hangman of all time with up to 600 executions before he died in 1992 at 87.
His most famous "client" was Ruth Ellis - the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Dad would have been proud.
1,000: Number of people executed by the Pierrepoint family, Henry, Albert and Thomas over a 55-year period |
Source - Daily Mirror
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