Monday, October 22, 2018

My Cousin the Hangman


I have briefly mentioned before (*1, *2) a distant relative, Albert Pierrepoint, and the fact that he was the last official “executioner,” i.e. hangman, for the UK. Recently a less-distant cousin of mine posted some information about him and I thought that he rated a blog post by me as well.

Family Connections

Albert was born in the town of Clayton in 1905. However, his family was from the county of Nottinghamshire where his father was born and where his ancestors had lived for at least several hundred years. I have managed to trace back his ancestral roots into the early 1700s in this same location.

John(?) Pierrepoint (1712?-)
Gervase Pierrepoint (1735-1815)
Gervase Pierrepoint (1767-1857)
Gervase Pierrepoint (1801-1857)
Thomas Pierrepoint (1828-1898)
Thomas Pierrepoint (1844-1918)
Henry Pierrepoint (1878-1922)
Albert Pierrepoint (1905-1992)

Although I have not been able to trace back any farther and verify a family connection to me, the name Gervase was a common one in the Pierrepont/Pierrepoint family beginning several hundred years before those in Albert’s known ancestral line and Holme Pierrepont in Nottinghamshire has been the Pierrepont family home since 1280 (*3). These are good confirmation to me that he is indeed one of my distant relatives. I had earlier noted in (*1) how there are various derivations of the family name from de Pierrepont to Pierrepont to Pierpont as well as Pierrepoint and Pierpoint.

Being a Hangman

There is some good background information about Albert on Wikipedia (*4). This notes that he was born in 1905 and died in 1992. He was employed by England in this capacity beginning in 1932 and following the “family business” of his father, Henry, who held that position from 1901 to 1906 (*5) and his uncle Thomas from 1906 to 1946 (*6). However, Albert is much more famous that his predecessors for a couple of reasons.

First, the number of hangings that Albert was responsible for has been variously reported as being at least 435 and perhaps as many as 600 (his father carried out 105 and his uncle 294). But in addition, Albert was the last person employed in this capacity as the 1950s saw a rise in objections to the use of capital punishment as a means of punishment for a crime.

Interestingly however, this was not the reason for Albert “retiring” from this position in 1956. Albert viewed his work as a profession and he was very proficient in how he carried it out. He used as humane a method as possible, with a soft leather wrap on the noose to avoid rope burns on the criminal; he used soft leather bonds to tie the hands and feet to avoid any pinching that would distract the individual, and had a carefully calibrated chart for the length of the “drop” to be used based on the height, weight, and age of the individual to ensure that the spine would be severed so that the individual would die quickly and not suffer. However, the people in the criminal justice system did not treat him very well and he often had trouble collecting the payment for his services. After a series of these, he finally resigned in 1956, effectively ending the practice of hanging as there was no one to take over for him.

In 2005 there was a film produced about Albert’s life that was titled simply “Pierrepont, the Last Hangman” (*7). More recently, the History Channel (UK version) produced a 45-minute show that is available on YouTube (*8). This latter presentation is more about some of the people that Albert executed than about Albert himself, but it also contains a fascinating look at the history of the process of hanging and how Albert is so unlike the stereotypical hangman – dressed in coat and tie instead of in a leather skullcap and black mask. If you have 45 minutes, I recommend it.

Notes



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