Collector snaps up official hangman’s ‘notebook of death’
ASECRET notebook has been released which gives a chilling insight into the mind of a pub landlord who killed hundreds of people for a living.
Albert Pierrepoint was Britain’s official executioner and hanged more than 400 people during a 25-year career in the part-time role.
Among those put to death by him was Kingstanding murderer James Farrell, 18, and he also assisted in the execution of Dorothea Nancy Waddingham, 36, who was the last woman to be hanged in Birmingham Prison.
Now, nearly 30 years after Pierrepoint’s own death, his notebook of death, recording the efficiency with which the pub landlord went about his grisly part-time job has been sold to a collector.
The notebook reveals how he dreamed of becoming an execution
er from his school days, wanting to follow in the footsteps of his dad and uncle who were paid to dispatch those condemned to death by the state.
Pierrepoint achieved his dream, travelling the country to hang men and women for an array of crimes while the death penalty, which was eventually abolished in Britain in 1965, was still the norm.
During his hangman’s career Pierrepoint killed those convicted of war crimes – and those accused of being German spies during the Second World War – becoming famous in the process.
Inside the notebook are handwritten notes on the weight, height of the prisoners and the length of rope needed. It was this attention to detail that helped him develop his reputation for being calm and clinical during his executions.
The detail would go as far as him noting the thickness of the victim’s neck and calculating the length of “drop” needed to ensure that death was quick and humane.
It it is speculated that Pierrepoint could have hanged up to 600 people during his 15 years as a hangman before retiring from the role in 1956. They included rapists, murderers as well as those convicted by court martial.
Serving as the jovial, singing landlord of the Help the Poor Struggler pub in Hollinwood, Oldham, was part of the other side of Pierrepoint’s life. He was known for singing popular songs such as Danny Boy at the piano.
Pierrepoint put killer Farrell to death at Birmingham Prison in 1949 for strangling Joan Marney in Sutton Park. Joan was just 14. They had met at a cinema in Sutton Coldfield. When Joan rejected his sexual advances Farrell flipped and killed her.
The 1936 execution of Waddingham sparked a protest from 10,000 people. She had been found guilty of murdering two vulnerable women in her Nottingham nursing home “for monetary gain”. Her case attracted much public sympathy. The execution is dramatised in the 2005 film Pierrepoint. Although the film shows Timothy Spall as Albert Pierrepoint carrying out the execution, in fact the hangman was Thomas Pierrepoint, Albert’s uncle; Albert acted as his assistant.
In June, a number of items including the notebook, a plaster cast of Pierrepoint’s face and hands, a silver watch chain which he wore to work and an ivory cigar holder were sold for £20,000 at a sale at Boldon Auction Galleries in the North East.