The life of a serial
LOOKING back at photos of the smiling Southport man, it’s hard to imagine he made his living in such a gruesome way.
Over the course of his career as a hangman, Albert Pierrepoint travelled the country, overseeing the hangings of hundreds of people.
In a career spanning 25 years, it’s estimated Pierrepoint was involved in the executions of between 435 and 600 people – with his final execution taking place in Walton, Liverpool.
Back in February 2019, reporter Kate McMullin looked into the archives to try and understand more about the life and work of this prolific Merseyside executioner.
WHAT do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘A hangman’. This was the answer of a young Albert Pierrepoint who made a career out of killing more than 400 people.
Pierrepoint, who was born in Yorkshire but resided in Southport, was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career.
During his tenure, until 1956, he travelled all over the country to hang men and women for all kinds of crimes.
And his last execution was in Walton, Liverpool.
But why did Albert Pierrepoint decide on such a grisly career?
And what made him Britain’s most prolific executioner?
From school age young Albert decided he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his dad Henry Pierrepoint and uncle Thomas – who were official hangmen.
In school when asked to write about what job he would like when he was older, Pierrepoint would say: “I want to be a public executioner like my dad is, because it needs a steady man with good hands like my dad and my Uncle Tom and I shall be the same.”
After leaving school he went to work in the mills and following that worked as a drayman for a wholesale grocer, delivering goods.
But it was in September, 1932, aged 27, he moved into his chosen career and was taken on as an assistant executioner.
New to the job, Albert would work alongside his uncle Tom as his assistant.
His first job as an assistant executioner was the hanging of a young Irish farmer, who had murdered his brother, in 1932.
His uncle Tom was free to select his own assistant and took Albert with him to Mountjoy Prison, in Dublin, for the hanging.
As an assistant executioner, Albert’s job would be to follow the prisoner onto the scaffold, bind the prisoner’s legs together, then step back off the trapdoor before the lead executioner sprung the mechanism.
And this is what he did for the remainder of the 1930s, alongside continuing his work in the grocery business, until 1941 when he became a lead executioner.
During his tenure Albert hanged hundreds of people – men and women – all over the country, including at Walton prison.
Wigan murderer Norman Green was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Walton Prison, Liverpool, in 1955.
Pierrepoint also reportedly hanged 200 people who had been convicted of war crimes in Germany and Austria and hanged a number of German spies.
A number of high-profile murderers also met their end with Pierrepoint.
He undertook several contentious executions – one of the most well known being that of Derek Bentley.
The 19-year-old was hanged in 1953 by Pierrepoint for his part in the murder of a policeman, during a bun