Hangman’s assistant was in a sticky business
In our Memories page of June 28, we ran a story about Royston Lawrence Rickard, from Maidstone, who had been an assistant hangman, helping to dispatch several convicted murderers.
He helped one of the county’s executioners, Harry Allen, for 11 years, from 1953 to 1964, playing a role in 17 executions, for which he was paid £15 a time, plus travel expenses.
After the last executions in 1964, Rickard shunned publicity and kept quite about his former career.
Reader Tony Webb knew him when he was still active.
Mr Webb, from Allington said: “We both worked at the Sharp’s sweet factory in Maidstone in the mid-1950s.
“He was already there when I joined after coming out the RAF in 1953.
“He was a tall man and looked a bit like Stewart Granger (a film star of the era) with his hair swept back. I was the foreman on the chocolate floor. He was a bench-hand in the toffee boiling section on the floor below.
“I always felt that his task, which was a very mundane one, was rather below him, as he was clearly very intelligent, but it seemed so did he.
“He was very aloof and arrogant and talked down to everyone. He was living in Weavering at the time and was known as Roy or sometimes Ricky to his face. We also called him Pierrepont’s assistant.”
Albert Pierrepont was the country’s chief executioner at the time. Mr Webb added: “He never admitted being a hangman, if you asked him about it, he would just laugh it off, saying something like, ‘You’d better be careful I don’t hang you.’
“But obviously management knew about it and I think word had leaked out from the office. Also it was noticeable that he was always off work for a few days whenever there was an execution.”
Tony quit his job at Sharp’s shortly after the firm was taken over by Trebor in 1961.
He believes Rickard had already left the year before. BBC series The Land Girls has ensured most people know at least something about the work of the Women’s Land Army (WLA) who did so much to boost food production during the Second World War.
But how many know it was first established in 1917, during the First World War? This year is the centenary of the end of the First Word War and the first women getting the vote. To mark the anniversaries, the Old Chalk New Downs project wants to re-tell the story of women on the land during the conflict. In Kent, women were trained in farm work at centres in Wye and Swanley. The majority were milkers and field workers, but some were carters, plough women and market gardeners.
The project wants to hear from anyone who had a relative working in that first WLA. Email Hilary Hunter on hilary.hunter@ kent.gov.uk or call 03000 419486.