50 Facts About Albert Pierrepoint

Albert Pierrepoint was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956.

Albert Pierrepoint's family struggled financially because of his father's intermittent employment and heavy drinking.

Albert Pierrepoint knew from an early age that he wanted to become a hangman, and was taken on as an assistant executioner in September 1932, aged 27.

In 1956 Albert Pierrepoint was involved in a dispute with a sheriff over payment, leading to his retirement from hanging.

Albert Pierrepoint ran a pub in Lancashire from the mid-1940s until the 1960s.

Albert Pierrepoint wrote his memoirs in 1974 in which he concluded that capital punishment was not a deterrent, although he may have changed his position subsequently.

Albert Pierrepoint approached his task with gravitas and said that the execution was "sacred to me".

Albert Pierrepoint's life has been included in several works of fiction, such as the 2005 film Pierrepoint, in which he was portrayed by Timothy Spall.

Albert Pierrepoint was born on 30 March 1905 in Clayton in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Albert Pierrepoint was the third of five children and eldest son of Henry Pierrepoint and his wife Mary.

Albert Pierrepoint did not find out about his father's former job until 1916, when Henry's memoirs were published in a newspaper.

In 1917 the Albert Pierrepoint family left Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, and moved to Failsworth, near Oldham, Lancashire.

Henry's health declined and he was unable to undertake physical work; as a result, Albert Pierrepoint left school and began work at the local Marlborough Mills.

On 19 April 1931 Albert Pierrepoint wrote to the Prison Commissioners and applied to be an assistant executioner.

Albert Pierrepoint received an invitation for an interview six months later.

Albert Pierrepoint was accepted and spent four days training at Pentonville Prison, London, where a dummy was used for practice.

Albert Pierrepoint received his formal acceptance letter as an assistant executioner at the end of September 1932.

In July 1940 Albert Pierrepoint was the assistant at the execution of Udham Singh, an Indian revolutionary who had been convicted of shooting the colonial administrator Sir Michael O'Dwyer.

The day before the execution, Stanley Cross, the newly promoted lead executioner, became confused with his calculations of the drop length, and Albert Pierrepoint stepped in to advise on the correct measurements; Albert Pierrepoint was added to the list of head executioners soon after.

In October 1941 Albert Pierrepoint undertook his first execution as lead executioner when he hanged the gangland killer Antonio "Babe" Mancini.

Albert Pierrepoint followed the routine as established by Home Office guidelines, and as followed by his predecessors.

Albert Pierrepoint left the weighted sack hanging on the rope to ensure the rope was stretched and it would be re-adjusted in the morning if necessary.

Albert Pierrepoint secured the man's arms behind his back with a leather strap, and all five walked through a second door, which led to the execution chamber.

The prisoner was walked to a marked spot on the trapdoor whereupon Albert Pierrepoint placed a white hood over the prisoner's head and a noose around his neck.

Albert Pierrepoint was brought to the scaffold where a strap was wrapped around his ankles, followed by a cap and noose.

Just as Albert Pierrepoint pushed the lever, Richter jumped up with bound feet.

Albert Pierrepoint did not tell her about his role of executioner until a few weeks after the nuptials when he was flown to Gibraltar to hang two saboteurs; on his return he explained the reason for his absence and she accepted it, saying that she had known about his second job all along, after hearing gossip locally.

In late 1945, following the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the subsequent trial of the camp's officials and functionaries, Albert Pierrepoint was sent to Hamelin, Germany to carry out the executions of eleven of those sentenced to death, plus two other German war criminals convicted of murdering an RAF pilot in the Netherlands in March 1945.

Albert Pierrepoint disliked any publicity connected to his role and was unhappy that his name had been announced to the press by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery.

Albert Pierrepoint travelled several times to Hamelin, and between December 1948 and October 1949 he executed 226 people, often over 10 a day, and on several occasions groups of up to 17 over 2 days.

Six days after the Belsen hangings in December 1945, Albert Pierrepoint hanged John Amery at Wandsworth Prison.

On 3 January 1946 Albert Pierrepoint hanged William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, who had been given the death sentence for high treason, although it was established that Joyce was born an American citizen, and therefore it was questionable if he was subject to the charge.

In September 1946 Albert Pierrepoint travelled to Graz, Austria, to train staff at Karlau Prison in the British form of long-drop hanging.

Albert Pierrepoint undertook four double executions of prisoners, with his trainees acting as assistants.

Albert Pierrepoint later said that he changed his main occupation because:.

Albert Pierrepoint gave evidence in November 1950 and included a mock hanging at Wandsworth Prison for the commission members.

Albert Pierrepoint was not only aware of the rope, he had the man who handled it beside him, singing a duet.

In March 1950 Albert Pierrepoint hanged Timothy Evans, a 25-year-old man who had the vocabulary of a 14-year-old and the mental age of a ten-year-old.

Albert Pierrepoint was tried and convicted for the murder of his daughter.

Albert Pierrepoint subsequently admitted to the murder of Evans's wife, but not the daughter.

Albert Pierrepoint hanged him in July 1953 in Pentonville Prison, but the case showed Evans's conviction and hanging had been a miscarriage of justice.

Two weeks after Ellis's execution, Albert Pierrepoint hanged Norman Green, who had confessed to killing two boys in the Wigan area; it was Albert Pierrepoint's last execution.

In early January 1956 Albert Pierrepoint travelled to Manchester for another execution and paid for staff to cover the bar in his absence.

Albert Pierrepoint spent the afternoon in the prison calculating the drop and setting up the rope to the right length.

Albert Pierrepoint left the prison and, because of heavy snow, stayed overnight in a local hotel before returning home.

Albert Pierrepoint wrote to the Prison Commissioners to point out that he had received a full fee in other cases of reprieve, and that he had spent additional money in employing bar staff.

Albert Pierrepoint died on 10 July 1992, aged 87, in the nursing home where he had lived for the last four years of his life.

Albert Pierrepoint did so in what Lizzie Seal, a reader in criminology, calls "quasi-religious language", including the phrase that a "higher power" selected him as an executioner.

Albert Pierrepoint is a man, she is a woman, who, the church says, still merits some mercy.

The exact number of people executed by Albert Pierrepoint has never been established.