The autobiography of Albert Pierrepoint, a Yorkshireman who for twentyfive years served as the public executioner in both the UK and Ireland. Pierrepoint comes out against the death penalty, surprisingly. He is a surprisingly ordinary working class man who made his living as a publican (the hangman was not paid a salary but a fee for each execution). What is truly interesting is the professionalism and dispassion with which Pierrepoint approaches his job.

I had forgotten that I had had once read and owned this book, purchased when I lived in England back in the early eighties when they still executed criminals, until my recent reading of the execution of German spies (by Albert Pierrepoint) in the history of the War-time MI5 by Nigel West. (http://www.librarything.com/work/book/82975813).

Yes “Virginia”, they still had Capital Punishment until 1998 on the statute in Great Britain! I can recall newspaper photographs of our ”Learned Judges” solemnly placing a small piece of black cloth over their curly-white 16th century ceremonial wigs, anointing themselves with the ‘black cap’ before announcing that dread decision … ” You will be taken from this place and hung, by the neck, until pronounced dead”.

I remember later learning that the conditional “until pronounced dead” was truly necessary as some of the deaths were horrifically far from instant, often, in the public hangings of the 1600’s, requiring the certain ”assistance” of close friends or relatives hanging on the legs of the condemned after their drop from the scaffold. The whole concept, and the solemn procedures and evil mechanics of hanging a living human horrified me as a boy and led to several (albeit enjoyable) arguments with my father on the subject of ‘Capital’ punishment. While he had the dubious ‘advantage’ of once having to escort a prisoner to this end as a Naval Officer, I eventually won our family argument for and against capital punishment by adopting what he claimed was the “unfair” position of asking if his views would change if it were me, his eldest son, that was being prepared for “the drop”.

The chilling and revolting concept of Governmental murder of another human was only gradually eased, as I grew more aware of the fact that so many so sentenced were, perhaps, not quite as human as I imagined in my youth. My reading of the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi, monstrous participants in the Holocaust further modified my views on capital punishment … but I retained intense reservations of how another human could possibly participate and actually carry out the execution? So, initially I approached this book by the official British hangman with caution.

Pierrepoint was the ultimate professional – with a huge compassion and respect for his victims – and wrote his book with a total lack of sensationalism or salaciousness. Eventually even he began to doubt that capital punishment actually resolved anything, other than society’s need for a revenge of “healing”. ”I do not believe” he wrote,“that I stopped a single further murder by all my hanging.”

A chilling and even humbling book written by the human (and, in fact a member of a family) who undertook to carry-out the odorous, repulsive and revengeful needs of society with humanity, respect, and thankfully, a professional efficiency.

It's undoubtably an interesting read and for someone with such a lurid occupation the author shows remarkable restraint during the telling of his story. The most astonishing and revealing biographical detail to emerge from the entire book is the author's claim that the death penalty achieves nothing. ( )

Albert Pierrepoint was a long-time hangman in Great Britain. He writes well and recounts his stories of the various criminals he executed. He also served as hangman for Nazi war criminals in Nuremburg. ( )