Albert Pierrepoint - Career

Career

In late 1931, Lionel Mann, an assistant of five years' experience, resigned when his employers informed him that his sideline was affecting his promotion prospects, and Pierrepoint received an official envelope inviting him to an interview at Manchester's Strangeways Prison; his mother Mary, having seen many such envelopes in Henry's time as an executioner, was not happy at her son's career choice. After a week's training course at London's Pentonville Prison, Pierrepoint's name was added to the List of Assistant Executioners on 26 September 1932. At that time, the assistant's fee was 1½ guineas (£1.57½) per execution, with another 1½ guineas paid two weeks later if his conduct and behaviour were satisfactory. Executioners and their assistants were required to be extremely discreet and to conduct themselves in a respectable manner, especially avoiding contact with the press.

There were few executions in Britain in 1932, and the first execution Pierrepoint attended was in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, on 29 December 1932, when his uncle Thomas was chief executioner at the hanging of Patrick McDermott, a young Irish farmer who murdered his brother. He engaged his nephew as assistant executioner even though Pierrepoint had not yet observed a hanging in England and thus, despite being on the Home Office list of approved Assistant Executioners, was not allowed to officiate in England. Pierrepoint's first execution as chief executioner (he still acted as assistant until 1944 in some British cases, and until 1945 at Shepton Mallet) was that of gangster Tony Mancini at Pentonville prison, London, on 17 October 1941, who said "Cheerio!" before the trapdoor was sprung.

On 29 August 1943, Pierrepoint married Annie Fletcher, who had run a sweet shop and tobacconist two doors from the grocery where he worked. They set up home at East Street, Newton Heath, Manchester. At some point, and unknown to Albert, Annie learned of his "other career", but for many years she did not ask him about it, waiting for him to raise the topic. The couple first discussed the matter after he returned from Gibraltar in January 1944, where he had conducted a double execution.

Following the Second World War, the British occupation authorities conducted a series of trials of Nazi concentration camp staff, and from the initial Belsen Trial 11 death sentences were handed down in November 1945. It was agreed that Pierrepoint would conduct the executions, and on 11 December he flew to Germany for the first time to execute the 11, plus two other Germans convicted of murdering an RAF pilot in the Netherlands in March 1945. Over the next four years, he travelled to Germany and Austria 25 times to execute 200 war criminals. The press discovered his identity and he became a celebrity, hailed as a sort of war hero, meting out justice to the Nazis. The boost in income provided by the German executions allowed Pierrepoint to leave the grocery business, and he and Anne took over a pub on Manchester Road, Hollinwood, between Oldham and Failsworth, named Help the Poor Struggler. He later moved to another pub, the Rose and Crown at Much Hoole, near Preston.

Pierrepoint resigned in 1956 over a disagreement with the Home Office about his fees. In January 1956, he had gone to Strangeways Prison, Manchester, to officiate at the execution of Thomas Bancroft, who was reprieved less than 12 hours before his scheduled execution, when Pierrepoint was already present making his preparations – the first time in his career that this had happened in England. He claimed his full fee of £15 but the under-sheriff of Lancashire offered only £1, as the rule in England was that the executioner was paid only for executions carried out – in Scotland he would have been paid in full. Pierrepoint appealed to his employers, the Prison Commission, who refused to get involved. The under-sheriff sent him a cheque for £4 in full and final settlement of his incidental travel and hotel expenses, as he had been unable to return home that day because of heavy snow. The official story is that Pierrepoint's pride in his position as Britain's Chief Executioner was insulted, and he resigned; however, there is evidence that he had already decided to resign, and had previously been in discussion with the editor of the Empire News and Sunday Chronicle for a series called "The Hangman's Own Story", revealing the last moments of many of the notorious criminals he executed, for a fee equivalent to £500,000 in today's money. Pierrepoint was the only executioner in British history whose notice of resignation prompted the Home Office to write to him asking him to reconsider, such was the reputation he had established as the most efficient and swiftest executioner in British history. On learning of the proposed newspaper series, the Home Office considered prosecuting Pierrepoint under the Official Secrets Act before deciding it would be counterproductive; they applied pressure upon the newspaper publishers and as a consequence the series was eventually terminated.

Albert and Annie Pierrepoint retired to the seaside town of Southport, where he died on 10 July 1992 in a nursing home where he had lived for the last four years of his life.