Thomas Pierrepoint

Thomas William Pierrepoint (* 1870 ; † 1954 ) was a British executioner .

Pierrepoint worked as an executioner for the British government for 37 years before retiring in 1946 in his mid-seventies. He is credited with carrying out over 300 executions - an exact number is unknown because he also worked in Ireland , Germany , Cyprus and other countries. He was the brother of Henry Pierrepoint and uncle of Albert Pierrepoint .

Thomas Pierrepoint can claim to be one of the longest-serving executioners in history; he was still active at the age of 75.

In 1940, a prison doctor said he looked insecure and that his visual acuity was doubtful. His brusque manner (he ignored the prison chaplains) and the speedy execution of executions (he got his assistants into great trouble because he opened the trap door, regardless of whether they were still busy tying up their legs) were cause for criticism . As a result, special reports were requested of his next executions. Since these reports appeared satisfactory (the extensive correspondence on them was released by the UK State Archives in 2006), the matter was not pursued. However, the files show that the “shortage of young people” during the Second World War was responsible for the fact that the “Prison Commission” could not or would not do without its services.

His reputation was so great that he was hired by the US Army to carry out death sentences from their courts-martial against soldiers of the US Army who were stationed in Great Britain and had committed criminal offenses there. In 13 of the total of 16 hangings he acted as the responsible executor (in three of them his nephew Albert Pierrepoint assisted). The executions by the US Army were carried out using the British method of the "long drop", but the protocol was American; Albert Pierrepoint noted in his autobiography that the fact of leaving the delinquent standing on the scaffold with the rope around his neck for up to 5 minutes at midnight while official documents were being read and prayed was irritating and stressful, and he was the "fast" British one 9 a.m. method preferred.

When he retired in 1946, he sought a small pension from the Prison Commission . Executioners in Britain were not civil servants, but were paid per execution. The UK Home Office's answer was short and sweet: no pension for executioners.

Works

• Steve Fielding: Pierrepoint. A Family of Executioners . John Blake Publishing, London, 2006, ISBN 1-84454-192-4 , (A book on the three Pierrepoints).

Web links

• Press article (English)