Customer Reviews

Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners: The Story of Britain's Infamous Hangmen

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Unlike those learned gentlemen who practice the judging of a book by its cover, I have read this work. It is a fascinating and compassionate account of a family dedicated to reshaping execution from torture to a death as quick and painless as possible. A second goal was to carry out the sentence with as little trauma to the body as possible, to spare the family yet another indignity.
Unlike recent inept and intenionally cruel Iraqi hangings done at the direction of the US government, the Pierrepoint family practiced and rehearsed the final moments so that only a few seconds elapsed between the executioner's entering the chamber and the drop. Pierrepoint also desribes his awakening, and his eventual joining of the British movement to outlaw the barbaric practice of capital punishment.

I have read a number of books about British executioners including Diary of a Hangman by John Ellis, and The Hangman's Tale: Memoirs of a Public Executioner by Syd Dernley, and I have to say that this book by Mr Fielding was not nearly as interesting as those two. The actual biographical information about the three Pierrepoints, Henry, Thomas and Albert is rather sketchy and most of the book consists of page after page of brief accounts of murders and then a paragrpaho or so detailing the execution of the perpetrators. A few of the murders are interesting accounts of famous cases, but the bulk are sordid and mundane and the accounts of the executions, for the most part, seem to differ only in the weight of the victim and the length of the drop. It is a pity that the author didn't focus on a smaller number of cases and provide a bit more interesting detail for each. As it was, the book quite quickly became repetitious and tedious. I finished it, but I doubt I will read it again.

The cover of this book shows a noose totally unlike that used by Pierrepoint or any other British executioner - one cannot help wondering if the rest of the book is as full of such glaring errors. I shall not be wasting my money.