Ghosts from past as hangman's book goes under hammer

The Bradford grocer’s boy who inherited his father’s job as Britain’s chief executioner, logged each of his victims according to the thickness of the neck around which he slipped his noose.

The dog-eared “execution book” kept by Albert and his father, Henry Pierrepoint, is now going under the hammer, along with plaster casts of Albert’s face and hands, preserved after his death in 1992. Auctioneers expect next month’s sale to raise up to £40,000 .

Albert Pierrepoint had been the executioner for William Joyce – the traitor and Nazi propagandist Lord Haw-Haw – and the British Fascist John Amery, the first person to plead guilty to treason in an English court since 1654. He also executed some 200 war criminals in Hameln, Germany.

James Rylands, of Summers Place Auctions in Sussex, said the plaster hands were his most chilling legacy. “They are both workmanlike and delicate – and then you think of the grim task they performed,” he said. “I hope the buyer will keep them in the public domain.”

Albert resigned in 1956, having hanged more criminals than anyone else in Britain. He became a publican in Oldham.