After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Britain’s Most Prolific Executioner: Pierrepoint

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

For Albert Pierrepoint, execution was a family affair. His father and uncle were hangmen and from the 1940s until the late 1950s Albert was Britain's "Number One" executioner. Which meant he was the one sent to hang the Nazis who ran the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of the war.Who was Albert Pierrepoint? What does it take to be able to execute hundreds of people? And what is 'The Drop'?Edited and produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards. So go to the show notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm. They will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds. If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't, stop what you are doing

right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Hello everyone. Anthony here. Listen, we have some sensitive content in this episode, so

this one might not be for you. If it's not, please go back and listen to one of the earlier episodes. But if you're sticking around, we're certain that you're going to enjoy this one. In the mid-1940s, Britain was at war. Across the country, bomb shelters provided security from the near-continual onslaught of German bombers. In less violent demonstrations of conflict, ration books were marked with pencils in food stores across the capital and beyond, an everyday keepsake of a tumultuous moment in history. But as the world shook under the weight of combat, the administration of everyday life still somehow went on. Doctors treated minor illnesses, the postmen delivered letters, now more eagerly awaited

than ever by some, and criminals broke the law. For some of these criminals, the justice system, such as it was, meant that their actions brought them face to face with one Mr. Albert Pierpoint. You see, Albert Pierpoint was an executioner. He was a meticulous man who employed rigorous order when faced with the prospect of death. For example, on the day before an execution, Pierpoint would arrive at his designated prison just before four o'clock in the afternoon.

The executioner was then quietly accompanied to a private room within the prison and given time to prepare the tools of his trade. Then, at approximately 5.30 p.m., Albert Pierpoint was taken to see the condemned person for the first time. They will not have been aware of him as he looked cautiously through a spy hole or a window, taking them in, studying them. In neat handwriting, then, Pierpoint takes down the age, height and weight of the condemned, delivered to him by a prison guard.

At this point, he could have guessed, of course, but he preferred to be precise. From this information, the hangman later calculated what was referred to as the drop. Each individual, you see, had a drop unique to them. The drop was the length of rope required to kill the criminal in question as quickly as possible. Pierpoint retired then for the evening to his rooms and contemplated his duties. At 7am the following morning, Albert made his way to the execution chamber and saw to his final preparations with the help of an assistant. Eventually, when the time comes, the criminal enters the chamber.

Albert Pierpoint is the last face they shall ever know. Hello and welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I'm Dr Maddie Pelling. And I'm Dr Anthony Delaney. And today we're talking about Pier Point, the Executioner. So Anthony, can you just tell us what the story is in this episode? What is it about? What are we going to get into? There's quite a few different strands coming together in the history of Albert Pierpoint. We're going to look at an idea of state execution. We're going to look at the figure of the hangman, the trade of the hangman, how it became a family trade, which is fascinating, I think.

But it's also a study of World War II and Pierpoint's place in World War II, which is so fascinating. And finally, then, it's a study of the man himself, I think, what it takes to be an executioner, what, how he reacted to some of the more macabre elements of his position. And I've given you this was for the listeners, I've given Maddie a picture of Pier Point and I just find him a fascinating figure. So Maddie, do you want to maybe describe what's happening in that picture? Yeah. So it's a photograph. Pier Point is, I think, I mean, he doesn't look particularly young at this point. He's sat to a desk in a domestic space. There's a sort of 1930s

fireplace with an electric fire. There's a TV set behind him and pretty flowery wallpaper and carpet. It looks like a fairly typical domestic scene, but the man in the photograph is looking directly at the camera. He's in black tie with his hair swept over with some brill cream. He has this quite jauntily cocked eyebrow. There's something pretty uncanny when you know that this is a man who, by the end of his life, will have executed over 400 people and some of them criminals involved in some of the most high profile cases. We've got Nazis, we've got serial killers. So he's at the heart of all these different cases. And there's something quite chilling about this black and white photograph, I think.

It seems to me a man who presents himself in a certain way and he looks quite sort of confident, almost dapper. And I suspect it's going to be difficult to get to the centre of him and to work out who he really is. So we're in the Second World War, that's the sort of historical context for the beginning of this story. Tell us a little bit about who Pierpoint is. So Albert Pierpoint was born on the 30th of March in 1905. His father was Henry Pierpoint and his mother was Mary Buxton. Now, one thing which will become a little bit clear as we talk about the executioner throughout this episode is that that wasn't an executioner's only job. So Henry,

Albert's father, was also a clogger, so he made clogs, but he was an executioner, as was Albert's uncle Thomas. That's so fascinating that it's a family business. Yeah. Who would have thought? I think that wasn't particularly unusual. There were other family firms, let's say. And if you think about it, it's kind of interesting that one would need to be immersed in the idea of this from a very early age in order to even consider it realistically. For instance, Albert was

11 when he first decided, well, this is what he tells us himself when he first decided that he wanted to be an executioner. He learned about his father's second occupation at that age. And as soon as he learned about it and why his father was away so frequently, he said in an essay that he wrote as a child, when I leave school, I should like to be the official executioner. So not only did he want to be the executioner, he wanted to be the official executioner. So there's a hierarchy of executioners here as well. I find that fascinating that age 11, that's something he's thinking about. And I think you're right. It kind of talks of a sort of indoctrination into that as a trade.

I mean, even calling it a trade feels slightly odd. I feel very sorry for the teacher at school who had to read his essay. Well, apparently the teacher just smiled at him in kind of quiet acknowledgement when he said this. Now, I will say in terms of writing one's own history, Albert Pierpoint is an interesting case study for that too, because most of what we know about Albert comes from Albert. So yeah, so there may well be some fashioning going on here. And as we get to know the man a little bit better throughout this episode, it'll be interesting to come back and talk about that, I think, at the end to see what in his kind of lore he has created or invented himself. Yeah, so he's someone who kind of self mythologizes. Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. And we'll see a really blatant example of that a little bit later on. But in terms of this family reputation as executioners, they were, although not the only family that were carrying out executions, they were seen as the most prolific at the time in Britain. Albert's father died when he was 17 and it fell to his uncle Thomas to become the primary executioner in Britain after the death of Albert's father. But Albert's father had had a kind of a troubled history with his secondary job, I guess, in that he was an alcoholic. And he struggled more than Thomas's brother with leaving it behind once he had committed these executions.

So Thomas's apparent advice to Albert was, if you can't do it without whiskey, don't do it at all. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. earlier that Pier Point is born in 1985, and I think that speaks as well to a certain early 20th century form of masculinity. I'm thinking about the fact that these early decades are shaped by two world wars, and especially in the First World War, this idea of doing your of sort of shutting up, not talking about any trauma that you might have and sort of getting on with the job. And I think to me, his uncle Thomas sounds someone who's very much sort of living and breathing that mindset. We think about the second world war, particularly as being so far removed from a Victorian mindset, but in some ways it was the second world war that removed us so violently from that mindset.

You know, the Victorian era ended in 1901. So 1905, when Albert is born, it's not that far removed. So there is a lot of that kind of Victorian hangover, as you're kind of describing there of what masculinity was. And that changes then obviously a little bit during the Great War and what men were supposed to do, what men were expected in society, the roles, the functions that they had to play. It's just an interesting sort of social context for understanding, I guess, why peer point would feel an ability to do this or even an aspiration potentially. I mean, obviously this is state sanctioned, sort of efficient killing rather than killing in a context of war.

But it's just interesting to me, I think that that is the context. I think it's important to bear in mind. And I think it's also important to remember that because of his duties, because of his duties as executioner, Albert took his first job as the principal executioner in May 1940, for example. He is not at war. He would have been 35 at that point, so not too old to be fighting, but he has his duties to fulfill at home, so therefore he's not in combat.

And he becomes around that time Britain's number one, as it was known in the trade. But Albert does actually get embroiled in the Second World War, which brings me to the next part of the story. Hamlen, Germany, December 13th, 1945. Two years into his reign as Britain's number one, Pierpoint is called to Germany to oversee the execution of Joseph Kramer, the beast of Belsen. And, as the newspapers reported it,

his blonde queen, Irma Gress, alongside nine other Nazi concentration camp aides. British and German police surrounded the gallows to protect Albert from any last minute attacks or escape attempts. The first to die on the gallows that morning was Elizabeth Volkenroth, 26, a former hairdresser and chief of SS women

at the Belsen camp. Precisely 30 minutes later, she was followed by Irma Gress, 22, the youngest person Peer Point had ever executed. Unlike the men who would follow, the women were to be hanged individually, in some macabre nod to the supposed delicacy of their sex. Peer Point recalled when Irma Gress came towards him, she laughed. He was, it seemed, somewhat beguiled with her and blushed and smiled with her when she was asked her age.

At 5 feet 5 inches and 150 pounds, Irma was assigned a drop of 7 feet 4 inches. Gress stood firmly on a chalk X that marked the spot then. And Miss Wilson, the deputy governor of Strangeways Prison, who had accompanied the delegation to help with the hanging of the women, placed a white cap over her head. Then, in language German, Gress pleaded, Schnell.

She dropped into nothingness. There's so much in this story about gender, which I think is very interesting. You know, even these women who are Nazis, who have committed atrocities, that they are kind of perceived as being worthy in some way of a more dignified death because they are female, because they're women. I find that fascinating and potentially abhorrent for all kinds of reasons. Why is Peerpoint in Germany? I mean, he doesn't fight in the Second World War and he is, as you said, dealing with domestic cases of execution at home. He's the British number one executioner. What's he doing in Germany? That seems like an odd

extension of British state power. I mean, I guess it's wartime, but he's part of the strict British administration of the state. Why is he in Germany? He was requested. Well, I say he was requested, his position was requested. It transpired later that it wasn't him specifically, they just said, get the hangman out there basically. So after the liberation of the camps such as Belsen, Pier Point was taken to Germany to enact what they viewed as swift retribution basically that there would not be time to try these people, you know, years later they were tried on the spot and found guilty and hanged. So he was seen as an efficient or the official hangman was seen as an efficient way of doing

this on the spot. And so he was taken to Germany. So he really does find himself at the very heart of some of the most horrendous atrocities committed during the Second World War, which is far more than a lot of even British soldiers would have witnessed, particularly at the concentration camps themselves. So this is something he grapples with, but in a very odd way, because what we're hearing here is firstly, as you point out, this concentration on the female condemned, which is odd in itself, and that there was only three females and eight men, but it's very much the women who endure here. And he is talking about blushing and smiling and there's almost this kind of flirtatious element to what he's describing. So it's an interesting recounting of a particularly lurid point in history.

And it's just so deeply sinister, isn't it? This moment of potentially sort of potential flirtation at the moment of almost death, the fact that it's with a condemned Nazi, with a woman who he has immense power over, but also on the other end of the spectrum, she is a person who's committed these terrible crimes. It's just a really strange, visceral moment from the past. I suppose it combines contemporary ideas of gender with the chaos of war, with the horror of what the Nazis had done at the concentration camps, and also how the international community, and Britain in particular, sought to prosecute and to punish that. Thinking about this actual moment of execution, you speak about Irma Gress in terms of her physicality

and how that is used to calculate the drop. So tell me a little bit about the drop, because this is something that Pierpont is very skilled at, and it's something that he's quite famous for in terms of his precision. So maybe without getting into too much of the sort of gruesomeness, can you tell me a little bit about that as a process and why he's known for it? Yeah, apparently, Pierpoint was particularly skilled, as you say, at

calculating the drop and could essentially do it from sight, but never took that liberty. It was the numbers that he encountered, the weight, the height, the age, all of those things. They were vital to his process. Why was that important? Well, one of the reasons being is because there had been miscalculations in the past. And if you say, for instance, we look back at the 18th century, hanging in the 18th century wasn't considered in terms of the drop. It was just any old length of rope and you would essentially not to get too gruesome, you essentially dangle there until you died.

And people would come and pull on the victims legs, wouldn't they, to try and hasten the process. Yeah. So, and that's a good point. You're talking about a much longer process there if you're not dropped properly. On the other side, there were also examples where the drop was miscalculated and the condemned person was decapitated at the moment of execution. So you need to get this right in order to preserve some form of dignity. Interesting. What happens afterwards? So we've done the calculated drop, the death has been successfully carried out or achieved. What happens to the body of a condemned Nazi who is killed by

peer point? What's the process with those human remains? So in Irma Gress's case, Miss Wilson, because she was female, went with a doctor into the pit to ensure that the condemned was dead in the first place. And Miss Wilson is the deputy governor who's come from strange ways over with the have had to pronounce the condemned dead. Bodies were left to hang from anything between 20 minutes to 60 minutes. But in the case of these particular people at the concentration camps, the 20 minute option was taken as sufficient. There is a theory that was because they were injecting them as well post-hanging just to make sure the job was done. So they would leave them to hang for a certain amount of time, just to make sure that they really were dead, which is quite gruesome in itself.

But in this case, they wanted to be a little bit speedier, and then the bodies would be transferred from the rope in the pit into a basic coffin, which would be waiting to receive the body. into a basic coffin, which would be waiting to receive the body. I find Pierpoint so compelling. He's obviously a strange figure in our history and he comes with all these ethical, moral questions and he self-mythologises as well. It's hard to unpick his importance, his significance. One thing I just find so fascinating about him is that he's really at the centre of this moment at the end of the war, this moment of punishment and justice and retribution. It's so strange to me that an executioner would be the witness to a lot of this. as you say, he didn't fight in the war, he was employed

back in Britain. And he's here in Germany witnessing things that even men who have fought across Europe, they're not privy to these moments. It's just remarkable that he's inserted into this and that he is not only a witness to it, but an active participant as well. And it ensures his place in history in a way. There are other executioners before him and after him, and they are well known. But Pierpoint's name carries a lot of weight in history because of his involvement on this international stage. And it was because of that involvement and some of the cases that come afterwards, particularly,

that his legacy and his history endures. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Across the next ten years, it was Pierpoint who oversaw the hangings of the most notorious

murderers of the period. Neville Heath, John George Haig, John Christie. He also carried out three of the most controversial executions in the latter years of the death penalty in Britain, those of Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis. Inevitably people were, and still are, intrigued by Pierpoint's role as executioner. The man himself remained tight-lipped regarding the secrets of his profession, stating, I refuse to speak about it. It is something I think should be secret myself. It is sacred to me, really. By the time he retired his noose,

Pierpoint had overseen the death of more than 450 people. Later, when Pierpoint had retired, those in favor of banning the death penalty used his admission that he did not know if the death penalty actually acted as a deterrent in favour of their argument. If death were a deterrent, he had stated, I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them last. Young lads and girls, working men and grandmothers, I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown.

It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done, I have not prevented a single murder. I have not prevented a single murder. Fascinatingly self aggrandizing and sort of quasi religious language coming in there when he's talking about himself. I'm really interested in the psychology of a man who could do this as a job. I mean, what do we know about his sort of mental state and how he, the way

that he presents himself, how he writes about himself and his job is very, it is self-aggrandizing, but it doesn't give that much detail in terms of his private feelings about it. It's all about this kind of legendary status, the very famous people that he has come into contact with, that he's ended the lives of. It's very, it feels quite sort of biblical and epic. What do we know about how, what was going on in his mind? Can we know that, in fact? I don't think we can. But there is this predestined order almost that he is carrying out, which is really, really interesting when it comes to ending people's lives. So for instance, he is quoted as saying he had to hang Derek Bentley, or he had to hang Mrs. Louisa Merrifield. But of course, he could have resigned at any

point. This was not something he was appointed to per se. This was an elected position that you could come and go from. He also didn't have to take part in any particular case. One of the interesting things about the Ruth Ellis case, for instance, Ruth was condemned to death for killing her partner who was domestically abusive. And given those circumstances, there was public outcry that she should not be hanged for her crime. But after the fact, she was hanged, but, and after the fact, Pierpoin contacts Ruth's sister and asks if along with her, he might visit the grave of Ruth Ellis and take a

picture of himself standing beside, actually, he doesn't stand beside it. He kneels beside it and puts his hand, puts his arm on the headstone. And there is something in that which makes me very uncomfortable. It is unseemly to some extent, and it also breaks from his tradition by the way. He usually does not entertain what has happened after the fact, but with this particular case, it seems to have stuck with him slightly. Niamh It's interesting for so many reasons, isn't it? Because as an executioner, he's not really there to comment on the guilt or otherwise of the people that he's commissioned to kill, to execute. And I think in that case, he is sort of at least insinuating some sympathy

with Ruth, if not suggesting, maybe not a regret that he had to kill her, but that she didn't deserve that fate in some way. Will Barron Do you know what? I don't think so. I think it was a really famous case, possibly his most famous individual case. And I think it's something about the fame level around it. Because as you say, he really did not get involved with the wheres and why-fors of people that he was, you know, pulling the lever on essentially. He just did what he had to do in his own words. But with this one, I think there was something around Ruth Ellis and the public

outcry that he wanted to potentially, and this is me guessing from what he has written, but there's something where he wanted to attach himself to that case even further. he seeks out some kind of personal connection with the people that he executes, though, rather than public persona. Although the way that he mythologizes himself later on would suggest he is looking for some kind of some level of sort of public fame or infamy. But to me, thinking about his execution of some of the Nazi women in the 1940s and these sort of famous cases in Britain later on. He's almost a collector of criminals in a very macabre way. And, and to me, it feels like he's claiming it's very sort of unsettling, but some kind of ownership of them in some way, some ownership of their moment of death that he's the one

to sort of end their lives. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think there are examples of him visiting with friends or friends visiting him probably more likely in his home, where he would take his executioner's chest out. He would unpack the contents. In some cases, he would place the noose around the neck of his friends. There's one particular friend I'm thinking of here whose name escapes me, but I have heard him testify to this saying, now that the Pierpoint had said to him, you will be the only person living who had Albert Pierpoint's noose around your neck. So he's aware of the entertainment value of this or the outrage value of this. And I think that appeals to him, even though he would say it didn't.

And I think he would strongly disagree with what I'm saying here. But I have a suspicion there's something else going on there, too, that does lend itself to the idea of his notoriety. And he was happy with that notoriety. Yes. I wonder how he was perceived by the public, and especially in those later years when we don't have the death penalty in Britain now. So can you tell us a little bit maybe about how legislation came to get rid of the death penalty? And also, I think to me it sounds like that process goes hand in hand with Pierpoint presenting himself

in this more sort of infamous and entertaining way. And let's hold on to that actually, because that's a really interesting point. But yeah, there's What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. There were so many high profile cases like the Ellis case that I mentioned, cases of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley as well, which led to the 1957 Homicide Act and that reduced

the categories of murder that could be punishable by death. So there are now fewer instances in which the death penalty can be used. Then in 1965, the death penalty for murder in Britain was suspended for five years. Just as a let's see what happens here. But in 69, that was made permanent. But actually, during the research of this, I hadn't realized this myself. I thought that 69 was the date. But actually, it was not until 1998 that the death penalty in Britain was finally

abolished for any crime. Yeah, I had 1969 in my head all the time, but actually I guess it's an administrative quirk, but at the same time that's when it officially ends. So the last people to be executed in the UK were Peter Allen and Gwyn Evans on the 13th of August 1964. I want to come back to that point that you made because I find it fascinating about how he's perceived, how Pier Point is perceived towards while all of this is going on and about his notoriety. And as you were talking, it made me really think he changes his position.

He has retired by this point, remember, so he's no longer an active executioner. So Pierpoint himself resigns in 1956. But by the way, it's for no moral objection that he resigns. He's just not getting his expenses paid on time. So he stops. And that's the reason he stops. That's kind of characteristic of his efficiency, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's very much in keeping with what we know about him. Yeah. But as this conversation around the death penalty is growing then in the 60s,

that's when he comes out and says, actually, I don't know how effective the death penalty is. So therefore, to get back to what you were talking about, that's how he positions himself in this conversation. Well, I mean, people are coming to him, of course, for his opinion. It's a really valuable opinion. And he takes the side of what he sees the public opinion to be doing, I think. I'm, this is conjecture, but I'm not entirely convinced that he necessarily believes what he's saying, but he knows that it places him in this quasi-religious position where he almost gets to condemn the death penalty himself as somebody who enacted the death penalty, and it's imposing a judgment from on high almost. And because bear in mind, he doesn't stick with that opinion.

Later on, he changes his mind again in the 1980s and he becomes a little bit more neutral then or so he seems. And he's like, well, actually there may be a case for it. Look at society. It's falling apart. This isn't the society that I know and love. This isn't the Britain that I know and love. Maybe we need to bring back the death penalty. So it's this

self-fashioning. I think it's really hard to get at Albert Pierpoint, which is why people continue to try to do so. You've spoken, Anthony, about his this kind of elevated status that he has, and it's very much a self-appointed elevated status. He writes himself into the history of Britain. And you know, he was there at some of these pivotal cases and these pivotal moments that a self-appointed elevated state as he writes himself into the history of Britain. He was there at some of these pivotal cases and these pivotal moments that shape not only criminal history but social history as well and how Britain moralises itself, how it understands the role of the state in terms of policing and punishment and all of that.

After he dies though, he's kind of treated in a way like many criminals in history, rather than a hangman, in that he's made into a relic. So there's a death mask made of him and also casts are taken of his hands. I think it's Wandsworth Prison and they're in the museum there, I believe still. Just let's talk about that for a minute because I think the fact that it's the death mask and the hands is very interesting. But this process of replicating someone in that way is very much something in the 18th and 19th century in particular that's applied to criminals who are executed. Yeah, actually, he takes on a kind of a, it's almost like that 19th century idea of Birkin hair in a way, which we've spoken about before in terms of memorializing the gruesome and Pierpoint

becomes part of that, albeit on another side. I find so personally, and I'm sure this has happened before, I don't know about you Maddie, do you know of any other post-mortem hand casts that have been taken? I mean, I'm sure that there are some, but I think in this particular case, the hands to me, they represent his work and they are, you know, they're the hands that would have done the calculations along with his mind in terms of the drop, they're the hands that would have handled the rope and indeed handled the executed prisoners before and after the moment of death. And I think there's

obviously a sort of power that's attributed to them, a very sort of macabre sinister power. And I guess as well, they're the hands that have been the witness to all these great cases, including the executions that he did of Nazis in the Second World War. It's fascinating to me and I don't know how I feel about it. I don't know morally if it's useful to memorialise him and parts of him in that way. I also think, as I'm talking, that the fact that he is sort of disarticulated himself, he's not memorialised as a statue or as a waxwork. He's a face, a death mask and some hands. And there's something very strange about that, this taking him apart in terms of his own body that's quite interesting there, I think.

Also, if you think about the phrase that is applied to murderers, often you will see people write that such and such victim died at the hands of. And so it's interesting that the hands here become something of note, something that they want to memorialize. And we have to be upfront about it. One of the things that fascinates us about Albert Pierpoint is that the end of people's lives were enacted through him. And we can talk about the justice system and we can talk about, you know, these sentences that were passed down and that he was enacting a state sanctioned function, all of which is true. But at the end of the day, when it came to pulling that lever and looking at that person face to face for the last time,

the last person that they might see, it's peer point. He's the one standing there. And he was always very reluctant, and there's something in this, I think, he was always very reluctant to talk about the numbers of people he had executed. He didn't want to talk about numbers. He didn't want to talk about a body count, essentially. And when you interject those facts and those, you know, you're talking about over 400 people here. And our fascination, I think, as listeners, as historians, as viewers, comes from trying to piece together what it is like to be the final person with whom a condemned person interacts before they leave the earth.

That's mammoth. It is. And we continue to be fascinated by him. I think there's at least one film about his life, and there is something that draws us back to his story again and again, whether or not we agree with state-sanctioned execution as a concept. I think he as an individual is compelling and troubling. Yes, I think that's exactly a compelling and troubling. I have no qualms about saying I do not agree with state sanctioned execution. And possibly for that very reason, he is more compelling, because not only is he somebody who at one point at least believes in this thing, but he is carrying it out. You know, he is carrying out state sanctioned killings. And actually, the family of Ruth Ellis, for instance, I have heard Ruth Ellis's sister say in an interview

that she thinks he should be tried. You know, that her sister killed one person who was physically abusive towards her, and she was hanged for that, but that peer point has killed over 400 people in her view. And where's his trial? I think that's a really great note to end on. Thank you, Anthony, for talking us through this case. I think it's a really difficult one to get through. and I think it raises a lot of questions, probably more so than it answers once you start to look into his life. He's a fascinating man and a fascinating figure in history and a fascinating witness to history actually.

Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of After Dark, Myths, Misteeds and the Paranormal. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts, and if you want to leave us a review, it's very welcome. It helps more people discover us, and it's always nice to receive feedback. So thank you very much, and we will see you next episode. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

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