Face of a killer: Plaster casts of last hangman Albert Pierrepoint set to go up for sale

Published: 03 June 2010
by DAN CARRIER

WITH these hands he despatched some of Britain’s most notorious killers – and, on some occasions, watched with this face as innocent people swung from the gallows.

Now the plaster-cast death mask, hands and macabre daily diaries of Britain’s last official hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, have come into the possession of a rare books dealer in Camden. 

Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, based in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, have been handed the bizarre loot and are due to sell them this weekend at a fair at Olympia – with all the profits being handed over to the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.

Ed Nassau-Lake, from Jarndyce Antiquarian, explained that the book – with carefully annotated entries that include such names as Ruth Ellis, accused police killer Derek Bennett and the wartime traitor William “Lord Haw Haw” Joyce – is a one-off with a value almost impossible to gauge.

He said: “It was sold at Christie’s by the Pierrepoint family soon after his death in 1992. The diary starts in 1932, when the life of a Patrick McDermott was ended by the Pierrepoint family in the confines of Dublin prison.” 

Others were killed abroad after Albert went to the Nuremberg Trials and executed Nazis who had committed mass murder at the death camp Belsen. As well as the names of his victims, the executioner kept a log of their height, weight, and how far they fell when the trap beneath the gallows opened.

And some were found to be innocent after the deadly deed had been done – accused child-killer Timothy John Evans was hanged by Pierrepoint on March 9, 1950, for the murder of his daughter. He was later found to have been innocent and was pardoned, posthumously. Pierrepoint hanged the real murderer two years later. 

He wrote how he had been involved in 606 executions, but killed less as around 173 were reprieved before he could tighten the noose.

Mr Nassau-Lake added: “I expect them to fetch anywhere from £15,000 upwards.”