Albert Pierrepoint - Views On Capital Punishment

Views On Capital Punishment

Pierrepoint allegedly became an opponent of capital punishment. The reason for this seems to be a combination of the experiences of his father, his uncle, and himself, whereupon reprieves were granted in accordance with political expediency or public fancy, and had little to do with the merits of the case in question. He had also hanged a slight acquaintance, James Corbitt, on 28 November 1950; Corbitt was a regular in his pub, and had sung "Danny Boy" as a duet with Pierrepoint on the night he murdered his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy because she would not give up a second boyfriend. This incident, in particular, made Pierrepoint feel that hanging was no deterrent, particularly when most of the people he was executing had killed in the heat of the moment rather than with premeditation or in furtherance of a robbery.

Pierrepoint kept his opinions to himself on the topic until his 1974 autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint, in which he wrote:

I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people ... The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.

However, Pierrepoint's opinion with regard to capital punishment remains controversial and the subject of debate, mostly due to a 1976 interview with BBC Radio Merseyside, in which the former executioner expresses his uncertainty towards the sentence, and reminds the interviewer that, when the autobiography was originally written, "things were going steady." In addition, he states "Oh, I could go again", when describing his reaction to particularly vile murder cases.

Pierrepoint's position as an abolitionist and capital punishment opponent has also been attacked by his long-time former assistant, Syd Dernley, in his 1989 autobiography The Hangman's Tale:

Even the great Pierrepoint developed some strange ideas in the end. I do not think I will ever get over the shock of reading in his autobiography, many years ago, that like the Victorian executioner James Berry before him, he had turned against capital punishment and now believed that none of the executions he had carried out had achieved anything! This from the man who proudly told me that he had done more jobs than any other executioner in English history. I just could not believe it. When you have hanged more than 680 people, it's a hell of a time to find out you do not believe capital punishment achieves anything!

Pierrepoint biographer Steve Fielding took a similar view when interviewed for the 2003 Alba Productions documentary The Executioners, stating that he believed it was used only as a "good line to sell the book."

Albert's father Henry was never officially "dismissed" nor was his uncle Thomas "retired"; rather, their names were removed from the list of executioners and invitations to conduct executions ceased to arrive. Albert formally demanded that his name be removed from the list, thus he "resigned".