For over a quarter of a century, between his qualification as an assistant executioner in 1932 and his abrupt resignation in February 1956, Albert Pierrepoint stood as the pre-eminent practitioner of judicial hanging in Great Britain. By his own reckoning and official Home Office files, he officiated at more than 400 executions across England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, Germany, Austria, and Egypt.
Behind the mechanical efficiency that became Pierrepoint’s hallmark was a ledger: his personal execution logbook.
In keeping with the traditions established by his uncle Thomas and his father Henry—both of whom had served on the Home Office list of approved executioners—Albert kept meticulous written records of almost every execution he carried out. These notebooks, surviving alongside official Home Office LPC4 forms (the prison governor’s certificate of execution), offer an extraordinary, dispassionate window into the working reality of the mid-20th-century British scaffold.
The Logbooks: Structure and Content
Unlike the sensationalised accounts that frequently appeared in the Sunday press, Pierrepoint’s personal notebooks were austere, practical, and businesslike. He maintained them not as macabre souvenirs, but as professional operational logs to ensure mathematical accuracy under the Home Office Drop Table.
Each page typically documented an execution through a series of narrow columns ruled in ink:
| Recorded Field | Operational Purpose |
| Date & Time | Standard 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM execution slot |
| Prison Location | Wandsworth, Pentonville, Strangeways, Barlinnie, Hameln, etc. |
| Condemned Prisoner | Full name, age, and broad offence (usually murder or treason) |
| Physical Stature | Height in feet and inches, weight in stones and pounds |
| Drop Length | Exact drop calculated in feet and inches |
| Assistants | Names of accompanying assistants (e.g., Syd Dernley, Royston Rickard) |
| Remarks | Observations on physique, neck condition, or mechanical drop speed |
For Pierrepoint, the calculation of the drop was an exact science. Under the revised 1913 Home Office table, the drop was calculated to deliver a striking energy of roughly 1,000 to 1,260 foot-pounds, intended to fracture the second and third cervical vertebrae and sever the spinal cord immediately without risking strangulation or decapitation.
A condemned man who was thick-necked, muscular, or elderly required adjustments of several inches compared to a lighter, frail prisoner. The logbook served as Pierrepoint’s running reference library, allowing him to check previous drops for similar physiques before entering the condemned cell.
Notable Entries in the Ledger
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Pierrepoint’s log received the names of some of the most notorious figures in modern British criminal history, alongside wartime traitors and Nazi war criminals.
| Date | Condemned | Prison | Stature & Drop | Notes / Significance |
| 19 Dec 1941 | Antonio Mancini | Pentonville | 5 ft 7 in / 9 st 11 lb — 7 ft 6 in | First execution as lead hangman in England |
| 19 Dec 1945 | John Amery | Wandsworth | 5 ft 6 in / 9 st 6 lb — 7 ft 7 in | Treason; pleaded guilty; took just 7 seconds |
| 3 Jan 1946 | William Joyce (“Lord Haw-Haw”) | Wandsworth | 5 ft 5 in / 10 st 1 lb — 7 ft 2 in | High Treason; scar across cheek noted |
| 13 Dec 1945 | Josef Kramer & Irma Grese | Hameln | Multiple individual drops recorded | 13 Belsen war criminals in a single day |
| 10 Aug 1949 | John George Haigh | Wandsworth | 5 ft 8 in / 12 st 3 lb — 6 ft 2 in | The “Acid Bath” murderer; calm on scaffold |
| 9 Mar 1950 | Timothy John Evans | Pentonville | 5 ft 5 in / 9 st 12 lb — 7 ft 4 in | Wrongfully hanged; posthumously pardoned |
| 28 Jan 1953 | Derek Bentley | Wandsworth | 5 ft 8 in / 10 st 4 lb — 7 ft 0 in | Controversial joint-enterprise execution |
| 13 Jul 1955 | Ruth Ellis | Holloway | 5 ft 2 in / 7 st 5 lb — 7 ft 4 in | Last woman executed in Great Britain |
The Hameln Logs: Industrial Hanging in Occupied Germany
The most staggering entries in Pierrepoint’s logs date between late 1945 and 1949, when the British military authorities contracted him to carry out executions of convicted war criminals in the British Occupation Zone of Germany.
Operating primarily at Hameln Prison, Pierrepoint faced an operational scale never seen in modern British domestic justice. In Britain, an executioner carried out perhaps ten to fifteen executions a year; at Hameln, Pierrepoint frequently hanged ten to fifteen condemned prisoners in a single morning.
- Double Gallows Protocol: To process the large numbers sentenced by British military tribunals, the Royal Engineers constructed a double gallows allowing two prisoners to be dispatched simultaneously.
- The Record Day (13 December 1945): Pierrepoint’s log records the hanging of 13 staff from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in one day, beginning with Josef Kramer (the “Beast of Belsen”) and Fritz Klein, followed by female guards Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, and Juana Bormann.
- Tally: In total, Pierrepoint executed 202 individuals in Germany and Austria under military warrant, all systematically tabulated in his field books with German weights converted into British stones and pounds.
The Final Entries and Resignation
The final entries in Pierrepoint’s register illustrate both the routine nature of his trade and the dispute that ultimately ended it.
On 13 July 1955, he recorded the details of 28-year-old Ruth Ellis at HM Prison Holloway—a drop of 7 feet 4 inches, executed without incident in roughly twelve seconds. It was to be the final female execution in British history.
Six months later, on 27 January 1956, Pierrepoint travelled to Strangeways Prison, Manchester, to carry out the execution of Thomas Bancroft. Upon arrival, he inspected the gallows and prepared his apparatus, only for the prison governor to inform him that a reprieve had arrived from the Home Office. Under existing regulations, an executioner was paid £10 for an execution, but only half the fee (£5) if a reprieve was granted after he had arrived at the prison.
Pierrepoint, having incurred train fares and lost time from his public house (the Help the Poor Struggler in Hollinwood), argued that he was entitled to the full fee of £10 plus conduct money. The Prison Commission refused.
Insulted by what he perceived as petty bureaucratic penny-pinching by the Under-Sheriff of Lancashire and the Home Office, Pierrepoint took his pen to paper and submitted his formal resignation to the Prison Commission on 23 February 1956. His ledger was abruptly closed.
The Historical Value of the Logs
Following Albert Pierrepoint’s death in Southport in July 1992, his surviving logbooks, execution diary, and measuring tapes were eventually sold at auction, later entering private archival collections and public exhibitions.
Historically, these logs are far more than a ledger of the dead. They represent an indispensable empirical record that cuts through folklore and sensationalist true-crime writing. Where contemporary newspapers reported struggle, fainting, or prolonged suffering, Pierrepoint’s cold, matter-of-fact notations—noting drop lengths to the half-inch and drop speeds between seven and fifteen seconds—show how the Home Office converted an ancient, messy public spectacle into a clinical, concealed administrative procedure.
For the student of British capital punishment, Pierrepoint’s notebooks remain the defining primary record of the mechanical long drop at its absolute operational zenith.
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