Brummie Cabbie wrote:
gusmac wrote:
Brummie Cabbie wrote:
gusmac wrote:
I will leave you with the thoughts of Albert Pierrepoint
"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."
That's very, very rich coming from a guy that regularly put the noose round the neck and pulled the trap-door lever!!
You couldn't make it up!!
Indeed. A man who knew far more about capital punishment than most.
Over 400 executions - Perhaps murder wasn't as uncommon as you think back then?
It must have been sad for him to conclude that his life's work had been pointless.
My point was that he continued to do the job for a few decades collecting his fees and only upon retirement did he make such a statement.
Indeed his view was very contradictory as later reported;
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!So don't believe what Pierrepoint said when he was trying to justify his conscience.
If he was justifying a guilty conscience, surely he would have claimed the opposite.
After 680 deaths, it has to be an admission of guilt that whatever he believed at the beginning of his career, he was wrong.
I think he was just being honest.
I've just ordered his book, Executioner Pierrepoint: An Autobiography
Login
Register
FAQ
