How do you become an official Executioner? What is it like doing the job? How do you carry out capital punishment on behalf of the state.
The focus of this this lens is on the nature and psychology of the individuals who perform the role of Executioner and how they approach the job rather than an exploration of the deep ethical issues involved with subject of capital punishment.
Albert Pierrepoint is often referred to as Britain's last hangman, but this is not true - executions continued until 13 August 1964. The last executions were performed by Harry Allen and Robert Leslie Stewart in separate prisons at the same. Image thanks to The Oldham Advertiser
Just how do you apply for and get the job as a professional executioner? What motivates somebody to do the dark job of execution and how do they rationalise and cope with the work that they do.
Are professional executioners morbid individuals or are they highly principled with a strong sense of right and wrong. How are executioners renumerated? Do they get a pension?
What happens if an official executioner has to take time off on sick leave? Do they get counselling on the work that they do? How long does a professional executioners career last.
These are all puzzling questions and probably not what comes to the top of the mind. Mind you that's hardly surprising as the job itself probably doesn't figure strongly in school career advice sessions or university milk rounds.
This lens has no intention of debating the moral and ethical issues of capital punishment. That is clearly a delicate and complex issue, it is about exploring the Executioner as a career phenomenon and the mind sets attitudes and behaviours of those people that have done it.
The Job of Professional Executioner
Alot more than the task of ending somebody's life
:''For other meanings of the term, see executioner (disambiguation). Headsman redirects here; see The Headsman (2005 film) for the movie.
A judicial executioner (not to be confused with executor) is a person who carries out a death sentence ordered by the state or other legal authority, which was known in feudal terminology as high justice.
Executioner in the Spotlight
The Executioners
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
Amazon reviewer Eckybun (Worcestershire, UK) - says:
If you watched the recent documentary series on The Crime and Investigation Network about executioners in the UK, France and the USA, then this book is the logical progression if you want to learn more. The book starts at the earliest forms of execution such as crucifixion and stoning and comes right up to date with Lethal Injection. We learn that stoning was truly a death in the name of the people as the public would carry out the sentence. We learn about how reviled early British hangmen were and how there was an occasion where one executioner was pardoned from his own death sentence in order that he may use his skills to dispatch other condemned inmates. The children of French executioners generally married into the families of other French executioners and the Philippines was the only nation other than the USA to ever use the elctric chair as a means of executing there criminals. All these facts and hundreds more are contained within this fascinating book which looks at methods of execution and the people who carried out the sentences. Great value book and highly recommended.
List of official executioners by country
Such as:
John C. Woods 1903-1950. Hangman for the Third Army in WWII. He was one of the hangman who executed Nazi war criminals.
Jean Rombaud Saint-Omer; in 1536 called to England to execute Ann Boleyn
This is a list of people who have acted as official executioners.
Executioners Stuff on Amazon
The Executioner's Bible: The Story of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Century
Amazon Price: $11.96 (as of 01/04/2010)
Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners: The Story of Britain's Infamous Hangmen
Amazon Price: $13.22 (as of 01/04/2010)
Executioner: The Chronicles of James Berry, Victorian Hangman
Amazon Price: $27.95 (as of 01/04/2010)
The Last Executioner : Memoirs of Thailand's Last Prison Executioner
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
Executioner Pierrepoint
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
About Applying For and Doing The Job
- Saudi State Executioner explains himself
- How he justifies his job
- Florida judge expresses concerns
- Innappropriate dress code?
- Sing Sing Executioner
- The executioner's job at Sing Sing was not an easy one. Killing human beings, even under the approval and authority of the government, was a complicated and demanding job.
- Drama film about Albert Pierrepoint
- He said about his job:
"I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge." - The Standown Texas Project
- He told no one about what he did: not his wife, not his friends, no one. "I had to change. You've got to be transformed to take a life, to become - I hate to say an animal - but a person that you are really not.
- Cruel and Unusal Punishment
- I find myself saying, "You know, Jerry, you don't seem like an executioner."
- 'Star' executioner who struggled to cope with his fame - Times Online
- ALBERT PIERREPOINT, the hangman immortalised this year in a biopic starring Timothy Spall, was already feeling the pressures of fame some 60 years ago.
- Master Hangmen by Robert Walsh
- Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Pierrepoints, first Henry,
then Thomas and finally Albert, were chief executioners for Great Britain,
responsible for hanging hundreds of British citizens. After World War II, Albert
would hang some 200 Nazis on orders of Field Marshall Montgomer - Robert G. Elliott, the official Sing Sing executioner - Crime Library on truTV.com
- Robert G. Elliott explains
- ABC News: Interview With an Executioner
- Exclusive: Rare Interview With Executioner
- Fernand Meyssonnier Algerian executioner
- Fernand Meyssonnier discusses his career
The Death Penalty In The Spotlight
This review is from: The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective (Paperback)
Earlier editions of this book by Prof. Roger Hood made it an essential work for anyone remotely interested in the field. Hugely expanded and revised, it now becomes a must-read for a broader audience - frankly, anyone who cares about justice and human rights. The breadth and scale of the authors' accomplishment is quite breathtaking. Want to know about execution methods and the fairness of trials in Iran or Nigeria? You'll find the answers here, together, of course, with a lucid and in some ways damning exposition of the use of the death penalty in the country that attracts most attention, the United States. Legal, ethical and historical factors are all explained with intellectual clarity and limpid prose. The book also contains comprehensive accounts of abolitionist movements in different countries, and of the problems they must overcome. SUPERB.
Very Matter Of Fact
image from Death Penalty Information Centre
How Do Executioners Cope With The Job?
Well I guess you can't take your work home with you!
- Crime Psych Blog
- To buffer themselves from their own consciences, people often adjust their moral judgments in a process some psychologists call moral disengagement, or moral distancing
- New York Times - Mental Health and Behaviour
- When Death Is on the Docket, the Moral Compass Wavers
- The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Execution Process
- Academic journal article
- Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts ... - Google Book Search
- Excerpt about the role of professional executioner
- The Role Of Moral Disengagement in the Execution Process
Powderhouse
A novel by Jens Bjørneboe
"The second lecture (134-77) is given by the professional executioner Lacroix, still wearing high bandages about his throat after his recent suicide attempt. His topic will be execution and executioners-"from the point of view of the executioner," one who has "the same right to respect, kindness and compassion as all other human creatures have" (134).
What follows, in the text, is a forty-two-page detailed description of the executioner's trade and art, from the high Middle Ages to our day. Generally speaking, the techniques described range from the oldest traditional forms, the chopping block and tortures associated with the Inquisition, hanging, the guillotine, the firing squad, and finally the American electric chair. The focus of the lecture, more than anything else, is on the changing nature of killing by the state, and its effect on those "men in possession of special qualities" who carry it out."
Powderhouse: Scientific Postscript and Last Protocol
Amazon Price: $15.95 (as of 01/04/2010)
Lord High Executioner
Lord High Executioner: An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
Famous Executioners
Professionals who didn't hang around and were a cut above the rest
- 7 Famous Executioners
- Grover Cleveland!!!
- John Ellis
- John Ellis was born in the Balderstone district of Rochdale, England, on October 4th, 1874.
- James Billington
- James Billington was among the first executioners in Britain to take a scientific approach to hanging criminals.
- The English hangmen 1850 - 1964
- The English hangmen from 1850 to 1964 The post of hangman became much sought after in the mid 19th century and remained so until capital punishment was abolished in 1964 with large numbers of applicants (including women) for each vacancy. It would probably attract just as many applicants today
- Capital Punishment U.K. Contents Page
- Capital Punishment U.K. - Contents Page
- Giovanni Battista Bugatti official executioner of the Papal States
- Papal States official
- Godwine Porthund
- medieval executioner
Death At Midnight
The Confession of an Executioner
Cabana is a former prison warden. He doesn't strike me as being much of a "push-over". He has personal experience living in very close proximity to men who have committed the worst crimes imaginable to decent people. He has personally presided at executions. His book leaves the reader aching for the scars left by his role in this process.
Death At Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner
Amazon Price: $20.65 (as of 01/04/2010)
What Happens When The Professionals Get It Wrong
Sometimes it's hard to be an executioner, trying to keep someone from popping up to make a quip when they should have spectacularly sunk without a trace. Or to be told that the condemned to the guillotine won't have a last drink for fear of "completely losing his head." The business of death can be absurd, and nothing illustrates this better than these tales of the gruesome and frankly ridiculous ways in which a number of ill-fated unfortunates met (or failed to meet) their maker.
The Executioner Always Chops Twice: Ghastly Blunders on the Scaffold
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 01/04/2010)
The Lord High Executioner
Song from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado
"Behold the Lord High Executioner!"
The song, "Behold the Lord High Executioner," from the Gilbert and Sullivan musical, "The Mikado." The song is sung here by Martin Savage, who plays George Grossmith, the real-life actor to first take up the role of Ko-Ko. This footage taken from the film, "Topsy Turvy." I do not own any part, nor am I affiliated with, this production.
Runtime: 115
24219 views
21 Comments:
curated content from YouTube
The Last Face You Will Ever See
The Last Face You'll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
Removes the mask of the executioner revealing the secret face of capital punishment, probing the private lives, emotions, and concerns of the men and women who staff the nation's death chambers.
Amazon reviewer Hagbard Celine comments:
"'The Last Face..' is a near biography of former
State of Mississippi executioner, Don Hocutt; it
follows his career from Parchman Penitentiary
guard to his membership of the Gas Chamber
execution team and finally to his current days
of retirement and ill-health, with plenty of
anecdotes from Hocutt himself and people
who worked in Mississippi Corrections thrown in
for good measure."
A Hanging by George Orwell
The Hanging The reality of execution as described by George Orwell.
"It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
This dramatic and moving picture can be found in the National Gallery in London. The impact of the painting can only really be felt when you see it for real. The characters are life size and when you look at the picture its 'as if' you are really there at the event. A very profound and thought provoking experience.
Death Row
The process of execution
- Texas Department of Criminal Justice
- Death row was located in the East Building of the Huntsville Unit from 1928 to 1952. From 1952 until 1965, the electric chair was located in a building by the East Wall of the Huntsville Unit.
- Florida Department of Corrections
- Death row fact sheet
- University of Alaska Anchorage
- Of the 38 states that currently authorize the death penalty, 37 are holding prisoners under sentence of death, as is the federal prison system
Nice Job!
Executioner
Nice Job!: The Guide to Cool, Odd, Risky, and Gruesome Ways to Make a Living (Lookout Media Series)
Amazon Price: $13.45 (as of 01/04/2010)
The Guillotine
Tool of the Executioner.
Whilst it is commonly associated with the French Revolution, it's formative designs go way back in the 13th century. The Halifax Gibbet is an example of this.
Guillotine
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
The mechanisation of the death sentence. Mechanical, dispasstionate and utterly effective.
The Executioners Song
The execution of Gary Gilmour
The Executioner's Song
Amazon Price: (as of 01/04/2010)
Execution and Capital Punishment
- Executed Today
- Fascinating if gruesome true tales.
- Intellectual Competence & the Death Penalty
- Blog that considers intelligence in relation to issues of capital punishment
What are your thoughts of the role an Executioner?
Whatever your position on the issue of capital punishment, do you have a view about the role executioner themselves?
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Reply
- spirituality spirituality Apr 27, 2009 @ 2:39 am
- Great lens - you've been blessed by a squidoo angel :)
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Reply
- 0ctavias0fferings 0ctavias0fferings Jan 23, 2009 @ 8:39 am
- Very interesting lens.
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