Cross-Posted at JUST EAT THE DAMN PEACH. |
If you're not in need of light-hearted fun or something upbeat to take your mind off this, that, or the other, I would strongly recommend this film: the misleadingly titled The Last Hangman, in which the always extraordinary Timothy Spall plays Britain's Albert Pierrepont, the most humane hangman in history. (The trailer for the film is here). It unlocks a certain small grey window on a certain period of British history and a certain aspect of British history and culture. Besides: Timothy Spall.
I knew before watching the film that Pierrepont was an exceptional character since my death penalty-abhorring British husband, Nicholas, has always (based on Pierrepont's biography) admired and respected him. (Pierrepont even makes a brief appearance in the first chapter of Nicholas's novel, Elijah). Pierrepont's distinguishing trait was the utter respect with which he treated the people he executed, his careful use of techniques designed to cause instant death (to avoid the suffering and indignity that goes with the lynch-mob style of hanging practiced elsewhere), and his belief that those who died on the gallows thereby redeemed themselves ("they paid the price") and were thereafter entitled to the respect due to the dead anywhere.
I oppose the death penalty in every circumstances, but I would like to see Pierrepont's spirit infuse those who still promote it. The grisly hunger for revenge of most death penalty advocates, and their disrespect for the death itself, would have disgusted Pierrepont as much as it does me (and in fact, he later concluded that the death penalty was wrong).
It's a great and humane, if grim, film. In a review in the Boston Globe, critic Ty Burr writes:
Some of us...have been waiting for the great Timothy Spall movie. "Pierrepont --The Last Hangman " comes close enough to suffice for now. The movie, a gray and measured biography of Albert Pierrepoint , who worked until his 1956 retirement as chief executioner for Her Majesty's government, is grim stuff ....in its mixture of post war British reserve and ugly reality. Spall makes it work, creating a little man with big and terrible secrets.
The title's a misnomer: Death by hanging continued in Britain until 1964, when capital punishment was abolished. Pierrepoint was the only hangman the public knew, though, because he was so very good at his job. Timid and pear-shaped, a grocery deliveryman by trade, he plied his shadowy second career with such efficiency that the state came to rely on him for swift execution of its duties. He is estimated to have hanged some 450 people...
Like its hero, the movie doesn't flinch for most of its running time. The hangings are depicted with unmelodramatic directness: the whimpering of the condemned, the bag over the head, the short, sharp drop. Pierrepoint doesn't concern himself with the crimes of the guilty. He only wants to break the record for quickest hanging, both for humanitarian reasons and as a point of professional pride. After death is achieved, he unclothes and washes the bodies with tenderness. "She's paid the price," he says of one victim. "She's innocent now."...
By World War II his reputatation has risen to the point where Field Marshal Montgomery (Clive Francis) requests Albert's services at the mass executions of German war criminals. He began with the staff of the Belsen concentration camp; eventually he hanged 200 Nazis.
The film treats this as a turning point, both in terms of Pierrepoint's public notoriety and his state of mind. He returns from Germany a hero -- the pub is mobbed -- yet the unrelenting machinery of mass execution slowly breaks his spirit. What differentiates him from his victims, he wonders. It's obvious, yet not so obvious. (The Boston Globe; emphasis added)
I thought that the real turning point for Pierrepont (as the film sees it and as his biography has it) was the hanging of his old pal, a man known to him from his pub only as "Tish." Not recognizing the name of that day's client, he turns up for an execution only to find himself face to face with an old friend. "I'm sorry, lad," he says.
Pierrepoint 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 little to do with the merits of the case in question. He had also been forced to hang 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 commented:
- "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." (Albert Pierrepont)
As Burr says, the title of the film (The Last Hangman) is misleading, since Pierrepont's resignation preceded the decision of the Brits to abolish the death penalty.
It is no coincidence that the year Pierrepoint resigned, 1956, was the only year before abolition where not a single execution took place — he was the only executioner in British history whose notice of resignation prompted the government to write to him begging him to reconsider, such was the reputation he had established as the most efficient and swiftest executioner in British history....
Albert Pierrepoint is often referred to as Britain's last hangman, but this is not true — executions continued until 13 August 1964 when Gwynne Owen Evans was hanged at 8.00 a.m. at Strangeways Prison by Harry Allen, while Peter Anthony Allen was hanged simultaneously at Walton Prison, Liverpool by Robert Leslie Stewart, both for the murder in a robbery of John Alan West. He was, however, the last official Chief Hangman for the United Kingdom (and, for a time, the unofficial one for the Republic of Ireland, along with his uncle, Thomas). (Albert Pierrepon; links in originalt)
Wikipedia has a list of some of the notable criminals executed by Albert Pierrepont.
The execution of the German war criminals appears in the film. It is handled in a way that makes you understand Pierrepont's exact attitude toward even the worst criminals:
- 13 German war criminals - Irma Grese, the youngest concentration camp guard to be executed for crimes at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz (aged 22), Elisabeth Volkenrath (Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz), and Juana Bormann (Auschwitz), plus 10 men including Josef Kramer, the Commandant of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. All were executed at Hameln on 13 December 1945 at half-hour intervals, the women being hanged individually, the men in pairs.
You can see a videotape of this segment here. Fans of Tobias Menzies (Brutus in Rome, my own favorite character in that series) might find his presence slightly cheering. But not necessarily all that much.
This did not appear in the film:
- "Lord Haw-Haw", William Joyce, controversially convicted as a traitor and executed at Wandsworth, 3 January 1946.
The next three criminals were all portrayed in the film. Two of them are the two innocent men that Pierrepont hanged.
- Derek Bentley, controversially executed at Wandsworth on 28 January 1953 for his part in the death of Police Constable Miles, despite his having already been under arrest at the time of the fatal shot. The execution was carried out despite pleas for clemency by large numbers of people including 200 Members of Parliament, the widow of Miles, and the recommendation of the jury in the trial. After a long campaign, Bentley received a posthumous pardon in July 1993. An article written by Pierrepoint for The Guardian, but withheld until the pardon was made, dispelled the myth that Bentley had cried on his way to the scaffold. Right until the last, he believed he would be reprieved. In 1998, the Court of Appeal ruled that Bentley's conviction was "unsafe" and quashed it.
- Timothy John Evans, hanged at Pentonville Prison on 9 March 1950 for the murder of his daughter (he was also suspected of having murdered his wife). It was subsequently discovered that Evans' neighbour John Reginald Christie, a self-confessed necrophiliac, was a serial killer who was also executed by Pierrepoint on 15 July 1953 at Pentonville (not in the film). Timothy Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966 for the murder of his daughter.
- Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, on 13 July 1955, for shooting her lover. Contrary to myth, Pierrepoint had no regrets about her execution — in fact it was one of the few times he spoke publicly about one of his charges, and he made it abundantly clear he felt she deserved no less.
The film was ambiguous about his reaction to Ellis. At the very last moment, she smiles at him quite creepily, but Nicholas says that it's not in the biography. He denies that her execution factored into his resignation.
Here's a review of the film by a blogger from New Zealand who doesn't share my view of the death penalty but who seems to have taken in Pierrepont's view of his job as comprehending the obligation to minimize pain and fear to the extent possible.
You can get Pierrepont's biography, Executioner Pierrepont, at Amazon.co.uk.
I'd actually love to review these boxes on my shopping/lifestyle blog. i wonder if they'd send me a sample box to talk about?
Posted by: moncler outlets | November 13, 2011 at 10:36 PM