Henry Pierrepoint

Henry Albert Pierrepoint (30 November 1877 – 12 December 1922) was an English executioner from 1901 until 1910. He was the father of Albert Pierrepoint and brother of Thomas William Pierrepoint.

Early life Pierrepoint was born in Normanton on Soar, Nottinghamshire, the fourth child and second son of Thomas Pierrepoint, a railway platelayer, and Ann Pierrepoint, nee Marriott.

By 1891, he and his family had moved to Clayton, near Bradford, where he was employed in a worsted mill. Henry was unhappy working there, and so in 1893 his father arranged an apprenticeship for him at a large butchers in Bradford. Three years later he left the apprenticeship and moved to Manchester where his sister Mary was one of the managers at a cabinet making firm.

Career as a hangman

Over the next few years, he worked primarily as an assistant to William and John Billington before becoming the principal executioner of Britain in 1905. In 1906, he carried out all eight hangings on the island.

Pierrepoint later persuaded his elder brother Thomas to join the family business, and reputedly trained him in a stable with a rope and sacks of corn. Later, an interview he gave, published in a local newspaper, inspired his son Albert to do the same. In his nine-year term of office Henry carried out 105 executions. His career was finished when he arrived the day before an execution at Chelmsford Prison "considerably the worse for drink", and fought his assistant John Ellis. Ellis reported the incident to the Home Office which decided, after receiving confirmation by the warders' account of the matter, to strike Henry from the list of approved executioners.

Henry was never officially "dismissed", but he was removed from the list of executioners and invitations to conduct executions ceased to arrive.

Throughout his career as an executioner, Pierrepoint occupied various other jobs, such as a position in Huddersfield gasworks, on 12 December 1922, aged 45, although his age was incorrectly registered as 48.