For over fifty years, if someone was going to be hanged in Britain, chances were it would be a Pierrepoint holding the lever.

Henry, Thomas and Albert Pierrepoint were Britain's most extraordinary family of state executioners — three generations who between them hanged approximately nine hundred people, including Nazi war criminals, British traitors, serial killers, and at least one man who was almost certainly innocent. Albert alone carried out between 435 and 600 executions, perfecting a method so precise he could complete a hanging in under twelve seconds.

He hanged thirteen Nazi SS guards in a single day at Hameln Prison in 1945. He hanged the last woman ever executed in Britain. He hanged a man he sang duets with in his own pub. He hanged Timothy Evans — later found to be innocent — and three years later hanged the man who actually committed the crime. In 1956, Britain's most prolific executioner resigned over a dispute about expenses. And in his autobiography, he concluded that capital punishment had never deterred a single murder.

This episode covers the full Pierrepoint story — the craft, the dynasty, the cases that shook Britain, and the question of what it means to spend a lifetime perfecting something that turns out to be wrong. Content warning: execution methods, capital punishment, wrongful conviction.

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Written and edited by Corinna Harrod with Holly Clarke. Artwork by Jessica Holmes.
Music: "The Mooche" by Duke Ellington (1928).