DEATH OF A HANGMAN

 

 

(In memory of Albert Pierrepoint, 1905-92)

 

With a name more guillotine than gallows,
You came from a lurid line of hangmen

To spend half of your decent, awful life

Perfecting the ritual of the rope:

Twenty seconds from the dungeon to doom

Was the modern art you wrought in a medieval room.

Orwell’s essay and your eloquent book

Turned my young man’s mind against the old law,

Although my ancient heart beat a slow death

For child-killers, terrorists and Nazis;

They dangled before you in their hundreds –

Poisoners and criminals of passion,

Traitors, sex-slayers, madmen, women too

All despatched with respect and compassion;

But how many more innocents, one wonders,

In this era of grudgingly admitted blunders?

Reflective and retired, considering it all,

You left this country with a hard lesson

Learnt more fully than any living Englishman,

That the mob’s rope tossed over a branch

Or bullets or gas or volts or the syringe –

Prove only that blood begets blood, not change;

The bitter fruit of your life’s work: nothing but revenge.

 

(C. IGR 1992)

The issue of capital punishment is one of those ethical questions which tend to divide people into either the black or white camp. I’m in the minority grey area, inclining towards total abolition and recoiling from the hysterical string ‘em all up brigade. It’s worth remembering that, less than two centuries ago, the children of the poor were hanged for stealing fruit. In this country. In public.

 I’d recommend both Pierrepoint’s autobiography,‘Executioner’ (1974) and George Orwell’s essay, ‘A Hanging’ (1931) , which is about his time in the Burmese police during the 1920s when he witnessed a number of executions.

 Picture courtesy Google Images.