1950: James Corbitt, the hangman’s mate

On this date in 1950, famed British executioner Albert Pierrepoint carried out his most difficult assignment: hanging his friend.

Though not literally the Isles’ last hangman, Pierrepoint is the last one everyone thinks of, the man who defined the hangman’s job for the 20th century.

Discreet, orderly, and as quiet as he was efficient,* he was the brand-name executioner for stiff-upper-lip England of the waning empire, with over 400** hangings to his name from 1932 until he resigned over a fee dispute in 1956.

Despite his proper avoidance of the spotlight, Pierrepoint’s excellence at his craft would make him a celebrity — especially after the press fixated on his role hanging Nazi war criminals after World War II. The ready-made morality play upon the scaffold boards could hardly be resisted: the English grocer, meting out a dignified and precise measure of justice to the likes of the Beast of Belsen.

Hanging Around

Pierrepoint’s characteristic client wasn’t a war criminal, but a humdrum British murderer, only a handful of which attract especial remembrance today.

Still, in the immediate postwar years, the growing reach of the mass media and burgeoning public controversy over the death penalty would frequently put Pierrepoint in the middle of the era’s highest-profile hangings, including:

Tish and Tosh

Like as not, this day’s affair hit the sturdy hangman harder than any of those.

James Henry Corbitt was a regular at “Help the Poor Struggler”, the piquantly named Oldham pub Pierrepoint bought and managed after World War II. Known as “Tish” to Pierrepont’s “Tosh,” the two had sung a duet of “Danny Boy” on the night that Corbitt went out and murdered his girlfriend in a jealous rage.

Corbitt was not exceptional as a criminal, and he was indisputably guilty; we wouldn’t notice him if not for his acquaintance with the man who put him to death.

But Pierrepoint would remember this one well, as he later wrote in his his autobiography:

I thought if any man had a deterrent to murder poised before him, it was this troubadour whom I called Tish. He was not only aware of the rope, he had the man who handled it beside him singing a duet. The deterrent did not work.

Remarkably, the most prolific executioner in British history had come out against the death penalty, or so it seemed. (He later backed away from a strong anti-death penalty position, though without retracting his original reservations. The death penalty had been a decade off the books by this point, in any case.)

It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men and grandmothers.

I have been amazed to see the courage with which they walk into the unknown.

It did not deter them then and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder. And if death does not work to deter one person, it should not be held to deter any … capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.

It’s an open question how much Tish’s hanging this day really contributed to Pierrepoint’s retirement six years later or his apparent change of stance on his trade. But it provides the gut-wrenching dramatic pivot for the film Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman.

Interestingly, while the hangman saw in Corbitt’s fate a troubling indictment of the death penalty, the hanged man’s son to this day still says dad deserved to die.

More on Albert Pierrepoint

For a man so ubiquitously present in the mid-century experience of Great Britain, and who undertook such a dramatic volte-face, it’s no surprise that Pierrepoint has attracted plenty of attention — including this website, and a number of books.

Also of possible interest: Hangmen of England: History of Execution from Jack Ketch to Albert Pierrepoint (we’ve met Jack Ketch here before). More dry factual data about Pierrepoint, the father and uncle who preceded him in the post, and other recent practitioners in Britain’s colorful line of executioners is here.

* The English practice was for Pierrepoint to pinion the prisoner’s arms in the condemned cell, escort him a few steps into a hanging chamber, hood him, and execute the sentence without further ceremony. The whole process took mere seconds — a record fast seven seconds from cell door to trap door in the case of James Inglis — which Pierrepoint seems to have had a gift for dignifying in his (usual) silence with a sort of calming paternal assurance.

Pierrepoint hanged six American soldiers under the auspices of U.S. military forces deployed to England during the Second World War, and confessed to considerable discomfort with that entity’s protracted pre-hanging procedures that had him standing on the scaffold with the condemned man for several minutes.

* And perhaps well over 600 hangings; the figures are disputed.

On this day..

17 thoughts on “1950: James Corbitt, the hangman’s mate

  1. You have to look at the death penalty for what it is ,Justice
    Not revenge.
    Christ as GODS only begotten son came down to earth as a man to pay for the perfect life Adam lost .
    A perfect life for a perfect life to balance out GODS perfect system of justice
    The wages of sin being death.
    You take someone’s life, you have to pay the price with your own to balance out justice.
    Once you’ve paid that price the slate is wiped clean ,what comes after is between you and GOD.
    No one should deny you the right to pay either.

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  3. I firmly believe that the death penalty should be re-introduced back into the U.K. At the time & era there was a good argument for & against it. It was abolished. Now if we fast forward to the 1980’s onwards the death penalty would be a welcome punishment. In Mrs Thatcher’s time, when she was’nt helping peadophiles, a vote was taken in the house & it was a close call. We almost had it back. There have been legions of murderers released from prison only to kill again.
    Could I be an executioner? Yes, & I am a female. It needs dignity & a certain amount of compassion to carry out the execution because you are facing a person @ such a stressful time, the imminent drop & their death.
    I hope in my lifetime I get to see it’s return in the same dignified & humane way via hanging. Or another way in which the murderers & peadophiles could repay their debt is to use them instead of animals for all testing. It was proven a few years back when a group of volunteers agreed to test a drug which had previously been tested on rats & was cleared to test on humans. It did not go very well at all. All the men reacted immediately, faces swelling up, vomiting, convulsions, heart rates off the chart, blood pressure off the chart etc. They could hardly cope as each volunteer started reacting. All of this could have saved a lot of animals lives & money if they just do all testing on humans. Those prisoner’s could be seen to be reaying their debt to society for their crime. And at leat you would get accurate results & if the prisoner died during testing, again they have repaid their debt.
    But this country, (UK), does not have the bollocks to bring back hanging. On a much milder example of what the prison system means today, I unfortunately happen to know someone who had been in prison for GBH & he was given 5yrs, but he played the “good boy” & got out early. I was disappointed to see him but I asked him what it was like & he replied ” After a few days I settled in & it was great, like a holiday camp, wouldn’t be concerned if I went back!” This guy is probably going to be back in as he is a dealer & user of forged £20 notes which he offered to me for £10 each!! I hope he goes back in soon.
    The UK needs a very big kick up it’s arse.

    • Supporting the death penalty is one thing but wanting criminals to be medically experimented on?!? You’re a complete psycho.

      I can’t believe your comment has been left up.

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  11. iv read most there is to read about this man .he did the dirty work whot no one wanted to do . someone had to do it no one else would do it the way he did he had it down to a fine art .thats taken pride in ur work . qk &clean rip ap

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  13. The very idea that the death penalty is a deterrent is horribly misplaced. How does execution deter the person who committed the crime? It doesn’t.
    Does the death penalty deter anyone from a crime worthy of execution? NO! Just as prisons do not deter thieves, sex offenders, liars, and others guilty of their crimes.
    So, we must ask ourselves what purpose do prisons serve? They separate criminals from those of us free and place them in positions where they no longer are.
    What purpose does execution serve? It’s purpose is threefold: first, it follows the law; second, it stops the criminal from committing any further crimes; and third, is meant to provide the most severe form of punishment.
    Equating capital punishment with the same thing as a “Do Not Touch – Wet Paint” sign is foolish.
    Would I want to be an executioner? I don’t believe I have what it takes to be one. An executioner’s job is an operation of law.
    Why call an executioner a murderer? He/she is only carrying out that portion of the law that requires the condemned to face the punishment of his or her crime.
    An executioner is no more a murderer than the jury that convicted or the judge that pronounced sentence or the warden where the execution takes place.
    Finally, abolishing capital punishment goes against the grain of the law. For every form of capital punishment the state invokes, there will be a host of those opposed to it as cruel & unusual or inhumane.
    Was Mr. Pierrepoint a bad man? No, though I’m convinced he felt bad about some of his work. Was he a murderer? Hardly.

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