A once secret notebook gives a chilling insight into the mind of a man who killed hundreds of people for a living.
Albert Pierrepoint executed over 400 people during a 25-year career, making him one of Britain's most prolific hangmen.
Remarkably, Albert, dreamed of becoming an executioner from his school days, wanting to follow in the footsteps of his dad and uncle who were paid to dispatch those condemned to death by the state.
Albert, whose first job was in a Failsworth textile mill, achieved his dream, travelling the length and breadth of the country hanging men and women for an array of crimes whilst the death penalty, abolished in Britain in 1965, was still the norm.
And, even during his days as executioner he was a well-known figure in the area, running a pub in Oldham.
During his hangman's career Pierrepoint killed those convicted of war crimes -and those accused of being German spies during the Second World War- becoming famous in the process.
And now, nearly thirty years after his own death, his 'Notebook of Death', which records the efficiency with which he went about his grisly part-time job, has been sold to a collector.
Inside are handwritten notes on the weight, height of the prisoner and the length of rope needed.
It was this attention to detail which helped him develop his reputation for being calm and clinical during his executions.
The detail would go as far as him noting the thickness of the victim’s neck and calculating the length of ‘drop’ needed to ensure that death was quick and humane.
If the rope was too long it could result in the prisoner being decapitated but if was too short the prisoner would die slowly by strangulation.
To ensure he got every execution right to his exacting standards he would describe the prisoners' necks in his notes.
It it is speculated that Albert could have hanged up to 600 people during his 15 years as a hangman before 'hanging up the rope' in 1956.
They include rapists, murderers as well as those convicted by court martial.
Among them was the Nazi defector and propagandist Lord Haw-Haw, real name William Joyce.
Pierrepoint is said to have hanged 13 people in one single day on February 27, 1948.
However, despite the task at hand, it was Albert's job to make sure prisoners were given 'dignity in dying and in death.'
Ensuring a quick and dignified death involved preparation work and arithmetical calculations, all of which went into his notebook.
Pierrepoint was born in Clayton, West Yorkshire and moved to Oldham as a youngster.
His father Henry Pierrepoint and uncle Thomas were also hangmen, and he began what he described as his 'dream career' in 1932, aged 27, when he was taken on as an assistant executioner.
At school ,when asked what he wanted to be when he was older, he said: "I want to be a public executioner like my dad is, because it needs a steady man with good hands like my dad and my Uncle Tom and I shall be the same."
During his time as an assistant to the executioner Albert would follow the prisoner onto the scaffold, bind the prisoner's legs together, then step back off the trapdoor before the lead executioner sprung the mechanism.
This continued right through the 1930s, whilst working as a grocer, until he was appointed as a lead executioner in 1941, two years after the outbreak of the war.
In one entry in his notebook he writes that the condemned has a 'very heavy body, ordinary neck.' Others are described as 'wiry, very thin neck' or 'strong neck, little flabby.'
An entry for a prisoner called Charles James Caldwell, at Strangeways, can be seen at the top of one page of the book, stating he is 5ft 4 inches tall and weighs 144 pounds, requiring a 'drop' of 7 ft 9 inches.
In his autobiography Pierrepoint wrote: "A condemned prisoner is entrusted to me, after decisions have been made that I cannot alter. He is a man, she is a woman who, the church says, still merits some mercy.
“The supreme mercy I can extend to them is to give them and sustain in them their dignity in dying and in death. The gentleness must remain."
"I just accepted what I had to do", he said of the job.
"Our method was the cleanest, quickest and most humane in the world.
"I always respected the condemned man, respected his dignity, too."
In 1953 Pierrepoint executed notorious serial killer John Christie.
It was reported that just as he was about to be hanged, Christie complained that his nose was itching.
Pierrepoint is said to have leaned towards him and told him: “It won’t bother you for long."
Serving as the jovial, singing landlord of the Help the Poor Struggler pub in Hollinwood, Oldham, was part of the other side of Pierrepoint's life.
He was known for singing popular songs such as Danny Boy at the piano.
Famously, he hanged a regular from his pub, James Corbitt. The pair had duetted in the pub together and nicknamed each other Tish and Tosh.
Corbitt had been in Pierrepoint's pub the night he went on to strangle his sometime girlfriend Eliza Wood in a jealous rage at her flat in Ashton-under-Lyne.
And it was the landlord who was tasked with being Corbitt's executioner, at Strangeways on November 28, 1950.
Pierrepoint recalled in his memoirs how, at the gallows, Corbitt said: “Hallo Tosh."
"Hallo Tish, how are you?” Pierrepoint recalled saying, describing how the condemned man smiled and relaxed after he greeted him with ‘the casual warmth of my nightly greeting from behind the bar.'
Pierrepoint handed in his resignation after 15 years as a lead executioner in February 1956.
It was rumoured in the press at that time that his resignation was connected with the hanging of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK.
Albert denied this in his autobiography but did not disclose why he decided to 'hang up the rope.'
By the end of his life however, he was firmly opposed to the long-abolished death penalty.
"I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge" he said in his book.
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His reputation as probably Britain's most famous hangman endures to this day.
And in June, a number of items including the notebook, a plaster cast of Pierrepoint’s face and hands, a silver watch chain which he wore to work and an ivory cigar holder were sold for £20,000 at a sale at Boldon Auction Galleries in the North East.
They are said to have been bought by an 'eclectic' private collector.
Giles Hodges, director at Boldon said: “This is the most fascinating set of items I have ever sold. It was a real eye-opener when it came in and I won’t see anything like it again.
“It provides a remarkable insight into the role of the executioner and I suppose that someone had to do the job.”
