WILLIAM CALCRAFT. Executioner Extra-ordinaire.

Hardback. SIGNED. The biography of the hangman who had the longest career on the scaffold (45yrs from 1829-1874) and used the shortest rope in the business. He was also the last executioner to carry out a hanging in public in England, that of Michael Barrett in 1868; the last one to carry out a multiple hanging in public, 5 pirates in 1864; and the last public hanging in Glasgow, Dr. Pritchard in 1865. He also hanged the first man to commit murder on a railway train in this country, Franz Muller in 1864; the first to carry out an execution in private in England (ie behind prison walls), that of Thomas Wells in 1868. He was also the last hangman to be a salaried employee, his scaffold successors being engaged only when they were actually required. Throughout the ages, executioners were reviled and abused - unjustly - by the public; William was no exception. A man of his times, a servant of the State, he was there simply to hang convicted criminals in the regulation manner, not to introduce innovative and humanitarian measures! Another excellent book by Geoffrey Abbott, who upon his retirement from the Royal Air Force in 1974, became a Yeoman Warder ('Beefeater'), lived in the Tower of London and was sworn in at St. James's Palace as a Member of the Sovereign's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard Extraordinary. Profusely illus., Appendices, Select Bibliog. and Index. 194pp. small 8vo. h/back. With loosely inserted, coloured postcard size photograph of the Yeoman Warder (retd) author which has been SIGNED BY GEOFFREY ABBOTT. As New in F. dw.