LORD HIGH EXECUTIONER An Unashamed Look at Hangmen, Headsmen, and Their Kind

Hardback. SIGNED. An inspection of the people who do our dirty work for us. Throughout the centuries there has been no end to the imaginative methods the state has sanctioned to execute those people who have committed criminal acts. Executioners have cut them in two and boiled them alive, crucified them and beheaded them, hung them, injected them, electrocuted them, burned them, gassed them, and - this one especially for women who had committed adultery - sewn them into sacks with poisonous snakes and other animals and thrown them into a pond to drown. In France the guillotine was highly effective - and crucifixion has been popular from the time of the Phoenicians. The author has written a history about those methods and about the men - and one woman - who throughout the centuries have been our agents of death. Featuring amongst others : William Calcraft (who executed more men than anyone in the history of England), Albert Pierrepoint, Arthur Ellis etc. In Canada, the first person executed for a crime is reputed to have been a young girl, hanged at age sixteen for the crime of petty theft. And the last two people to die by capital punishment were Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas. They were hanged in the Don Jail in Toronto on December 11, 1962, by a hangman who wore a tasteful business suit. A text complemented by over 70 historical paintings, photographs, woodcuts and engravings of executions and executioners. A macabre trip into the world of our legal merchants of death. Illus., Bibliog. and Index. 256pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Nr. F. in F. dw. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.