THE HANGMAN'S TALE Memoirs of a public executioner

Paperback. Since the abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1965, the secrets of the execution chamber have remained shrouded in mystery. Now for the first time this century - because of a change in the secrecy laws - a hangman is free to relate what really happened when the extreme penalty of the law was exacted. On 29 March 1949 Sydney Dernley watched James Farrell hang at Winson Green Prison, Birmingham. From that moment, he became a man with a 'hidden life'. At last, Dernley has broken a long silence to tell his chilling story. He recounts his work with Albert Pierrepoint; his part in the execution of Timothy John Evans, the only man ever granted a posthumous free pardon; and his involvement in several double hangings. He reveals that in the nightmare world of the execution suite things did go wrong: one hanging was so badly botched that the executioner was sacked. Dernley remembers the differing behaviour of condemned men. Some were petrified - that is scarcely surprising - but others were astonishingly brave...there was one who even smiled and ran towards the waiting noose. Though murderers were placed on a round-the-clock double guard from the moment they entered the condemned cell, one man came within an ace of cheating the gallows with a desperate suicide bid. This is an extraordinary account of the work of public hangmen and the last moments of the men dropped to their death on the gallows. Illus. + Index. 207pp. mass market paperback. As New with no creasing to covers.