Albert Pierrepoint hanged his singing partner.

 

James Henry Corbitt

I had a copy of Albert Pierrepoint's memoirs which I read many years ago. Pierrepoint had been one of Britain's official executioners for nearly 25-years (1932-1956) and is said to have executed between 435 and 600 people. He executed many Nazi war criminals as well as Ruth Ellis, Derek Bentley,  Timothy Evans and John Reginald Christie, for the same murder. John Christie had murdered both the wife and daughter of Timothy Evans and Evans, had been sentenced to death for the crime. 

I do know that when Pierrepoint turned up at Strangeways Gaol to hang a man in November 1950, he wasn't aware that he knew a man called James Henry Corbitt, because the name meant nothing to him. It was the governor of the jail who told him that the man he was about to hang had said that he knew him. It was only when he looked through the spy hole in the cell door that he recognised who it was. Corbitt and his girlfriend had been regulars in Pierrepoint’s pub in Failsworth which was called ‘Help the Poor Struggler’. Corbitt was known for being a good pub tenor and had often sang duets with Albert Pierrepoint.

In August 1950, Corbitt had strangled his girlfriend Eliza Wood in a bedroom at the Prince of Wales pub in Ashton-under-Lyne. I wrote about this murder in Northern Voices magazine some years ago. Pierrepoint hung Corbitt in November 1950. The pub that was located on Stamford Street, is no longer there but it acquired the nickname, ‘The Stranglers Arms’.

This is the first time that I have ever seen a photograph of James Henry Corbitt (see above). I did see a photograph that had been taken of Eliza Wood in a library book. It had obviously been taken at the scene of the crime because it showed her lying in a bed with a word ‘Whore’ written on her forehead.

Albert Pierrepoint seems to have had no qualms about hanging people and doesn't seem to have suffered any lasting psychological damage. I think he may have seen his job as a 'calling' or 'craft' because both his father and uncle had been hangmen. I think that he said that from being a schoolboy he’d wanted to be a hangman. He also took pride in being able to kill somebody quickly and efficiently.

Some British hangmen have suffered psychological damage. John Ellis, from Rochdale, committed suicide and the Yorkshire hangman, James Berry, also seems to have suffered some kind of PTSD. In his memoirs, James Berry, wrote about hanging Mary Ann Britland at Strangeways Gaol in August 1886. She was the first woman to be hanged at Strangeways. Mrs Britland was also from Ashton and was found guilty of murder by poisoning her husband, daughter, and best friend. I believe that Mrs Britland was dragged to the scaffold kicking and screaming. Berry said that many years after executing her Mrs Britland he could still hear her screams in his head.