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as anyone any information about The Mansfield Hangman Syd Dearnley?

The Prospect of Hanging is a curious theme for Radio 4 on a Sunday evening
when the week's news was mainly of murder. But it covered no more than
Martyn Wiley's interview with a retired hangman. Syd Dearnley seemed a
decent fellow and old prejudices could have been suspended by the end of the
programme. He had been a welder in Mansfield, as much interested in crime as
any other reader of crime stories, and at age 27 applied for the job of
assistant executioner at Lincoln prison. The procedure he described - leg
straps, arm straps, hood, lever - was done in a very short time, in one
recorded case, 7 1/2 seconds and sounds singularly unbrutal. 'I had no
qualms,' Dearnley said. 'It suited me and got me an extra pint or two of
beer.' (
http://data.synthesis.ie/site_media/trec/FT/FT932-7516.txt)

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I assume you have read his Wiki and the probable reason for his dismissal ?

Then there is this interview that appears on a .pdf under "GCSE Religious Studies: Crime and Punishment".
In 1964 the last two men in Britain were hanged for murder. The following year, parliament voted to abolish capital punishment, with overwhelming public support. The most famous public hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, had already retired having executed more prisoners than any other British executioner. The passage of time has since seen the demise of every executioner and their assistants (Pierrepoint died in 1992). By 1994 Syd Dernley was the only former hangman alive in the UK.
In 1949, Syd Dernley was appointed as an assistant executioner, of which there were several employed by the Home Office. He continued to work as a welder at the local colliery, taking time off for the executions when they were offered to him. Over the next four years he assisted in the hanging of over 20 men. There were many other reprieves that he would otherwise have helped to despatch. Syd was removed from the list around 1954, but was never given an official reason.
In subsequent years Syd has retained an active interest in capital punishment and has amassed a sizeable collection of souvenirs. In 1984 he began work on his autobiography with a radio broadcaster, David Newman. Published in 1989, the book generated a great deal of interest in Syd.
Syd Dernley lives in Mansfield, a coal-mining town on the edge of Sherwood Forest. Syd lives in a small bungalow with his wife, Joyce, and is the treasurer of his local Conservative Club. I was greeted at the gate by the man I recognised from the book, but distinctly older looking than his 74 years would suggest.
Almost as soon as I step into his house, Syd scuttles off to find his 'goodies'. When he returns he is carrying a battered brown leather case: "It's been to all the executions I did," he says. Inside the case is a white linen hood, slightly smaller than a pillow case, a legstrap and armstrap, plus his pièce de résistance - a replica noose made specially for Syd (he had to sell his previous - genuine - noose, which he now regrets).
Next, he brings in a leather-bound book filled with the dates and locations of all his interviews and debates. Most are from 1989, immediately after the publication of his book. There are dozens of them: debates at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, interviews on local radio and TV, interviews with newspapers and magazines, and lectures around the world. Syd is more famous now than he ever was as a hangman.
He shows me some magazines in which he has featured. One, a Spanish publication, has a series of pictures in which Syd is in the process of stringing-up the interpreter, complete with hood. Syd tells me that the man wasn't prepared for it and "nearly messed himself" during the rather-too-realistic demonstration.
Syd is a macabre man, and the gallows humour is much in evidence. Further evidence of this comes when he shows me into the bedroom, where he has three working model gallows (to scale, and featuring model 'victims'). He also has a rather ghastly model guillotine, which features a headless body and 'bloodied' blade: "I lost the head" he says, without a trace of irony.
These grim furnishings to the boudoir fail to impress Joyce, however: "The wife calls it me bloody chamber of 'orrors". As he leads me to the room, he says "Now, you are the condemned man" and starts counting "one, two, three...". We walk into the 'execution chamber' and Syd flicks the lever on the model, just as he reaches the count of "eight". This, apparently, is a pretty good time for a real hanging.
Fortunately for the model man, one of the trapdoors refuses to budge and he remains stubbornly alive. A bungled execution. It has been known for this to happen in real executions by hanging: in 1884, British executioner James Berry attempted to despatch a man three times, but on each occasion the man failed to drop. He was later reprieved. No such luck for the man on Syd's model, though.
Also in the bedroom is his vast collection of memorabilia, including a genuine spyhole from a condemned cell, and a wooden board on which the notices of executions were placed outside the gaol. These, Syd tells me, were filched for him by prison warders when the various execution paraphernalia were dismantled.
Syd then reveals the contents of his vast collection of files. He shows me tables of drops, newspaper clippings of death sentences, and a prison governor's report filed after the hanging of Ruth Ellis. On this document, under the section entitled "condition of neck" (post mortem), the governor has simply written "normal", but has curiously added "rather long". Syd explains the additional comment:
"Ruth Ellis were a small lass and Pierrepoint [the principal executioner] gave her a long drop in accordance with the tables. [The vertebrae] had been parted over an inch and her head had damned near been pulled off."
Ruth Ellis was hanged on 13 July 1955 - the last woman in Britain to be executed.
Syd has lists of all the executions performed in every prison in Britain, going as far back as the eighteenth century. Each entry states the principal executioner and his assistant. On one sheet is the name of a notorious hangman - William Calcraft. Calcraft was the last executioner to perform in public (hanging was confined to prisons after 1868) and was said to favour a short drop so that he could pull on the legs of the victim in order to strangle them. Syd agrees that this was probably true.
Among Syd's mementoes is his Nuremberg folder. Inside are photographs of Nazi war criminals lying on the slab after their executions. The nooses are still tightly bound around their necks, and their faces show clear evidence of strangulation: eyes popping, tongues protruding. The knots used in these nooses were abandoned in Britain hundreds of years ago. Such a perversion of the 'craft' appals even Syd:
"The Nazis were hung on a scaffold erected in a gymnasium by an American Army General. The Americans only drop 'em six feet, so some were strangled to death. One of 'em were kicking for fourteen minutes after he were dropped. He were a bloody twat, that hangman." (In point of fact, the US Army executioner responsible was Master Sergeant John C. Woods.)
Syd adds that the same General later performed executions on Japanese war criminals using a portable electric chair, but was killed by his own machine after it was sabotaged.
Syd shows me photographs of a full-size working gallows that he owned when he ran a post office in Mansfield. It was originally used in a Liverpool prison. Syd had the gallows erected in the cellar of the post office. The pictures show a boy being bound and hooded.
"I had to sell the gallows, and now they're rotting away outside a museum 'cos they can't afford to repair them," he tells me sadly.
James Berry and Albert Pierrepoint, the two executioners who dominated their business over the last 150 years, later came to regret their activities and they denounced capital punishment. Syd Dernley has only one regret - he didn't hang enough men.
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Slightly off topic but regarding William Calcraft mentioned in a previous post. In the 1870s Calcraft hanged an ancestor of mine in Durham Prison and by the account made a right mess of it. (Please remember you can not choose your relatives)

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I remember various accounts of hangings in Iraq post Saddam where the hangman got the weights and `drop' incorrect and had two bits of the victim instead of one. However there must be something that can be done with murderers instead of locking them away for life at great expense to the state.

I suppose any answer would be `shouted down' by the PC crowd and dogooders.

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Calcraft hanged an ancestor of mine... and by the account made a right mess of it. (Please remember you can not choose your relatives)

And not, I assume, your hangman :)

Dearnley assisted with a hanging that was the time record, the condemned was hooded, manacled and hanged within 7 seconds after leaving his cell.

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I suppose any answer would be `shouted down' by the PC crowd and dogooders.

So we do not come to a `dead end', I saw a documentary about Chinese executions. I could not work out why they had changed from their usual method of a single bullet to the back of the head to a bullet to the RIGHT side of the chest.(Bullet to be paid for by victims family)!

Then a `whistle-blower' at the presentation night of a Chinese surgeon in Sydney,explained it simply. The head method killed the victim outright. The guy/woman shot in the RIGHT side othe chest was invariably still alive and not damaging the heart etc so all organs could be harvested (for the use of party members no doubt). I suppose the brains could be used for politicians.!

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I'm sure that your comment regarding the harvesting of organs is quite true, Stan (#8). In your previous post (#6) you asked what is to be done with murderers. Capital punishment is banned in most countries so the only alternative is life imprisonment. The problem with sentencing is that there are many forms of murder. If a motorist momentarily loses concentration and hits someone, crimes of passion and so on. Then there are the people who are just pure evil. The people who just love to torture, mutilate and kill their victims. Prison will never change these people and they should never be released. In todays world of DNA and forensics it means that mistakes wouldn't be made, as they were in the past. In my opinion, when these evil killers are found guilty, they should receive the death sentence which would be carried out within one year of being sentenced. Any appeal should be sorted within that year.

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  • 2 years later...

“In particular, those people who murder small children. They should still be executed, no matter what the law says, and most people like myself think so.”

“I do know that they [the Government] daren’t have a referendum on it, because they know that too many people will be in favour. As the Government have determined that there shall be no more executions and also they’ve scrapped the gallows in every prison, they are determined that it won’t come back. So you watch the papers day by day and watch the murder rate rise.”

Syd Dernley 1994.

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The full interview

The last hangman - The first of a two-part 1994 interview with a former British executioner Syd Dernley

In 1964 the last two men in Britain were hanged for murder. The following year, parliament voted to abolish capital punishment, with overwhelming public support. The most famous public hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, had already retired having executed more prisoners than any other British executioner. The passage of time has since seen the demise of every executioner and their assistants (Pierrepoint died in 1992). By 1994 Syd Dernley was the only former hangman alive in the UK.

In 1949, Syd Dernley was appointed as an assistant executioner, of which there were several employed by the Home Office. He continued to work as a welder at the local colliery, taking time off for the executions when they were offered to him. Over the next four years he assisted in the hanging of over 20 men. There were many other reprieves that he would otherwise have helped to despatch. Syd was removed from the list around 1954, but was never given an official reason.

In subsequent years Syd has retained an active interest in capital punishment and has amassed a sizeable collection of souvenirs. In 1984 he began work on his autobiography with a radio broadcaster, David Newman. Published in 1989, the book generated a great deal of interest in Syd.

Syd Dernley lives in Mansfield, a coal-mining town on the edge of Sherwood Forest. Syd lives in a small bungalow with his wife, Joyce, and is the treasurer of his local Conservative Club. I was greeted at the gate by the man I recognised from the book, but distinctly older looking than his 74 years would suggest.

Almost as soon as I step into his house, Syd scuttles off to find his 'goodies'. When he returns he is carrying a battered brown leather case: "It's been to all the executions I did," he says.

Inside the case is a white linen hood, slightly smaller than a pillow case, a legstrap and armstrap, plus his pièce de résistance - a replica noose made specially for Syd (he had to sell his previous - genuine - noose, which he now regrets).

Next, he brings in a leather-bound book filled with the dates and locations of all his interviews and debates. Most are from 1989, immediately after the publication of his book. There are dozens of them: debates at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, interviews on local radio and TV, interviews with newspapers and magazines, and lectures around the world. Syd is more famous now than he ever was as a hangman.

He shows me some magazines in which he has featured. One, a Spanish publication, has a series of pictures in which Syd is in the process of stringing-up the interpreter, complete with hood. Syd tells me that the man wasn't prepared for it and "nearly messed himself" during the rather-too-realistic demonstration.

Syd is a macabre man, and the gallows humour is much in evidence. Further evidence of this comes when he shows me into the bedroom, where he has three working model gallows (to scale, and featuring model 'victims'). He also has a rather ghastly model guillotine, which features a headless body and 'bloodied' blade: "I lost the head" he says, without a trace of irony.

These grim furnishings to the boudoir fail to impress Joyce, however: "The wife calls it me bloody chamber of 'orrors".

As he leads me to the room, he says "Now, you are the condemned man" and starts counting "one, two, three...". We walk into the 'execution chamber' and Syd flicks the lever on the model, just as he reaches the count of "eight". This, apparently, is a pretty good time for a real hanging.

Fortunately for the model man, one of the trapdoors refuses to budge and he remains stubbornly alive. A bungled execution. It has been known for this to happen in real executions by hanging: in 1884, British executioner James Berry attempted to despatch a man three times, but on each occasion the man failed to drop. He was later reprieved. No such luck for the man on Syd's model, though.

Also in the bedroom is his vast collection of memorabilia, including a genuine spyhole from a condemned cell, and a wooden board on which the notices of executions were placed outside the gaol. These, Syd tells me, were filched for him by prison warders when the various execution paraphernalia were dismantled.

Syd then reveals the contents of his vast collection of files. He shows me tables of drops, newspaper clippings of death sentences, and a prison governor's report filed after the hanging of Ruth Ellis. On this document, under the section entitled "condition of neck" (post mortem), the governor has simply written "normal", but has curiously added "rather long". Syd explains the additional comment:

"Ruth Ellis were a small lass and Pierrepoint [the principal executioner] gave her a long drop in accordance with the tables. [The vertebrae] had been parted over an inch and her head had damned near been pulled off."

Ruth Ellis was hanged on 13 July 1955 - the last woman in Britain to be executed.

Syd has lists of all the executions performed in every prison in Britain, going as far back as the eighteenth century. Each entry states the principal executioner and his assistant. On one sheet is the name of a notorious hangman - William Calcraft. Calcraft was the last executioner to perform in public (hanging was confined to prisons after 1868) and was said to favour a short drop so that he could pull on the legs of the victim in order to strangle them. Syd agrees that this was probably true.

Among Syd's mementoes is his Nuremberg folder. Inside are photographs of Nazi war criminals lying on the slab after their executions. The nooses are still tightly bound around their necks, and their faces show clear evidence of strangulation: eyes popping, tongues protruding. The knots used in these nooses were abandoned in Britain hundreds of years ago. Such a perversion of the 'craft' appalls even Syd:

"The Nazis were hung on a scaffold erected in a gymnasium by an American Army General. The Americans only drop 'em six feet, so some were strangled to death. One of 'em were kicking for fourteen minutes after he were dropped. He were a bloody twat, that hangman." (In point of fact, the US Army executioner responsible was Master Sergeant John C. Woods.)

Syd adds that the same General later performed executions on Japanese war criminals using a portable electric chair, but was killed by his own machine after it was sabotaged.

Syd shows me photographs of a full-size working gallows that he owned when he ran a post office in Mansfield. It was originally used in a Liverpool prison. Syd had the gallows erected in the cellar of the post office. The pictures show a boy being bound and hooded.

"I had to sell the gallows, and now they're rotting away outside a museum 'cos they can't afford to repair them," he tells me sadly.

James Berry and Albert Pierrepoint, the two executioners who dominated their business over the last 150 years, later came to regret their activities and they denounced capital punishment. Syd Dernley has only one regret - he didn't hang enough men.

The last hangman - The second of a two-part 1994 interview with a former British executioner

More than thirty years after the abolition of capital punishment in Britain, the clamour for its reintroduction seems to have abated. The cherished goal of the hanging and flogging lobby remains unfulfilled.

In the summer of 1994 I interviewed Britain's last surviving executioner, Syd Dernley. During the course of the interview, I asked Syd about some of the moral issues surrounding capital punishment. If I expected well-argued and challenging responses to my questions, I was to be disappointed.

What makes someone become a hangman? In his autobiography, The Hangman's Tale, Syd writes:

"It was not that I wanted to kill people, but it was the story of travel and adventure, of seeing notorious criminals and meeting famous detectives."

I asked him why he had not simply joined the police force.

"At that particular time, I owned a .22 rifle with a silencer - legally - and a .22 pistol with a silencer, and we only lived 6 miles away from Sherwood Forest, and I liked pheasants and partridges..." he says, with an impish grin.

Syd obviously enjoys a good thrill-kill. I asked him whether he could have stomached other forms of execution - decapitation for example?

"Well, I've become immune to the sight of a hanging man, so it'd be an experience!" he exclaims.

Syd thinks about this prospect for a moment, then laughs "chopping bloody 'eads off! I could certainly do it. My conscience, if I've got one, would be still. I was a very good hand with a striking hammer when I worked at the colliery... off with his nut!"

Later, Syd tells me that the last French executioner visited him a couple of years ago, recalling that the headsman had to stand well-back from the guillotine, because the blood would spray several metres from the blade. Syd has a mischievous grin on his face me as he tells this unsavoury fact.

You might have guessed that Syd Dernley is still an ardent supporter of capital punishment. His reasons are fairly simplistic, despite the fact that he obviously knows much about the subject. He trots out the usual well-worn reasons for reinstating the death penalty, often as a totally inappropriate response to a question that he has no valid answer for. Frankly, it's infuriating.

He's very clear about one thing, however, and that is the sort of people who most deserve the noose:

"In particular, those people who murder small children. They should still be executed, no matter what the law says, and most people like myself think so."

So the severity of the punishment should be based on arbitrary criteria, in this case the age of the victim of the crime. Even if such a thing were acceptable, what about the likelihood of miscarriages of justice? With all the wrongful convictions that have been uncovered many years after the sentences were handed down, reintroducing the death penalty would surely be a recipe for disaster.

In his book, Syd states that since the convictions of only a few individuals who were sent to the gallows have been brought into doubt, this justifies its use. A case of the odd innocent man being expendable.

I point out recent cases such as the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Syd's wife, Joyce, intervenes at this point to remind Syd of his stock answer:

"As to the Guildford Four," he says, "they pleaded guilty, but in my opinion, they pleaded guilty because they knew they wouldn't be hung, that they'd only get a few years in prison."

This issue of miscarriages of justice is something that Syd has had direct experience of. In 1950 he assisted at the execution of Timothy Evans, who had been convicted of murdering his wife and baby daughter.

At the time it appeared that Evans' guilt was absolute, but three years later it was discovered that in the same house in which Evans and his wife had lived - 10, Rillington Place - Reginald Christie had been murdering women for years.

Christie had undoubtedly committed the crimes for which Evans was hanged. Timothy Evans was given a posthumous pardon in 1966 - until recently the only man to receive one. I asked Syd how it felt to have hanged a totally innocent man.

"Well, I've got no feelings at all about it. He'd been sentenced to death and we went down to Pentonville to carry out the execution and it was all over very quickly.

"There were only two things I remember about that execution: one is that while I was going on the train into London I saw in Leicestershire the Quorn hunt - a magnificent sight, and then when we went into the condemned cell in Pentonville to strap Timothy John Evans' arms, he turned and looked at us and I've never seen such terrified eyes in all my life."

Blood sports and hanging in the same breath! Rich pickings for a psychoanalyst, no doubt. Incredibly, Syd still believes that Evans was involved in the murders. Why?

"Well, to put it into Nottinghamshire language, he was a bit simple and he'd been persuaded by Christie to do so."

Is this not just an excuse to alleviate the guilt of killing an innocent man?

"Well, if I helped to kill an innocent man as you seem to be implying, it doesn't worry me one little bit. I did the job I was trained to do, and I did it well."

Another problem with judicial executions is the possibility of mistakes being made during the execution itself. Although the hanging process in Britain became highly efficient, bungled executions still occurred.

Syd took part in a terribly botched hanging in 1950 at Norwich Prison. The man, Norman Goldthorpe, was strangled to death when his hood became caught in the eye of the noose. Syd explains:

"I feel that it was a bad job - the man was dying on the rope. It had not broken his neck, but he was dead a couple of minutes afterwards. I know that the man who was in charge, Harry Kirk, never did another one."

What would Syd have done if the man had still been alive when he went down to examine the 'body'?

"I don't know," was the simple reply. There were no guidelines for this event.

In the USA, where executions are more complicated, the nightmare of a botched job occasionally becomes a reality. With so-called 'humane' methods such as lethal injection, people have been known to take up to fifteen minutes to die in the most agonising way, as their vital organs shut down.

In the gas chamber, the condemned prisoner is told to gulp in the cyanide as it enters the chamber. But the involuntary struggle for life can result in a slow and painful death.

Worse still is the electric chair, where faulty connections and conductors have caused people to be literally roasted to death. In 1983, when John Evans was executed in Alabama, flames were seen shooting from Evans' face mask while he struggled for breath. It took fourteen minutes to kill him, and he suffered severe burns.

Despite (or perhaps because of) these horrors, attempts have been made to show executions on live television in the USA. I asked Syd whether he thought this was a good idea.

"Well, no, although there is still a great deal of interest in it. When Ruth Ellis was under sentence of death, 234 people in one week wrote either to the Home Secretary or the Home Office, saying could they either be the executioner or assistant, or watch the execution.

"I don't think that the public should be allowed to watch the actual execution, but I really think that it would do good if some executions had been filmed, and let the people watch those."

Syd thinks that the nation is unequivocally on his side regarding capital punishment:

"I do know that they [the Government] daren't have a referendum on it, because they know that too many people will be in favour. As the Government have determined that there shall be no more executions and also they've scrapped the gallows in every prison, they are determined that it won't come back. So you watch the papers day by day and watch the murder rate rise."

Syd seems to forget that the existence of the death penalty in the USA has apparently not helped to control spiralling crime rates. In his book, Syd claims that Britain is getting "wilder and wilder" because the threat of the noose has gone. Does he not believe that social issues are the real problem?

"I won't attempt to answer that, because I simply do not know," he says. But naturally he knows that hanging is the answer.

The most prolific hangman in modern times was Albert Pierrepoint. He had hanged nearly 700 people when he retired, only a few years before the abolition of capital punishment. In the final pages of his autobiography, Pierrepoint made a shocking statement: in his opinion, capital punishment served no useful purpose and should not be reintroduced.

Syd Dernley worked with Pierrepoint on several occasions, so I asked him whether he thought that perhaps Pierrepoint was in a better position to comment on this issue than he was.

"Yes, his opinion would be considered far more than mine would," he agrees.

So why did Pierrepoint turn against the death penalty?

"My idea when I bought his book - and still is - [that] he didn't really intend to say that. He only said it for the benefit of the people who were putting his words down. I didn't believe that he said it."

Conveniently for Syd, Pierrepoint is not alive to comment. Like Syd, Pierrepoint had time to reflect on the validity of executions once he had retired.

When talking to Syd, one gets the feeling that, despite his protestations, he truly revels in having killed men with impunity. He has an air of ghoulish pleasure as he recounts his stories or shows me his mementoes.

Syd picks up my book and takes it into another room. On the first page he writes: "See you on the gallows one day soon".

Ah, but who will be on the trap, Syd?

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One gallows remains at Wandsworth prison according to my prison officer brother in law. Kept for remaining capital crimes i.e. Piracy with violence & Arson in the Royal Dockyards !

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Also made a comment about a newly executed man's "anatomy" & was heard by a Home Office official, nothing was said but he was never asked to officiate at an execution again.

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