The last hangman

The first of a two-part 1994 interview with a former British executioner

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.

About a month after this interview, Syd Dernley died of a heart attack.

Read part 2 of the interview