This Date in History: December 14

 

On Tuesday, December 14, 1943, official executioners Thomas Pierrepoint and Alexander Riley hanged U.S. Army Private Lee A. Davis at Shepton Mallet Prison for the crimes of murder and rape.  Davis is buried at the American Military Cemetery Oise-Aisne.  (The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II)

**********

The Pierrepoints, a Yorkshire family, provided three of Britain’s Chief Executioners, often called Official Executioners – Number One, and sometimes termed “scaffolders”, for over fifty years. Henry Pierrepoint (March 1878 – December 14, 1922) took up the craft first; he hanged a total of 105 men from 1901 to 1910.  According to reputable sources, Henry could execute a man in the time it took the prison clock to strike eight – leading him from his cell to the adjacent death chamber on the first stroke, and having him suspended, dead on the rope, by the eighth and final stroke.  However, the work proved to be a pressure cooker and on July 13, 1910, when he arrived at Chelmsford Prison to prepare for an execution the following day, Henry was intoxicated and physically assaulted his assistant, John Ellis.  Nine days later, authorities removed him from the list of executioners and he never worked again as a scaffolder.  (American Hangman: MSgt. John C. Woods: The United States Army’s Notorious Executioner in World War II and Nürnberg)