Harry Bernard Allen was one of Britain's last official executioners, officiating
between 1941 and 1964. He was chief executioner at 41 executions and acted
as assistant executioner at 53 others, at various prisons in England, Scotland,
Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Cyprus. He acted as assistant
executioner for 14 years, mostly to Albert Pierrepoint from 1941 to 1955.
In October 1955 Allen was appointed as Chief Executioner alongside Pierrepoint,
although he did not execute anyone in this role until 10 May 1956, when he
hanged two EOKA members in Cyprus. Pierrepoint was no longer available
because he had resigned in February 1956. Allen's most controversial hanging
came in April 1962, when James Hanratty was hanged for murder, despite efforts
to clear his name. Allen also assisted in the execution of Derek Bentley in
1953, and he performed one of the last two executions in Britain, in 1964.
Early life Born in Denaby Main, near Conisbrough in
the West Riding of Yorkshire on 5 November 1911, Allen was brought up in
Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, and was educated at St Anne's Roman Catholic
School in Burlington Street, Ashton. His first job was in the Transport
Department at Park Bridge Iron Works, before he became a bus driver with
Ashton Corporation, a job he continued to hold after he became an assistant
hangman in 1941. Career as an executioner
Allen applied for a job in the Prison Service in the 1930s but was turned
down. He successfully applied to be put on the Home Office list of executioners
and was often employed as an assistant executioner to Tom Pierrepoint, the
uncle of Albert Pierrepoint. As a preliminary step, he witnessed his first
execution at the age of 29 – that of William Cooper – on 26 November 1940 at
Bedford prison, describing it as a "very good, clean job, not as gruesome as I
expected". Allen became a publican in Farnworth,
Lancashire in the 1940s, combining his role as executioner with running the
pub, which he ran until the early 1950s when he took over another pub, the
Junction Inn, on Higher Lane in Whitefield.
In 1945, five German prisoners of war were hanged for murdering a fellow
German soldier Sergeant-Major Wolfgang Rosterg whom they suspected of having
betrayed their escape plan. It seems to have been a crime and ultimate execution
that made the deepest impression on Allen. He wrote, "It was a foul murder.
They staged a mock trial, kicking the victim to death and dragging him by the
neck to the toilet where they hung his lifeless body on a waste pipe. These
five prisoners are the most callous men I have ever met so far but I blame the
Nazi doctrine for that. It must be a terrible creed." A 21-year-old, Erich
Koening, was the first of the soldiers to be hanged at Pentonville Prison,
swearing allegiance at the last to Nazi Germany.
On 28 January 1953 Allen assisted at the controversial execution of Derek
Bentley, who was hanged for a murder committed by a friend and accomplice
during an attempted robbery, and for which Bentley received a posthumous
pardon 45 years later. Contrary to some accounts Allen was not present at the
execution of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, in 1955: the
assistant to Albert Pierrepoint on that occasion was Royston Rickard.
Following the resignation of Albert Pierrepoint and the death of Stephen
Wade in 1956, Allen and Robert Leslie Stewart jointly became Chief
Executioners. However, the Homicide Act 1957 reduced the number of condemned
criminals by 75%, from an average of fifteen a year in the early 1950s to
about four a year in the late 1950s. As Chief Executioner, on 11 July 1958 Allen
hanged American-born Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel at Barlinnie prison,
Glasgow. He also hanged Guenther Podola on 5 November 1959, a German-born petty
thief, and the last man to be hanged in the UK for killing a police officer.
His most controversial case was that of James Hanratty, hanged on 4 April 1962
at Bedford prison for the "A6 murder" case. Efforts to clear Hanratty's name
continued until 2001, when DNA testing matched Hanratty to the crime scene.
Some newspapers claim that Allen's son Brian assisted his father at five
hangings, a claim which is rejected by Allen's biographer Stewart McLaughlin.
In Charles Duff's book A Handbook on Hanging, an article in the Daily Sketch
quotes Brian as saying that he had quit as assistant hangman because his fiance
would not marry him "unless you stop helping to hang people". Brian Allen
said "I'd been in two minds about quitting the job, but when Angela asked
me to drop it, that decided me ... Of course, Dad and I don't talk about the
hangman's job. I know it is supposed to run in families, but I've decided it is
"out" for me – though someone has to do it". However, a report in The Spokesman
Review headlined "Hangman Quits To Save Lives" stated that he had quit because
of a "conflict of loyalties" – he had recently qualified as a mental health
nurse and had taken a vow to "do all in my power to save and preserve life".
Allen performed the last execution in Northern Ireland in December 1961, when
he hanged Robert McGladdery at Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast. He also performed
the last hanging in Scotland, when Henry Burnett was hanged at Craiginches Prison
in Aberdeen, on 15 August 1963 for the murder of Thomas Guyan, and hanged
Russell Pascoe – one of the third-last prisoners to be hanged in a British
prison – at Bristol's Horfield Prison on 17 December in the same year. He also
performed one of the two final executions in the UK, when at 8am on 13
August 1964 Gwynne Owen Evans was hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester for
the murder of John Alan West. This occurred simultaneously with the
execution of Evans's accomplice Peter Anthony Allen, who was hanged at Walton
Gaol in Liverpool by Robert Leslie Stewart.
Allen always wore a bow tie during executions as a sign of respect. Of his
job, Allen said, "I never felt a moment's remorse and always slept
peacefully on the nights before and after a hanging."
Executions performed by Allen as head executioner
23 July 1957 – John Wilson Vickers 4 December 1957 – Dennis Howard
11 July 1958 – Peter Thomas Manuel 12 August 1958 – Matthew Kavanagh
3 September 1958 – Frank Stokes 10 February 1959 – Ernest Raymond Jones
28 April 1959 – Joseph Chrimes 8 May 1959 – Ronald Henry Marwood
14 August 1959 – Bernard Hugh Walden 9 October 1959 – Francis Joseph Huchet
9 November 1959 – Guenther Fritz Erwin Podola
1 September 1960 – John Louis Constantine
10 November 1960 – Francis George Forsyth
22 December 1960 – Anthony Joseph Miller 27 January 1961 – Wasyl Gnypiuk
9 February 1961 – George Riley 29 March 1961 – John Day
25 May 1961 – Victor John Terry 29 June 1961 – Zsiga Pankotia
6 July 1961 – Edwin Albert Bush 25 July 1961 – Samuel McLaughlin
8 September 1961 – Henryck Niemascz 20 December 1961 – Robert Andrew
McGladdery 4 April 1962 – James Hanratty
20 November 1962 – Oswald Augustine Grey 28 November 1962 – James Smith
15 August 1963 – Henry John Burnett 17 December 1963 – Russell Pascoe
13 August 1964 – Gwynne Owen Evans In addition to these, Allen also
performed the 9 executions of EOKA members which took place at the Central
Jail of Nicosia, Cyprus in 1956 and 1957. The remains of the hanged men are
buried within the walls of the prison, in the "Imprisoned Graves" section.
Their names are: Michalis Karaolis - executed 10 May 1956
Andreas Dimitriou - executed 10 May 1956 Iakovos Patatsos - executed 9 August
1956 Andreas Zakos - executed 9 August 1956
Harilaos Michael - executed 9 August 1956
Michael Koutsoftas - executed 21 September 1956
Stelios Mavrommatis - executed 21 September 1956
Andreas Panagidis - executed 21 September 1956
Evagoras Pallikaridis - executed 14 March 1957
Following the Independence of Cyprus in 1960, Allen performed the final three
executions at the Central Jail of Nicosia for the new Cypriot government,
assisted by John Underhill. These took place on 13 June 1962:
Hambis Zacharia - killed a man in 1958 Michael Hiletikos - shot a man dead
outside a Limassol nightclub in 1961. Fled to UK and was extradited to Cyprus
to stand trial Lazaris Demetriou - shot a man dead
outside a Limassol nightclub in 1961 Personal life and diaries
Allen's first wife was Marjorie Clayton whom he married in 1933. She left him on
the day that he was hanging Peter Manuel. Allen's second wife was Doris
Dyke, whom he married in 1963. In September 2008 a new book, Harry Allen:
Britain's Last Hangman, about the man and his executions was published. In
October 2008 it was revealed that Allen had kept a diary which included a
precise log of the prisoners and how they died. He recorded each prisoner's
age, weight, height and calculations for the length of rope needed to hang them.
The diary and other belongings were sold at auction in Knutsford, Cheshire on
behalf of his widow in November 2008 for £17,200.
Allen always publicly maintained that hanging was a "swift and humane
business". In his diaries he revealed that the execution of one prisoner,
Peter Griffiths, who was convicted at Lancaster assizes of murdering a
three-year-old child, June Anne Devaney, in the grounds of Queens Park Hospital
in Blackburn on 15 May 1948, took 30 seconds, which would have been the time
from Allen's entering the condemned cell to the moment of the drop. Many other
executions were faster than this, but death itself was always practically
instantaneous. Griffiths was 22 years old, 5 feet 10" tall, weighed 148 lbs,
and was given a drop of 7 feet 6 inches on 15 November 1948 at Walton gaol. Of
another hanging he noted, "Very good job, but should have had another two or
three inches – very strong." His granddaughter Fiona Allen is a
comedienne and actress, who rose to fame on the comedy sketch show Smack the
Pony. She said of him, "It's as if I had two grandfathers. One was the sweet,
lovely man who took me for walks on the beach, bought me sweets and toys and
always had me laughing and giggling. The other one was the man employed to take
lives for the Government. When I was a kid, everyone in the area knew what he
did. I remember going round to my first boyfriend's house for the first time and
I tried to impress his dad by telling him I wanted to go on the stage. He
looked up from his paper and said, 'Going on the stage are you, lass? Well
keep away from the trapdoor!'". Later life
Under the Murder Act 1965, capital punishment in the UK for murder was
suspended, before finally being abolished in 1969. Although the death
penalty remained for other crimes such as treason and piracy with violence, no
further executions took place in the UK, although a working gallows was kept in
service and regularly tested at Wandsworth Prison until 1998. It was
dismantled when the death penalty for treason and piracy was abolished by the
Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Allen moved to Fleetwood with his wife
Doris in 1977, to escape the continued publicity, and worked there as a cashier
at Fleetwood Pier. He died on 14 August 1992, just a month after Albert
Pierrepoint, who had died on 10 July in Southport.
References Notes
Bibliography McLaughlin, Stewart, Harry Allen:
Britain's Last Hangman, True Crime Library, ISBN 1-874358-42-7
External links Newspaper article with image from a page
of Harry Allen's diary about the execution of Peter Griffiths