Don't Blame the Executioner Trivia Quiz

Answer: He executed more people than any other executioner in French history.

The first person to be executed using a guillotine was Nicolas Jacques Pelletier in 1792, and Charles Henri Sanson was the executioner. The guillotine is infamous as the symbol of the rapid and numerous executions of the French Revolution and it remained the official method of capital punishment in France until 1981. Over the course of his career as the Royal Executioner of France, and subsequently as the High Executioner of the First French Republic, Sanson executed almost 3,000 people, including King Louis XVI of France.

Answer: Using a longer length of rope to cause death by breaking the neck rather than strangulation

William Marwood was one of only two British executioners to lend their name to the figure of the executioner in Punch and Judy shows. He took the job in 1872, aged 52, and became something of an infamous figure in popular culture of the time. He was referred to in the children's rhyme, 'If ma killed pa/ Who'd kill ma?/ Marwood'.

Despite this notoriety, in his work he introduced several measures to make hanging more humane, although it is true that the concern was driven as much by a desire to make executions less distressing to the prison staff required to witness executions as by compassion for the condemned prisoners. Marwood introduced the 'long drop' method, which used six to seven feet of rope rather than two to three, and which broke the prisoner's neck, causing a much faster death than the strangulation death effected by use of a 'short drop'.

He also improved the reliability of the 'long drop' by using smoother rope and replacing the traditional slip knot with a brass eye to form the noose.

Answer: He allowed his pet llama to witness private executions.

John Lee became known as 'The Man They Could Not Hang' because, when he was brought to the gallows, the trap door failed to open three times in a row and thus he had to be pardoned. Usually the executioner would test the equipment the day before the hanging with a bag of sand, but on this occasion James Berry failed to perform this task. On at least one occasion Berry miscalculated the length of rope required to hang a man, so that too much rope was used and the condemned man was decapitated because he had fallen too far and gained too much speed by the time the noose was pulled tight. Berry was a religious man who was concerned about sending unrepentant men to their deaths. Consequently he sometimes threatened condemned men with slower deaths to induce confessions, though there is no evidence that this was known by others at the time.

Answer: French executioners, or bourreaux, were social outcasts

In France, there was a long history of the executioners, or bourreaux, being considered social outcasts and so they rarely married into families besides other bourreau families. They were granted an exemption from the ban on first cousin marriages and as a result of this all nineteenth century bourreaux descended from just sixty-two different families.

After being refused marriage to a woman from outside this bourreaux network, Anatole Deibler was eventually wed to Rosalie Rogis, of bourreau lineage, whose two brothers became Deibler's assistants.

Answer: Llama trainer

In addition to working as a mill worker, a barber and a newsagent, John Ellis was also employed in some manual labour and general factory work positions. At the age of twenty-two he applied to become an executioner, a move which reportedly horrified his family.

After leaving his job as hangman, Ellis took his scaffold on the road as a sideshow act and also played another famous British executioner, William Marwood, on stage. He wrote a book about his time as an executioner titled 'Diary of a Hangman'.

Answer: Hanging

George Philip Hanna had a morbid fear of pain and developed techniques to make executions as swift and painless as possible. He was a wealthy man and had no financial need to do the job, indeed his only fee was a bottle of whiskey which he drank with the local sheriff after the execution.

His wife sewed hoods for the condemned to wear at their hanging and each prisoner was given a choice between a white and black hood. Hanna himself prepared the scaffold and positioned the noose but never pulled the trap himself, and detested being called 'the hangman'.

He was the executioner for the last public hanging in American history on 14 August, 1936. This was the execution of Rainey Bethea on the courthouse lawn of Owensboro, Kentucky.

Answer: The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby

Robert Green Elliot was appalled by the botched job of electrocuting prisoners which he witnessed while working as a prison electrician. In 1926 he became the New York state executioner, though his official title was State Electrician. As well as Bruno Hauptmann, he was the executioner of Sacco and Vanzetti, two men who were convicted of a crime primarily on the basis that they were known anarchists rather than on the evidence of the case. For his involvement in this execution, Elliot received hate mail, death threats and his house was bombed.

Answer: Electric chair

In 1940, the Mississippi government decreed that executions would henceforth be conducted by electrocution rather than hanging. It refused to abandon the practice of executing prisoners in the jurisdictions in which they had been convicted, yet at that time no mobile electric chair existed. Later that year, after a Memphis firm accepted the challenge of designing such a contraption, and Jimmy Thompson was hired as the travelling state executioner. Thompson was a heavily tattooed showman who had previously worked as a stage hypnotist.

He had a history of petty crime and was pardoned in order to become the executioner. He prided himself on swift and merciful executions, though his work apparently took its toll on him emotionally. He was renowned for drinking heavily after executions and was often arrested for drunken behaviour following executions.

Answer: Opposition to the death penalty

Albert Pierrepoint followed his uncle and his father into the 'family occupation' of executioner and was chief executioner from 1941 to 1956. His 1974 autobiography stated that he opposed the death penalty, primarily because he felt that most of the people he was required to execute had committed crimes of passion.

Some critics have suggested that these were not his true beliefs but merely a position expressed to enhance sales of his book. However, Pierrepoint was required to execute a friend who committed murder in a jealous rage, and this may well have had an impact on his attitude towards the justice of the death penalty. During his career Pierrepoint was the executioner of the last person to be executed in the Republic of Ireland and the last woman to be executed in England.

Answer: Nuremberg

On 16 October, 1946, Woods was in charge of the execution of Wilhelm Keitel, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Frank, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Alfred Rosenberg and Fritz Sauckel. These men were tried during the famous Nuremberg trials and were all executed within 103 minutes.

There was controversy around these executions because it was felt that unnecessary suffering was inflicted on the condemned. He was accused of using short lengths of rope so that the men strangled over a longer time than was needed, and of making the trap doors too small so that some men were injured as they fell through.

He was never called on to conduct another execution.