Dapper Harry Allen always wore a bow tie to make a good impression before tying the noose
Always immaculately turned out and wearing a bow tie for the men and women he killed, Harry Allen was one of the last hangmen in Britain.
Allen always dreamed of becoming a hangman. As a schoolboy, he was captivated by newspaper reports of the sensational trial of Edith Thompson, hanged in 1923 for the murder of her husband. During his time as a public executioner, he kept meticulous journals recording the details of each condemned prisoner's age, weight, height and final words. They also included calculations on the length of rope and drop, and how long prisoners took to die, usually about 10 seconds.
In 1945 he executed five German prisoners of war who had murdered a fellow prisoner for alerting their British jailers to an escape attempt. 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.
Up until the late 1970s he still received offers from across the Commonwealth to execute criminals. A curious fact about Allen is that he is the grandfather of former Coronation Street star Fiona Allen.
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