The polite term for his job was the finisher of the law.
Other better known job descriptions were executioner or hangman.
In the late 19th century, this was Robert Howard's, widely known as Nosey Bob, career for nearly 30 years. He was the longest-serving executioner for the colony of New South Wales.
WARNING: Subject matter contains confronting material
"I think he struggled with it. I mean, he said that he only did with a rope what judges do with their tongues," author Rachel Franks tells ABC RN's Late Night Live.
"He tried to distance himself from the decision of it," she says.
Ms Franks delved into Nosey Bob's past for her latest book An Uncommon Hangman, which looks at who he was and the deaths he was involved in.
She says the first hangmen in the newly formed colony of New South Wales were usually reluctant judicial executioners. They were often fearful of carrying out the role and of being ostracised, which many of them were.
"They were plucked from the ranks of convicts, and they really were making a very terrible deal to save themselves in many respects," Ms Franks says.
But Howard was different to many of his predecessors who were desperate to save themselves. He had a much more respectable life until he had hit economic difficulties, partly because of his nose.
"Howard [was] quite the self-motivated entrepreneur, so [initially he was] a cab driver," Ms Franks says.
He moved to Australia from England in 1866. He had a wife and six children, so he supported his family by working as a coachman in inner-city Sydney.
"He'd always been around horses since he was a boy. And so it was a great way for him to earn a living and do something that he loved with animals," she adds.
What happened to Bob's nose
The reasons for Howard's nickname are unclear.
In the early days, he was described as a handsome man, even an Adonis.
He was tall, muscular, and used to doing hard labour. There were rumours that he was the preferred cabbie for Government House and "well-to-do ladies".
But once his face became disfigured, the course of his life changed.
"The most commonly told story about his nose is that it was kicked off by one of the horses. But I think that such a neat slicing — none of the rest of his face was damaged in any way — I think it's unlikely," Ms Franks says.
Something she thinks may be closer to the truth was saddle nose, which developed from syphilis.
"People said, 'oh, it was cancer', 'oh somebody bit it off'. All these other things could have happened," she says.
So if you're a man who already had people staring at you for all the wrong reasons, why not pick a more palatable story?
Working with dignity
Wherever he was working, Howard took his job seriously.
He tried to bring some dignity to his role by wearing a formal coat and delivering a speech before carrying out each execution.
"He would always say, 'No one regrets this more than I do', to whoever was being sent off at the time," Ms Franks says.
He said it to the very first person that he attended on the scaffold all the way through to the 62nd person, she adds.
"I think that he wanted whoever he was dealing with to know that he was part of a system, and he didn't actually relish the job," she says.
Robert Howard executed 61 men and one woman in New South Wales over the course of his career from 1876 and 1904.
He worked across 12 different jails. Nearly half of his work was done at Darlinghurst gaol, but he also travelled to Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, and Tamworth.
Sometimes, to the dismay of the public, executioner and the convict, hangings didn't go to plan. And Howard's record wasn't flawless.
In the rare cases where the rope wasn't set to the right length, a slow strangulation instead of a quick death would ensue.
For people who were lobbying against the death penalty, every time something went wrong, it was more evidence for their argument to get rid of the punishment, Ms Franks says.
Howard was tasked with executing the last woman in New South Wales, Louisa Collins.
She was found guilty of poisoning her first and second husband.
The coroner of the day had the bodies of her former husbands exhumed for examination and traces of arsenic were found in both.
The men worked at a local tannery, Ms Franks adds, and there's a possibility that they could have been exposed to it in the workplace.
"There was quite a bit of doubt around the case … [Louisa Collins was] tried four times, and the first three juries were unable to come to a decision," she says.
"A fourth jury said she was guilty. And that then resulted in a death sentence."
A short retirement
Executioners would often wear disguises or use false names, but Howard never tried to hide when he walked down the street.
But being the colony's longest serving hangmen took its toll.
Outside of work, he began to drink more heavily.
At times, he wasn't welcomed in some establishments because the publican didn't like his profession. Newspapers would often report on fights between him and those who were close to the criminals he was assigned to execute.
In 1904, when he was in his early seventies, he retired from the role of executioner. By then, he was living in a cottage on Brighton Boulevard in north Bondi.
"So, by the standards of the day, he's an old man, and this [was] a physically demanding job, as well as emotionally wrenching, and he doesn't live very long, not even two years into retirement," Ms Franks says.
There are newspaper reports of him training his horse to carry an empty billy and six pence to the local pub to bring him back some beer.
In an interview, Howard said he knew that once he started, there would be no escaping the stigma of being the hangman, Ms Franks says.
"Once he took it on, he knew he had to stick it out," she says.
And he did.
RN in your inbox
Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.
