Some of the grisly items used by celebrity executioner Albert Pierrepoint are being put up for auction. The Yorkshireman, born in 1905, gained notoriety up and down the country for the double life he led - often hanging serial killers and Nazis before returning home to pull pints in his pub.
It is estimated that Pierrepoint oversaw 600 people on the gallows during 25 years as a hangman and now some of his tools of the trade will go under the hammer, like the cloth extension hoods he used in his prime, reports the Daily Star. Past auctions have seen a notebook, containing the names of those people whose lives he ended along with details of their belongings, fetch £20,000, along with his own "death mask".
Born into a family trade - his father and uncle also hung people for a living - Pierrepoint even wrote as a child: "When I leave school I should like to be the Official Executioner."
