Former butcher-turned-pub landlord killed 450 people after telling teachers of death hope

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A pub landlord killed 450 people after telling his teachers that he hoped to kill people when he grew up. Albert Pierrepoint followed in his father's footsteps as a government hangman.By night he was a jovial landlord serving pints to unsuspecting drinkers.

But off the clock he took the lives of at least 433 men and 17 women while working as a clinical state executioner.On one December day, Pierrepoint hanged 13 people before lunch, and his personal record included 17 hangings in one day, leaving him quipping, "was my arm stiff!".Manchester Evening News reports that drinkers would have found it difficult to reconcile the two worlds the smiling man serving across the bar lied in.

Born in West Yorkshire, Albert and his mother moved to Oldham when he was young, and he got his first job ages 12, as a piecer at a textile mill in Failsworth, Greater Manchester.But he always knew a very different life awaited him.

As a schoolboy, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said: "When I leave school I should like to be the Official Executioner." He later said: "Hanging must run in the blood." His Yorkshire-raised father, Henry, had also been an executioner before him.