Who applies to be an executioner?

In 1883, almost a thousand men applied to the English Home Office for a job for which they almost certainly had no prior experience. 

The job? London’s official hangman, responsible for carrying out executions.  

Who would want to be hangman? Those who have no other employment options? The truly destitute or desperate of the Victorian England working class? 

Not at all, says professor Stephen Heathorn, a cultural historian who recently published a paper about the job applications and what they can tell us about attitudes to work in Victorian London. 

“These were not people on the lowest rungs of society – most were semi-skilled or skilled workers who were making, for the time, a reasonable income,” he explains. “They were carpenters, butchers, soldiers, policemen – one was even a solicitor. But they were all looking to do better in their life and for their families, so this wasn’t a bad job – this was an opportunity.” 

In fact, although the job was called “odious” in contemporary accounts, the position of hangman was actually a sought-after position – and those applying for the job weren’t desperate or down-and-out but were, on the whole, respectable working- and middle-class men eager to demonstrate their fitness for the role. 

That’s because, while the phrase “gig economy” didn’t exist in 19th-century London, being the city’s official hangman was a great gig, at least financially. The previous hangman, William Marwood, got paid 10 pounds per hanging, with an extra five pounds added if there were multiple condemned to be hung.  

Because the number of annual hangings in the 1870s and 1880s rarely reached above 20, Marwood, who was eventually doing most of the hangings in the UK, only had to work 10-15 weekends per year – but still managed to bring in between 120 and 150 pounds annually. That was two to three times what an average working-class man would make working full-time. He was also working as a bootmaker in his free time and regaling anyone who could pay – journalists, curiosity-seekers or the lads in the pub – with tales of his notorious exploits.  

So when the publicity-happy Marwood died – an event that was reported in newspapers across England – almost 1,000 men decided they wanted his job. 

While the deluge of applications also made headlines, with newspapers reporting figures of up to 1,400 men applying for the job, this quirky chapter of Victorian history might have been lost completely if historian Greg Smith, now vice-provost at the University of Manitoba, hadn’t stumbled across the letters 20 years ago in the Corporation of London Record Office. 

It was a rare find, says Heathorn – working-class people didn’t generally apply on paper for jobs in 19th-century England, so there are very few job applications of any kind that exist from that period.  

And while Smith used the letters to support his research into violence in London in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Heathorn saw that they could provide a rarely seen glimpse into the lives of working-class men in Victorian London. 

“There was no call for applications, no job description – so how these men chose to present themselves in their applications tells us a lot about how they thought of themselves as workers with something to offer, and what they thought would be desirable attributes in someone doing this kind of work,” says Heathorn. “It also showed us, rather quickly, that many people were willing to do a job that didn’t seem respectable in order to afford the lifestyle of a respectable working man.”  

What are the qualities of a good hangman? Many of the job applications mentioned their sobriety, independence, and industriousness, presenting themselves as responsible family men. Cool nerves were also a common theme – and, in fact, barbers, with their steady hands and ease in handling dangerous straight-razors, were at the top of the occupations of the men who applied for the job. 

And then there were those who were eager to demonstrate their skills with, as Heathorn puts it, “pathological enthusiasm.” 

“There were a couple of letters that have pieces of string tied into nooses to show that they knew how to tie the knot,” laughs Heathorn. “One man even wrote that he had wanted to do this all his life, and had practiced hanging dummies as a child in his backyard.”  

Eventually, the men who trumpeted their family stability were eliminated from contention precisely because the Sheriffs of London, who were charged with selecting the new hangman, decided the job was better suited to a single man – one whose distasteful occupation wouldn’t sully his family’s reputation. 

That turned out to be a bad decision, says Heathorn. The man who was selected – a former railway foreman named Bartholomew Binns – turned out to be neither sober nor especially industrious, botching his first four executions so badly that he was let go less than a year into the job. 

“Part of the prejudices of the upper-middle-class sheriffs was that they couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to do this job, so they assumed a rough, strong railway man who didn’t have a family fit the bill better than the men who presented themselves as responsible, sober family men,” he explains. “In fact, no strength was required – a basic understanding of physical dynamics and a general knowledge of what you were doing was far more important.” 

Ultimately, the man who became London’s hangman was a family man named James Billington, who had written so enthusiastically about experimenting with hanging dummies in his backyard – which may have raised eyebrows initially, but was the beginning of a successful family business. His sons became his assistants, and when he retired, carried on the trade.