"The reputation of the hangman in the three-piece suit is not what it once was. During and after the war, he was considered a hero, a selfless, sober and self-effacing servant of the crown performing an unpleasant duty with no interest in profit or fame. More recent research and evidence — and changing attitudes towards capital punishment — suggest he was something very different: a callous, self-important brute, who claimed to be motivated by sacred impulses (as many killers do), fastidiously recorded his trail of death (ditto), relished his own macabre notoriety (ditto), killed several innocent people and went on hanging people, without remorse, long after he had concluded capital punishment was not a deterrent. He quit not from moral scruple but over money. He was not mentally ill, like many of his victims, just entirely loathsome."