Albert Pierrepoint and the cultural persona of the twentieth-century hangman

Albert Pierrepoint was Britain’s most famous 20th-century hangman. This article utilises diverse sources in order to chart his public representation, or cultural persona, as hangman from his rise to prominence in the mid-1940s to his portrayal in the biopic Pierrepoint(2005). It argues that Pierrepoint exercised agency in shaping this persona through publishing his autobiography and engagement with the media, although there were also representations that he did not influence. In particular, it explores three iterations of his cultural persona – the Professional Hangman, the Reformed Hangman and the Haunted Hangman. Each of these built on and reworked historical antecedents and also communicated wider understandings and contested meanings in relation to capital punishment. As a hangman who remained in the public eye after the death penalty in Britain was abolished, Pierrepoint was an important, authentic link to the practice of execution and a symbolic figure in debates over reintroduction. In the 21st century, he was portrayed as a victim of the ‘secondary trauma’ of the death penalty, which resonated with worldwide campaigns for abolition

Aspects of steroid metabolism in the normal and neoplastic mammary gland of the bitch

Normal and neoplastic canine mammary tissues have been incubated with radio-labelled progesterone, testosterone and androstenedione and metabolites isolated. In both tissues the most active enzyme demonstrated was 5α-reductase. Testosterone was converted to the more active androgen 5α-dihydrotes-tosterone only in the tumours. A reversal of the 3β-hydroxysteroid Δ4−5 isomerase enzyme system was noted without the addition of cofactors. Epitestosterone was formed from both testosterone and andros-tenedione in the tumours only