How good of a business was being the executioner?

>>1943246
You get befits like a retirement plan health dental when you retire you get AARP on you side

Here are some accounts of executioners in Canada,

John Radclive
John Radclive was Canada's first professional executioner, placed on the federal payroll as a hangman by a Dominion order-in-council in 1892, on the recommendation of the justice minister Sir John Thompson:[18] Radclive is often described as having trained under British hangman William Marwood although there is no documentary proof for this. He can be shown to have hanged at least 69 people in Canada, although his life total was probably much higher. At his death, the Toronto Telegram said he had 150 executions. He died of alcohol-related illness in Toronto on February 26, 1911, at the age of 55.[19]

Arthur Ellis
Arthur Ellis was the pseudonym of Arthur B. English, a British man who became Canada's official hangman in 1913, after Radclive's death. Ellis worked as a hangman in Canada until the botched execution of Thomasina Sarao in Montreal in 1935, in which she was decapitated. He died in poverty in Montreal in July, 1938, and lies buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery.

The Crime Writers of Canada present annual literary awards – the Arthur Ellis Awards – named after this pseudonym. Ellis is prominently featured in the 2009 documentary Hangman's Graveyard.

Camille Blanchard
The executioner who worked as Camille Blanchard, a pseudonym, succeeded Ellis. Blanchard was on the Quebec government payroll as a hangman, and executed people elsewhere in the country on a piecework basis. The hangman was traditionally based in Montreal where between 1912 and 1960 the gallows at Bordeaux Prison saw more executions (85) take place than any other correctional facility in Canada.[20]

Blanchard carried out many executions (for which he was not paid) in the postwar period in Canada, such as the double hanging of Leonard Jackson and Steven Suchan of the Boyd Gang at the Don Jail in 1952, and Robert Raymond Cook's execution in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, in 1960.[21]

Seems to not be to steady a line of work.

No idea but in France the position was hereditary so if your dad was an executioner you were fucked.

>having to pull the lever for a few hours a week on people judged to be criminals deserving of death
beats toiling in the fields or 12 hour factory shifts desu

>>1943297
Maybe, but can you imagine how fucked up you would feel for killing probably up to 100 people in your life?

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>>1943312
>Implying that 'merica won't do a movie about me and call me hero if I kill hundreds of people

>>1943312
>implying they dont make sure each executioner is a sociopath.

>>1943312
I don't know, I think most people could probably justify it with a sort of "I am the sword of justice" type of narrative.
>>1943264
sources for more reading on executioners? pretty please?

>>1943246
Pros
>Stable Job
Cons
>Social pariah.

I have no idea why the Western & Islamic world (and Japan) just hand the fucking Job to soldiers instead of having some underclass do it.

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>>1943360

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>>1943246

Must've been great if you secretly relished in killing people but didn't want find yourself on the receiving end of a noose yourself.

I kinda envy them.

>>1943312
Nothing wrong with killing criminals

>>1943246
The book "the faithfull executioner" written by Franz Smith gives a nice insight.

The function was hereditary for a long time and if your dad was one you were not allowed to take on another trade. In the case of Franz his father it was especially weird. He was forced by his lord to perform an execution, due the lack of an official one. After this he was not allowed to perform his past trade, or any other trade, ever again and had no choice but to become a executioner, dooming his heirs to same job.

Huge sociall outcast. Not allowed to attend church with others, special stool in the tavern away from everyone else, house away from the normal people etc.

Paid really well.

A huge side business of executioners was medicine and healing. They were trained to heal the ones they tortured, either for more torture or to be presentable for execution. So they started healing normall people to earn dosh on the side.

They had very specific rules about torture.

The executioner was often instructed to ease the suffering for the one sentenced. They would place a charge of gunpowder arround the victims neck if they were sentenced to be burned for example. In very heinous crimes the opposite was true.

You had fulltime, city employed executioners but also travelling executioners.