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- <text id=94TT1564>
- <title>
- Nov. 14, 1994: Died:Sydney Dernley
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994
- Nov. 14, 1994 How Could She Do It?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- MILESTONES, Page 39
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> DIED. SYDNEY DERNLEY, 73, Britain's last surviving executioner;
- in Mansfield, England. Dernley helped put to death 28 people
- between 1948 and 1953 and claimed to hold the speed record for
- hanging--the 7-sec. throttling of a prostitute killer. Although
- one of his clients was later deemed innocent and was posthumously
- pardoned, Dernley remained a believer in capital punishment,
- which Britain abolished for murder crimes in 1969. In his 1989
- autobiography, The Hangman's Tale: Memoirs of a Public Executioner,
- Dernley wrote that he had decided to become a hangman by age
- 11.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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