A Bradford hangman responsible for putting about 300 criminals to the noose was severely reprimanded by Home Office officials for touting' for business, newly-released records have revealed.

Public executioner Tom Pierrepoint was found to be contacting officials responsible for securing hangmen's services before it was certain the prisoners would die on the gallows.

Records released by the National Archives show that he wrote letters offering his services to under-sheriffs, the local officials responsible for securing the services of the hangman, whenever a newspaper reported a capital sentence against a murder.

Since many death sentences were overturned on appeal some of the letters related to criminals who escaped the death penalty.

A senior Prison Commission official wrote to Mr Pierrepoint in 1927 and a rival executioner Robert Baxter reminding them of the strict code of conduct they had to adhere to.

He said that they must instantly cease "the unacceptable behaviour of touting for business from under-sheriffs".

Mr Pierrepoint wrote back saying: "I never used to write but I found it out that someone else was and I was not getting my fair turn.

"The junior man was getting the work and the senior man was waiting idle."

All the executioners were then sent a revised version of the 1907 conditions of service, adding a clause that banned touting.

Mr Pierrepoint died in 1954 at his home in Northside Terrace, Lidget Green, after serving 35 years as a public executioner.

An obituary in the Telegraph & Argus described the 83-year-old as "always kind and quiet-spoken. He was sturdily built and wisps of hair turning snow-white peeped mischievously from under his hat."

He became a hangman after his brother, Henry, who was already a hangman, persuaded him to try for a position on the Home Office list of executioners.

The longest-serving of the Pierrepoint executioners, he in turn encouraged his nephew, Albert, who is the subject of the new movie The Hangman, to become his assistant.

He also ran a haulage firm and a bookmaker's business as a sideline. His wife Lizzie had a shop in Town End, Clayton, and kept mules, chickens and goats.

Tom Pierrepoint was responsible for hanging such notorious criminals as Louie Calvert, Frederick Seddon and Charlotte Bryant.

Seddon, 40, murdered Eliza Mary Barrow by poisoning her with arsenic obtained from fly strips.

The hanging of 33-year-old Louie Calvert, who murdered her landlady, drew a crowd of 500, many of them women, who stayed outside the jail until the death notice was displayed on the prison gates.

Charlotte Bryant, 33, was convicted of poisoning her husband with arsenic and was hanged in 1936. She was having an affair with their lodger. While awaiting execution, her black hair turned white, it was reported.

e-mail: saima.mir@bradford.newsquest.co.uk