Once a Jolly Hangman by Alan Shadrake

transactions lead the individual to perceive a discrepancy, whether real or not, between the demands of a situation and the resources of the person's biological, psychological or social systems'.
    During conversations I had with him, Darshan Singh constantly peppered his responses with his personal brand of real gallows humour - the product of a record number of executions for any hangman anywhere which seemingly has kept him psychologically balanced throughout the years. However, I still asked him if he slept well or whether he ever experienced nightmares involving some of those he had executed. Did he ever see any of the faces whose life he has snuffed out mocking him from the darkness during a disturbing dream? I almost believed him when he said he always sleeps well and what he does has never bothered him or disturbed his peace of mind ... until he began reeling off some of those jokes and laughing so heartily. 'After every execution', he has probably repeated a thousand times, 'it takes me two days to get over my hangover'. I felt sure that Freud would have loved to have had Darshan Singh on his couch for a few hours and attempted to analyse that particular joke. The conversation continues. Another joke - more raucous laughter. 'I am the fastest executioner in the world', he says. 'I don't hang about'.
    He recalled a certain execution many years ago that was celebrated with two fellow prison officers. It was the evening after his 500th execution, an obvious momentous occasion for any hangman proud of his work. The officers came to his home in civilian clothes with a bottle or two of Chivas Regal! 'I can't remember whose execution we
    were celebrating, who the 500th person was', he said. 'It was a long time ago ...'. Listening to Singh reminisce about this particular celebratory moment and make decidedly off-colour jokes reminded me of the Hungarian-born author Arthur Koestler who played a crucial part in the campaign to abolish capital punishment in Britain back in the 1950s. In his damning Reflections on Hanging which was serialised in the British Sunday newspaper, The Observer, and was causing alarm in the British establishment then fighting a rearguard action to keep the death penalty, Koestler opened with a startling commentary on 'this peaceful country where necks are broken: There seems to be jolliness about the procedure as if the victim, twitching on the end of the rope, was not a real person but a dummy burnt on Guy Fawkes' Day. The present hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, runs a public house called Help the Poor Struggler ... and the present Lord Chief Justice delighted a Royal Academy banquet with a story of a judge who, after passing the death sentence on three men, was welcomed by a band playing the Eton Boating Song's refrain: 'We'll all swing together' .... It all goes to show that hanging has a kind of macabre cosiness, like a slightly off-colour family joke, which only foreigners, abolitionists and other humourless creatures are unable to share'.
    Darshan Singh told me that he wanted to retire one day but the authorities could not find a replacement hangman. Not long ago he spent weeks training two understudies, one Chinese and the other Malay. Using dummies he taught them the Table of Drops, how to weigh and measure the condemned, and calculate the length of the drop accordingly. He told them it was important to get the length of the rope and the drop exactly right. Too short and they are strangled. Too long and they are decapitated, he always reminded them. Before the short walk to the scaffold arms are pinioned behind back on the trapdoors, the noose placed around the necks, the white cap on heads. Darshan Singh even told the trainees that he always uttered those now infamous words: 'I am sending you to a better place than this'. Then pull the lever. Perhaps he wanted them to carry on this tradition that he began. But when it came to a real execution, the would-be executioners froze and could not do it.