Always immaculately turned out and wearing a bow tie for the men and women he killed, Harry Allen was one of the last hangmen in Britain. Perhaps there's something about laughing and joking with customers in a pub that helps soothe a darkness in the soul. Like his mentor Albert Pierrepoint, Harry Allen was a state employed executioner by day and a jovial pub landlord by night. Born in Yorkshire in 1911, Allen - better known as the Middleton hangman - was brought up in Ashton-Under-Lyne. After leaving school he became a bus driver, a job he continued to do...