soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Dave Wilma" wrote in message
news:ac815686-7824-43bd-b515-a7bec648e5da@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

> Pierrepoint did perform hangings for
> the Army in England.

No, British law works differently: servicemen sentenced
to punishments equal to or greater than X (two years in
prison?) are transferred for incarceration to the civil power
i.e. the national prison system. Servicemen sentenced
to death were similarly processed, i.e. kept in civil prisons
until hanged by Pierrepoint. (During WW1 some dozens of
British soldiers were executed by army firing squads after
sentence to death by field court martials in France: but this
was by policy avoided during WW2.)

These rules applied to all Allied servicemen in Britain
in wartime except only Americans. On the insistence
of the US government, the UK Visiting Forces Act
allowed US forces to maintain on British soil their
national system of law, courts and punishments.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)