April 1, 1918 - Robert Leslie Stewart

Robert Leslie Stewart (April 1918 – 30 April 1988), from Edinburgh, Scotland, was one of the last executioners in the United Kingdom, officiating between 1950 and 1964.

Brought up in Dundee Street in Edinburgh, 3 miles from Saughton Prison, Stewart completed the Prison Commissioners' Assistant Executioner training course in September 1950 at Pentonville Prison in London. His name first appeared on the Home Office list in 1950, with his first engagement occurring at Norwich on 19 July 1951, assisting Stephen Wade at the execution of Alfred Reynolds.

Stewart was active on the Home Office list between 1950 and the suspension of capital punishment for murder in 1965, carrying out 21 executions as assistant. On the 1957 printing of the list, Stewart and Harry Allen were both promoted to the role of executioner in the wake of the resignation of Albert Pierrepoint and the death of Wade, both in 1956. In this capacity, Stewart carried out six executions. He also assisted Harry Allen at the execution of Anthony Miller, the last teenager to be executed in the United Kingdom.

Stewart performed one of the last executions in the United Kingdom at 8 am on 13 August 1964, when he hanged Peter Anthony Allen at Walton Prison.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert Leslie Stewart under CC BY-SA 4.0.