Robert Leslie Stewart

Robert Leslie Stewart (April 1918 - November 1989), from Edinburgh, Scotland, was one of the last executioners in the United Kingdom, officiating between 1950 and 1964.

Born in April 1918 and raised close to Edinburgh's 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 19th July 1951, assisting Steve Wade at the execution of Alfred Reynolds.

Stewart performed one of the last executions in the United Kingdom, when, at 8 a.m. on 13 August 1964, he hanged Peter Anthony Allen at Walton Prison in Liverpool, England. Allen had been convicted of the murder of John Alan West; Allen's accomplice, Gwynne Owen Evans, was hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England, at the same time. He also carried out the last execution in Wales, that of Vivian Teed at Swansea Prison in May 1958 for the murder of a postmaster during a robbery in Swansea.

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 Steve Wade, both in 1956. In this capacity, Stewart carried out six executions, among them that of Anthony Miller, the last teenager to be executed in the United Kingdom.

Robert Leslie Stewart died in South Africa, aged 71, in November 1989, where he had emigrated to work as an airline engineer and not, as has been suggested, as a hangman.

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