List of executioners

This is a list of people who have acted as official executioners.

In 1870 the Republic of France abolished all local executioners and named the executioner of Alger, Antoine Rasseneux, Éxécuteur des Arrêts Criminels en Algérie, which became France's official description of the executioner of Algeria's occupation. From there on there would be one only executioner to carry out death sentences for entire Algeria. Since the colony's executioner had obligatorily to live in Alger, people soon started to refer to him as to the "Monsieur d'Alger", "The Mister from Alger". At the occasion of his nomination, Rasseneux could choose four among France's and Algeria's former local executioners to be his aides.

After 1808, during the Portuguese-Brazilian Kingdom (1808-1822) and the Empire (1822-1889), when Brazil's States were still called "Provinces" and the currency was called "Reis", Brazil had factually abolished torture but was a busy death penalty country.
Method of execution was public hanging by an ultra-short drop of approximately 90 cm (2' 9 11/2"), with the executioner, after having activated the trap door or pushed the convict, according to the gallows's structure, climbed a ladder and launched himself rope downwards, hitting on the convict's shoulders with his weight.
Executioners generally were selected among convicts of capital crimes who had their death sentences stayed for indefinite terms or even commuted for live without parole, and who in exchange for their stays or commutations had to carry out the executions ordered by law. Executioners were, whenever possible, selected from among slaves convicted for a capital crime. And except for the province of Rio Grande do Norte, executioners had obligatorily to be of African descent.
As stayed or commuted convicts, executioners consequently lived as inmates in the prisons of the respective towns where they were based. When an execution was to be carried out elsewhere in his area, the executioner would be transported to the place of execution in chains and sleep in the local prison; after an attempt of murder against Fortunato José in 1834, prisons started separating the executioners from other inmates.
In the province of Rio Grande do Norte, the executioner had always to be the convict scheduled to die next after an execution, so that province's last execution had to be carried out by a firing squad, after the necessary emergency change of execution protocol.
In the state of Rio de Janeiro, after Independence September 7, 1822 there were also free executioners of African descent who having to travel around, were reached by couriers with execution orders.
Executioners, also when slaves, were paid for their executions; at the example of the province of Minas Gerais, we can establish payment was between 4$000 and 12$000 (4 Mil-Reis to 12 Mil-Reis) per execution.
The last execution of a free convict in Brazil was that of José Pereira de Sousa October 30, 1861 in Santa Luzia (nowadays Luziânia), GO. The last execution at all under law in Brazil was that of the slave Francisco April 28, 1876 in Pilar, AL.
Brazil abolished capital punishment officially with the Proclamation of the Republic November 15, 1889, and by law with its first Republican Constitution of 1891 and Penal Code of September 22, 1892.

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