Home > Lancashire > Oldham > Help The Poor Struggler Help The Poor Struggler

Picture source: www.grovesandwhitnall.co.uk

The Help The Poor Struggler was situated on Manchester Road. This pub closed c1990. Its most famous publican was Albert Pierrepoint, the hangman.

Albert Pierrepoint executed some of the most notorious villains of the 20th century - when he wasn't pulling pints. Before closing time at the Help the Poor Struggler, the landlord would sing Danny Boy. He had a fine voice, and was usually joined in the singalong at the piano - a fixture in post-war pubs - by a man who called him ‘Tosh’, who he called ‘Tish’ in return. One night Tish - whose real name was James Corbitt - left the pub, at Hollinwood, Oldham, and did something which he had been brooding on for a year. In a hotel room in Ashton-under-Lyne, Corbitt strangled Eliza Wood, his some-time girlfriend, to death. Corbitt, then in his thirties, would be sentenced to hang for that murderous act of jealousy. In his cell at Strangeways, awaiting the walk to the gallows, he would be met by a familiar face. “Hallo Tosh”, Corbitt said, looking up at the man who had been sent to execute him. “Hallo Tish, how are you?” replied the executioner. Later, in his memoirs, the executioner recalled the encounter, writing how the condemned man smiled and relaxed after he greeted him with ‘the casual warmth of my nightly greeting from behind the bar’. The meeting marked the point at which Albert Pierrepoint’s two worlds - jovial Oldham publican by night, clinical state hangman in his spare time - collided. And while Pierrepoint would not retire from his grim business for another six years, executing Corbitt, his friend from the pub, is said to have haunted him. It was at this time of year, back in 1956, that Pierrepoint was adjusting to finally giving up the lucrative, part-time role which he had held for a quarter-century; dispatching killers, gangsters, traitors, spies, terrorists and fascists for the state. It was a row over fees which led him to hand in his notice, he was paid £1, instead of the usual £15, when Thomas Bancroft, a child-killer sentenced to swing in Liverpool, got an eleventh-hour reprieve. Such was Pierrepoint’s esteem as a hangman - he could finish the job in eight seconds - the Home Office urged him to reconsider. But Pierrepoint was not to be persuaded to return to the task which had been his curious destiny. Albert Pierrepoint’s Yorkshire-raised father, Henry, had been an executioner before him. Soon after he married a Manchester woman, Mary Buxton, at Newton Heath, the elder Pierrepoint was added to the Home Office’s approved list of hangmen, having written to them repeatedly to volunteer his services. In time, Henry encouraged his younger brother, Thomas Pierrepoint, to follow him into the trade.

Manchester Evening News (February 2019)

A brief customer, my father knew Albert Pierrepoint and in fact when he was in the Prison Service he had helped Pierrepoint with a hanging at Leicester Prison.

Owen Vintner (October 2020)

Do you have any anecdotes, historical information, updates or photos of this pub? Become a contributor by submitting them here. Like this site? Follow us on

Contacts

You can also make email contact with other ex-customers and landlords of this pub by adding your details to this page.

Name	Dates	Comments
Lisa Chadwick	1980s	My Grandmother & Grandfather run this pub until the end being the last tennants names: Herbert Chadwick & Edith Chadwick

Other Photos

Picture source: Graham Darby