Bradford people's careers have taken some of them in strange directions.

Few can be stranger, though, than that of James Berry who began his working life looking after the books in his father's wool warehouse, spent eight years as public hangman despatching 130 people before starting to campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, and ended his days as a touring evangelist and farmer.

Berry, who was hangman during the latter part of Queen Victoria's reign, was a man of contradictions. He was capable of cold, even callous detachment - surely qualities essential for that sort of work. Yet he could be so affected by his job that he was sometimes unable to speak before an execution.

He took a genuine interest in his "victims" and the crimes they had committed. As a self-styled amateur criminologist he built his own "black museum" and kept scrapbooks of his cases.

He strove to be both efficient and merciful, and worked to a table of "drops" which he devised himself, based on the weight of the condemned person and the distance he felt they needed to fall through the trapdoor to die instantly.

"Executions now seem part of the distant past, and are considered barbaric by most modern people," says Stewart P Evans, author of a new book about the life of this enigmatic character. "Yet the last executions in England were conducted as recently as August 1964, well within living memory and still using methods partly developed by Berry."

So how did this son of a Heckmondwike wool stapler become such a significant figure in the administration of justice in this country? What path did you have to pursue to become a hangman?

Mr Evans reports that Berry was born on February 8, 1852 and was a troublesome child, getting into scrapes, making mischief and skipping school for two months so he could spend the money he'd been given to pay for his education on tops and sweets instead.

As an alternative to expulsion he was given a sound thrashing by his father "until he was tired out", Berry later claimed, whereupon the schoolmaster took over. It did nothing to break his spirit. He continued to be defiant. One day he protested at seeing the schoolmaster giving another lad a similar thrashing.

The teacher struck out at Berry with a ruler, drawing blood from his hand. Berry retaliated by hurling a heavy ruler at the man's head, causing him to fall to the floor.

Expulsion followed. The boarding school he subsequently attended had more success with him, but the incident shows that young James was a spirited lad.

After a series of jobs - one of which required him to attend the slaughterhouse where he learned the art of butchering - he fell head over heels in love at first sight with Sarah Ann Ackroyd, the daughter of a Bradford woolcomber. And shortly afterwards he joined the Bradford Borough Police Force.

By his own account he was a good copper, but his independent nature again got the better of him. After several years he resigned, claiming he didn't get credit for the work he did and was being denied promotion to a detective.

Various jobs and struggling business enterprises followed. Then Berry learned that the post of public executioner was up for grabs following the death of the incumbent, William Marwood. He had met Marwood in the line of his police work, and had had several long conversations with him about the job. He applied.

The first application failed, but when the man chosen over him was sacked within months for incompetence and drunkenness Berry got the job.

Before his debut, which involved the simultaneous hanging of two men, he was beset by doubts and fears. Would the ropes break? Would he tremble so much that he couldn't pull the handles?

None of that happened. Berry himself, in his own account of his life, wrote that at the "chime of the clock the two men were launched into eternity without the moving of a muscle of even a quiver of a nerve....Everything was done as quick as lightning and both culprits paid the highest penalty of the law..."

Technically, he had made a good start to his career. And it continued in similar vein with just a few hiccups. There was the case of John Lee, who was reprieved when, after three attempts at pulling the lever, the trap refused to open even though it had worked perfectly in the practice sessions. And there was the shocking case of Robert Goodale who was decapitated during a botched hanging.

Towards the end of his career Berry became increasingly convinced that many of the protestations of innocence made at the gallows were genuine. He became haunted by doubt about the job, and his behaviour grew erratic - so much so, in fact, that the authorities decided to put no more work his way (he was a freelance throughout those eight years, travelling from his Bradford home to wherever he was needed).

That was when he took to touring the country talking about his experiences, casting doubt on capital punishment, and showing lantern slides of prison scenes and executions (for a fee). Yet he became more and more depressed and turned to drink.

Matters came to a head on February 13, 1904, when he took leave of his wife and headed for the Midland Station (Forster Square) with the idea of catching the express train that was due to leave for London via Leeds and throwing himself out of the window in Thackley Tunnel.

While he waited he prayed. He begged forgiveness for what he was about to do. He imagined he saw his mother's face in the station's glass roof and cried out to her that he hadn't a single friend in the world.

And then, almost instantly, he found that he had one - an Evangelist who came and sat beside him, talked him out of his suicidal intentions, and set him on the path to righteousness and a new career as the Hangman Evangelist.

He turned to farming in his later years at Walnut Tree Farm, Bolton Lane, Bradford, and died in 1913.

"He would be pleased to know that he isn't forgotten in the 21st century," says Stewart P Evans. "He was one of the most colourful of the public executioners and has taken a prominent place in the history of British crime and punishment."

l Executioner, by Stewart P Evans, is published by Sutton at £20.