As a prisoner several centuries ago, Gilbert Savage had been given the choice of being executed himself or becoming an executioner.  Dressed in black, he told of crimes and punishments during medieval times in Britain showing the equipment he used.  Even children as young as eight were occasionally hung and what we would consider to be minor offences were harshly punished.  People were sometimes badly mutilated or even disembowelled before dying a lingering death yet the executioner could make money from those who would bribe him to make them die quickly.  The most serious crime was treason and he explained how the traitors’ heads or bodies were often displayed as a warning on town gates or walls.  
They were gruesome times but the children watching said it was “cool” and just like the very popular “Horrible History” books.     The photo shows him packing up his props including a severed hand and head, knives and axes