An Uncommon Hangman

Educator Rachel Franks tells the story of Robert Rice Howard (known as "Nosey Bob" Howard) (c. 1906), an Australian executioner.

Howard was employed as a hangman for the colony of New South Wales from 1875, initially as an assistant hangman. He held the position of senior executioner from 1877 until he retired in 1904. Throughout a career spanning twenty-eight years, Robert Howard assisted or supervised the execution of sixty-two persons in New South Wales.

Howard had a facial disfigurement, resulting in the loss of his nose, that occurred while working as a cabman in the mid-1870s. His missing nose and lengthy high-profile career as an executioner led to him being generally known, in newspapers and common parlance, as 'Nosey Bob' .