No, I couldn't execute anyone in cold blood There have been occasions when I could have killed out of rage (yes, actually, but luckily nothing apppropriate was in my hand at the time). I have a violent temper when my loved ones are threatened which frightens me very much.
I have in my possession a pencil portrait drawing of a man who I am told was an "official executioner" in the first quarater of the lst century. The artist was my aunt, a talented youngster at the time, who apparently met him aboard ship when the family was returning to UK from New Zealand at the end of my grandfather's career.
I never met my aunt, who died when I was a baby. but I am told that her abiding memory was of a tense and wound-up man with fingernails bitten to the quick .
Of course, he may just have been terrified that his gambling debts were about to be revealed / his wife would find out he had another lover / his mother was about to find she wasn't the only person in his life / he was still waiting to know if his Littlewoods Pools had come up......................
Who knows??!!!