Tom Long

Who was Tom Long?

Tom Long was the New Zealand government hangman in the late 19th-early 20th century, although it was not a full time position. He executed the "baby farm" murderer Minnie Dean, the only woman hanged in New Zealand. Long, an Irishman who claimed to have been an executioner in Australia, was appointed as New Zealand's first official hangman in 1877. In a newspaper interview in 1905 he claimed to have executed "fifteen in this country but hundreds in India.". He worked as a bushman and is said to have taken his swag through Wairarapa in between jobs. He was killed in 1908 while felling trees at Kauangaroa east of Wanganui.