Malta’s parliament formally abolished the death penalty in the year 2000, though, in practice, no person had suffered capital punishment since 1943, when the hangman, Wiġi Cutajar, executed the brothers Giuseppi and Carmelo Zammit for the homicide of Spiridione Grech.

A post-war Labour Party postcard of the gallows in Corradino prison

Later, the courts condemned a few others to death but the head of state reprieved them.

A member of the Rosarianti collecting alms in Old Bakery Street, Valletta.

Trials for capital crimes – homicide, treason, etc. – riveted the nation. The proceedings in court attracted morbid curiosity.

The actual execution followed macabre pageantry, not least the three-day presence of the spooky masked Rosarianti della Misericordia in the streets of Valletta.

This ancient confraternity, said to date back to 1575, recruited only aristocrats, higher bourgeoisie, professionals and wealthy businessmen.

A Rosariante in full garment, collecting alms on the occasion of an execution.

On the days of the execution, they collected alms for the repose of the soul of the ones who paid the ultimate price to justice and to relieve the family of the victim. Many contemporary postcards testify to the irresistible lure of the ghoulish.

Another postcard of the Rosarianti issued by Salvatore Lorenzo Cassar.

The Rosarianti after the execution of Nazareno Abela on February 1, 1927.

I opted not to dabble in criminal law. When my father was imprisoned and exiled in World War II, I grew up with my uncle, the most prominent lawyer in Malta – a criminal jurist of compulsive learning and obsessive integrity. I still recall the tensions, the prayers, the stress in the proximity of capital trials in which he served as defence counsel – there was to be faultless silence at home.

Fascist propaganda portrait of Carmelo Borg Pisani in blackshirt. He was hanged in 1942 for espionage and treachery.

In memoriam holy picture with rare text in Maltese (santa tal-mejtin) for Antonio Azzopardi, hanged on October 27, 1908 for the homicide of Giuseppe Camenzuli.

Ziju Bertu’s last two gallows trials regarded the art student Carmelo Borg Pisani, hanged in 1942 for espionage and treason, and the Żammit brothers. He then vowed not to take on other death penalty cases and left the field to Ġużè Flores, another brilliant jurist in the criminal field.

Unless otherwise stated, all images from the author’s collections.

A 1930s postcard of Rosarianti issued by the London Studio.