Executioners could often make a really good living this way, almost to the point where they're rich. They were knackers and all these other things, but nobody wanted to eat with him anyway. The blood of the condemned was often thought to have magical properties,. especially for epileptics. And at a lot of these executions, people would rush the scaffold to get hold of some blood. But ho, now, supply an demand is not a bad way to describe sort of the process that led to the decline of these master executioners.