capital punishment

capital punishment was formerly of central importance in all European criminal justice systems. Although the history of capital punishment in Scotland has been little studied, it is clear that hanging was the standard method of executing on both sides of the border. Under English law, decapitation, hanging, drawing, and quartering, or (in the case of women) burning at the stake were reserved for traitors, while some independent jurisdictions, notably Halifax, where a primitive guillotine was in use, had their own methods. But generally, capital punishment meant hanging.

Evidence from burial sites suggests that capital punishment was known in Anglo-Saxon England. Calculating levels of capital punishment for this and the medieval period is impossible, although it seems they were low. This changed drastically in the Tudor period. By Elizabeth's reign large numbers of convicted criminals were executed, a trend which continued after 1603. To take an extreme example, an estimated 150 were hanged annually in the London area in the mid-Jacobean period. Put differently, between a quarter and a fifth of those standing trial for felony in Elizabethan or Jacobean England were executed. Overwhelmingly, they suffered for property offences: of 337 death sentences passed by the main criminal court in Cheshire 1580–1619, 294 (or 87 per cent) were for property offences (mainly theft and burglary), 35 for homicide, and 8 for other offences.

The Elizabethan and Stuart periods also saw an elaboration of rituals at executions, a trend which probably began with treason cases, and a marked contribution from the clergy. The speech made by the convicted person assumed a central importance, taking a stereotyped form in which they confessed their crimes, admitted earlier sins, sought forgiveness from monarch, God, and the spectators, and thus publicly reintegrated themselves into society before dying.

The 18th cent. provides better documentation on ceremonies and crowd reactions at executions. It also experienced a lower level of executions than the early 17th, with many convicted persons being reprieved, notably before being transported to the American colonies. A system of selectivity was in operation. The capacity to execute widely was retained but usually those executed were persistent offenders, persons with no influential patrons, perpetrators of unusually atrocious crimes, or offenders convicted at a time when the authorities wanted to make examples.

The early 19th cent. experienced a rapid transition in thinking on punishment. Transportation to Australia or incarceration in one of the new penitentiary prisons became the standard punishment for serious, non-homicidal offenders. By the mid-19th cent. capital punishment was restricted to murderers and, after 1868, was carried out inside prisons rather than in public. The abolition of the death penalty was already being mooted. Debate on this issue surfaced intermittently in the 20th cent., leading to its abolition for all practical purposes in 1965.

J. A. Sharpe