The ending of public executions in the 19th century.
Public punishments such as whippings, the stocks, the pillory, but particularly executions, were always very popular with the general public and were normally well attended events. In the days before newspapers and when few of the populace could read, they also served a practical purpose of allowing the inhabitants of a town to see justice done and hopefully be deterred from committing crime. In some cases, judges would order the execution to be carried out at the scene of the crime for this reason. See the case of Sarah Malcolm for an example.
Up to the end of the
18th century, executions were very much a spectator sport for all classes of
society, the wealthy as well as the poor. Seats in Mother
Procter’s Pews, open galleries like modern grandstands at a football stadium,
which gave a good view of the proceedings at
Where the criminal was unusual, the execution could be guaranteed to draw huge crowds. Such was the case with 39 year old Henry Fauntleroy who was the managing partner at Marsh, Sibbald & Co, a failing Marylebone bank, who had been convicted at the Old Bailey on the 30th of October 1824 of large scale forgery. Fauntleroy was convicted of trying to defraud the Bank of England of £5000 in 3% annuities, belonging to a Mr. Francis Young. His case got wide coverage in the newspapers of the day due to his social status and his alleged immoral behaviour. Fauntleroy confessed to the crime and claimed his motive was to try to prop up the bank. It was claimed by others that the motive was to support his lavish life style and many girlfriends. It is thought that the crime for which he suffered was just one of many similar offences that had netted him a huge sum of money over several years.
There was considerable effort made to secure a reprieve and unusually further legal argument prior to his execution, but to no avail. This hanging of a “gentleman” at Newgate, just after 8 o’clock on Tuesday, the 30th of November 1824, was a major event to be watched by an estimated 100,000 people. It was reported that just three minutes elapsed between Fauntleroy leaving his cell and being suspended. He writhed on the rope for a moment before James Foxen, the hangman, pulled down on his legs, so ending his suffering. A broadside was produced giving an “Account of the Execution & Dying Behaviour” of Fauntleroy, whilst another purported to be his “Sorrowful Lamentation” and a third was an account of his trial. Two more gave details of the execution, such was the interest in the case.
Ordinary people would
walk for miles to watch an execution and by the 1850’s,
special trains were laid on to take them to the county town, as happened at
By the 19th century, newspapers
had become more widely available and would carry detailed accounts of trials
and executions. There was also a
flourishing trade in execution broadsides which were normally single sheets of
paper with the details of the crime, trial and punishment of the criminal,
often including the "last true confession" and lament of the condemned person. They generally had a stylised woodcut
picture of the execution scene, modified as required to suit the sex and number
of prisoners. The only problem with them is that as
they were usually printed before the execution, they could not accurately
describe an event that hadn’t yet happened and indeed may not actually happen
at all, as it was not unknown for the criminal to be reprieved after the
broadside had gone to print. One wonders
how much of the other verbiage they contained was pure speculation and
invention on the part of the printers, particularly the always popular “last
true confession”. However, the public
lapped them up. It is reported that some
2,500,000 broadsides were printed for the execution of Maria and
Frederick Manning. Here
is a picture of one from
The Illustrated Police News, first published on the 20th of February 1864, was a very popular tabloid style publication in the later Victorian era, largely replacing the broadside and packed with prurient details of the latest murder cases and executions. High quality drawings were included of the murder scene, the criminal and the execution. Sometimes there were also little tableau’s of the crime or the murderer’s supposed dreams prior to their hanging.
Photography had only just come into
existence in the 1850’s, but it was not possible to print photographs in
newspapers of the day. In fact, I am not
aware of any photograph of a British public execution. To compensate for this lack of pictorial
information, death masks were made of famous criminals after execution and put
on display. William Corder, who was hanged on the
11th of August 1828 for the shooting of Maria Marten in the famous “Red Barn
Murder,” had a cast taken of his head after death, which can be seen at the
William Palmer’s death mask can still be
seen at Shugborough Hall in the County Museum of Staffordshire. The death mask of William Burke, who was
Phrenology was very much in vogue in the 19th century although it was considered by many to be a pseudo-science. The concept was that the shape of a person’s head and the lumps and bumps of their skull would give an insight into their personality. Studying casts of the heads of executed murderers should tell us more about them. It didn’t!
Madame Tussaud’s waxworks would buy the prisoner’s clothes from the hangman and other artefacts to display in many cases, to add reality to the wax figures. The Chamber of Horrors was very popular with visitors, then as now, and new figures were put on display with amazing rapidity whilst there was still public interest in their case. This practice continued well into the 20th century.
The move to abolish public executions.
reduce the number of capital crimes and thus executions had been going on from
the end of the 18th century and during the first 40 years of the 19th century
had met with considerable success. In the five years from 1828 – 1833, executions still averaged over
one a week in
There was little mood in the country for outright abolition of capital punishment however. So, as this was clearly unattainable, the next step of the anti-capital punishment lobby was to campaign for the ending of public executions, something strongly supported by the Quaker movement and influential people such as the authors Charles Dickens and William Thackeray as well as much of the press. It seems that watching public executions had become unfashionable with the upper middle classes who no longer went to them. A parallel can be drawn with smoking. Growing up as child in the 1950’s and 60’s it seemed that everyone smoked - now it seems to be far less prevalent, especially among the more wealthy members of society. The “great and the good” have never been happy about ordinary people enjoying overtly morbid pastimes such as watching a criminal strangling on the end of a rope! There is no doubt that both sexes did enjoy a "good hanging" and there was general disappointment expressed if the criminal died too easily, as William Palmer did. Where the criminal was female, the proportion of women in the crowd was often reported to be higher. One gets the impression that the campaign to abolish public executions had far more to do with the fact that the lower classes enjoyed them, than out of any consideration for the feelings and sufferings of the prisoner.
It was not unknown for public hangings to
end in tragedy and not just for those being hanged. Crushing injuries and fainting were quite
common place as the crowd pressed forward to get a better view. On
The execution of three murderers, one of
whom was female, was quite an unusual event and had attracted a larger than
usual crowd. As they surged back and
forth, there were cries of “murder, murder” as people began to be trampled and
crushed. The worst affected area was
The authorities were powerless to help the injured and dying because they simply could not reach them. It was only after the gallows was drawn back into Newgate that the area could be cleared to reveal the full extent of the tragedy. No less than 27 bodies were discovered at the scene and there were a further 70 people requiring hospital treatment. A temporary mortuary was set up at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to enable relatives and friends to identify their loved ones. An inquest opened the following day which concluded on the Friday with a verdict "That several persons came by their death from compression and suffocation." It is unclear whether the authorities took any actions to prevent a recurrence of this tragedy but no similar problems were subsequently reported.
It has often been stated that public executions actually encouraged crime, particularly offences such as pick pocketing, then known as privately stealing from a person. It seems reasonable to believe this as when individuals are concentrating on the drama unfolding on the gallows above, they are off their guard and thus easy prey. Prison chaplains claimed that many of those subsequently hanged turned out to have previously witnessed one or more executions. Clearly they did not have the deterrent effect that had originally been hoped for.
Victorian England was full of hypocrisy and whilst there might be publicly expressed disgust in the press at the behaviour of spectators at executions, privately people loved every prurient detail. Executions had several obvious advantages to the individual’s conscience, they were a perfectly legal form of sadistic and voyeuristic entertainment, as the victims were criminals after all and one could justify taking the family to watch the hanging because one was going to see justice done. It was also a good moral lesson for the kids!
Progressively, attitudes to public hangings were changing between 1800 and 1868. At the beginning of the century, hangings were attended by all classes of society. By the end of the period, it was no longer fashionable to be seen at these events. Whether the propaganda of the abolishionists was having the desired effect on the middle and upper classes is unclear, or whether it was the Victorian notions of morality that had come to fore and people had become embarrassed to admit to going to watch a hanging.
There were exceptions to this though, such
as the execution of 23 year old Swiss born valet, Francois Benjamin
Courvoisier, at Newgate on
The crowd’s excitement rose as the hour of execution arrived and there were the usual shouts of “hats off” when Courvoisier was brought out. Thackeray records in “Going to see a man hanged” that he could not bring himself to look upon the final scene and that he had flashbacks of the execution for two weeks afterwards, such was the impression it had made on him. This was to be the sole hanging at Newgate in 1840. Several broadsides were printed in this case outlining the trial, confession and execution. Forty years earlier it was possible to watch multiple hangings here, for instance, on the 5th of June 1800, seven men were to share the drop with a further three the following month. By the 1840’s, they had become rare events and therefore probably of far greater public interest.
Charles Dickens seemed to enjoy watching
executions and had attended a guillotining in
famous execution at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in
They were hanged side by side a little after by William Calcraft. The execution passed off without incident but led to angry outbursts in the Times newspaper from Charles Dickens deploring the behaviour of the crowd. In one letter to the paper he wrote, "I was a witness of the execution at
The hanging of
William Bousfield outside Newgate on the 31st of
March 1856 did not go well. Twenty nine
year old Bousfield had killed his wife, Sarah and
their three children with a cut throat razor which he then turned on himself
sometime in the night of the Saturday or Sunday, the 2nd or 3rd of
February. Finding that he hadn’t been
able to commit suicide he went to
Another famous author to be, Thomas Hardy, was just 16 when he first went to watch a hanging and was able to secure a good vantage point in a tree close to the gallows.
The criminal was Elizabeth Martha Brown(e) who was to die for the murder of her husband,
John. She was hanged by Calcraft outside
Dorchester Gaol at 9 o'clock on a rainy Saturday morning, the 9th of August
1856, before 3 - 4,000 spectators. If
this does not sound a large number, it is worth noting that at the 1801 census,
the population of
1864 was an unusually busy year for
hangings at Newgate. Firstly, there were
the five ”Flowery Land Pirates” on the 22nd of February, followed by John
Devine on the 2nd of May and 23 year old Charles Bricknell
on the 1st of August. But the case that
was to make the headlines and capture the public’s interest was
The person convicted of the crime was a German tailor called Franz Muller, a man in his early 20’s. Sixty nine year old banker, Mr. Thomas Briggs, was travelling from
The pocket watch was found by police at a
jeweller’s shop in
There was always the danger that public
executions would make martyrs of the victims and this was to be the case in the
hanging of three young Fenians at the New Bailey Prison in
Sergeant Brett was in reality shot by accident. He was inside the van and his assailants demanded that he open the door, which he refused to do. Instead, he looked through the keyhole to get a view of the situation just as one of them fired a bullet into the lock which passed though his head. Although there seems adequate proof of this chain of events, it does not amount to manslaughter, in law, as the killing occurred as part of another serious crime.
On the eve of the execution, large crowds gathered just to see the gallows which had been erected on the Friday morning immediately outside a large gap that had been made in the prison wall. The gallows had to be protected by police and 72nd Highland Regiment was on hand the following morning to ensure that there would be no rescue for the three condemned men. In all, it is estimated that there were 2,500 police and soldiers on duty. Calcraft officiated as usual and the three men became still soon after the drop fell. It is interesting to note from a contemporary drawing of the scene how little the 8,000 or more spectators would have actually been able to see of the hanging bodies. The front of the gallows had a fence up to about chest level and the area beneath the platform was draped in black cloth to hide their struggles from view. Once the drop had fallen, all that would have remained visible would have been the hooded heads and shoulders of the three men. This arrangement was quite typical for the time.
These executions provided the Fenian
movement with the martyrs they sought and also brought them
wide press coverage, mostly condemnatory.
The three became national heroes in
In conclusion, it is fair to say that at best these public displays were a source of ribaldry, drunkenness and crime and at worst, the cause of serious loss of life. One tends to feel that Charles Dicken’s comments on the execution of the Mannings summed up the situation very well.
The last public executions and the legal changes that led to their abolition.
The decade from 1850 to 1859 had just 95 executions, the lowest 10 year total yet. A further 115 men and 5 women were to die in public between the 1st of January 1860 and the 26th of May 1868. Twelve men and one woman were hanged within prisons in the remainder of the decade, giving a total of 133 for the 10 years.
The Criminal Law Consolidation Act of 1861 reduced the number of capital crimes to four, murder, high treason, piracy and arson in a Royal Dockyard, (this was a separate offence, not high treason). In reality, except for four executions for attempted murder, this act was more of a tidying up exercise as nobody else had been hanged for a crime other than for murder since 1837.
The 1864 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment sat for two years and concluded that there was no case for abolition of the death penalty but did recommend ending public executions. (Franz Muller, above, was hanged whilst the committee was sitting).
In the Spring of 1868,
The last public hanging of a woman and also
last public execution at
The execution was set for exactly three weeks later. In the condemned cell she confessed to the prison chaplain. Kidder had to be helped up the steps onto the gallows and held on the trapdoors by two warders where she prayed intently while Calcraft made the final preparations. She struggled hard for two or three minutes after he released the trap and was described by the reporters, who witnessed her hanging, as having "died hard". An estimated 2,000 people, a lot of them women, had come to watch her final agonies. Click here for further details
The Capital Punishment (Amendment) Act
received its third reading in parliament on the 11th of May 1868. The following day Robert Smith was executed
Barrett was hanged by William Calcraft shortly after 8 am on Tuesday, the 26th of May 1868, dying without a struggle. It was reported in The Times newspaper that there were a great many members of the lower classes, including young women with children present at this execution and that the crowd stretched past St. Sepulchre’s Church and almost into Smithfield, such was the interest in it. The Times celebrated the fact that this hanging would be the last such vulgar public display (their editorial opinion).
Three days later, on the 29th of May, the Capital Punishment (Amendment) Act came into force ending public hanging as such, and requiring all future executions to be carried out within prisons. It further required that the sheriff or under sheriff, the governor, the prison doctor and such other prison officers as were needed had to be present.
The prison doctor was required to examine the prisoner after execution to verify that life was extinct and to sign a certificate to that effect to give to the sheriff.
The sheriff, and the governor and the
prison chaplain were required to sign a declaration to the effect that judgment
of death had been executed on the prisoner.
This Act allowed the governor of the prison and the sheriff of the county in which the execution took place the discretion to admit newspaper reporters and other witnesses, including the victim’s relatives to the hanging.
In the drafting of the Act, no thought had
been given to the Channel Islands and so it was just over seven years later
There can be no doubt that the prison and police authorities were very pleased to see the end of public executions as they required considerable crowd control and seemed to encourage crime and bad behaviour. There was also a large financial saving for individual county authorities as they no longer had to provide police and javelin men or meet the costs of erecting the gallows for each execution.