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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
IMPOLICY
OF
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
OOZblSTIXEIRzIEID;
DERIVED FROM OBSERVATIONS, SUPPLIED BY RECOLLECTION OK PUBLIC
EXECUTIONS; TO WHICH IS ADDED,
LETTERS ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, .
BY THE AUTHORJ ALSO, A
RETURN OF THE NAMES OF THE CRIMINALS WHO
HAVE BEEN EXECUTED AT CHESTER
DURING THE LAST 300 YEARS,
SPECIFYING THE OFFENCES FOR WHICH THEY DIED; WITH MUCH
INTERESTING MATTER ON THE VARIED CAUSES OF CRIME.
BY GEORGE BAKEWELL.
MANCHESTER :
JOHN HEYWOOD, WHOLESALE PUBLISHER, 170, DEANSGATE.
CHESTER:
MR. THOMAS, “ RECORD OFFICE,” PEPPER STREET.
usual allowance to the trade.
��It is upwards of forty years since I was induced to'witness the execution of a
female who had been convicted, at the Stafford assizes, of the crime of murder,
and I must own, although very young at the time, that a more revolting scene
could not be laid open to human observation. All parts of the town, at an early
period of the morning, were crowded with anxious spectators, many of whom, I
am sorry to state, appeared to feel that they had quitted their homes in order to
survey some object of merriment or rejoicing. Indeed, for upwards of two hours '
previous to the frightful tragedy which afterwards happened, drunkenness had
been indulged in to an extent at once disgraceful to a Christian community. I
am happy, however, to state, that the disciples of that good man, the Rev. John
Wesley, attended in great numbers, in order to teach the vulgar masses that the
death of a sinner was not desired by the Almighty; and, moreover, that the agon
ising spectacle about to be enacted was by no means calculated to deter from the
commission of crime; in short, that it was more likely to convert the^sufferer into
an object of commisseration, rather than as one leaving the world amidst universal
indignation. Various addresses were delivered in order to render manifest the
above just and most righteous conclusions; but some portions of the drunken
mob, as was natural from their supreme ignorance, gave vent to their.feelings by
the most disgusting shouts of derision. As the hour of execution drew nigh, a
large number of farmers had assembled exactly in front of the scaffold, and they
appeared deeply impressed at the supreme folly of the Government allowing such
an assemblage to take place; in a word, whilst the depraved were revelling in
views and feelings, at which even savages would revolt, the pious and the wn.c
were all convinced that at no far distant day the hideous scaffold would totally
disappear from amongst us, and verily what followed must, had George III. been
present to have witnessed it, have induced him to resolve never more to put a
fellow creature to death.
At twelve o’clock the Rev, Thomas Whitby, of Creswell, made his.^appearance,
reading, in the deepest tones, the service for the dead. In another instant the
hangman had completed his frightful duties, and the drop had no sooner fallen
than its whole fabric followed, including the beam on which the wretched creature
was suspended in the agonies of deach. The yells and execrations that ensued
defies description: fully an Hour elapsed before the arrangements were completed
�4
to effect the final work of strangulation. Afterwards, large and influential public
meetings were held in order to convince not only the Government, but all persons
possessed of correct feeling, that the Punishment of Death was wholly unjustifiable.
The next execution I witnessed was at Derby, of four persons, named Brown,
•Jackson, Booth, and King-, who had been convicted, upon purely circumstantial
evidence, of setting fire to a corn stack, the property of a gentleman named
Colonel Wingfield Norton. The judge who presided at the trial had told the
jury, which was composed of farmers, that even on the assumption that all, or
one of the prisoners had been on the prosecutor’s premises on the night stated
in the indictment, it was by no means improbable that the fire might have been
occasioned by a tobacco pipe igniting the straw, in which event there ought to be
an acquittal. In those days, it is well known, juries were extremely illiterate, and
the result was, the four unfortunate men, all in the flower and pride of their
youth, were consigned to the scaffold, although great efforts had been made to
save them. When the day arrived which was to remove them from. life into an
unseen eternity, the sun had risen with more than usual splendour, the weather,
up to eleven o’clock, had been beautifully fine, scarcly a cloud was to be seen on
the celestial horizon. As usual, the morbid anxiety of man was brought into its
rull requisition : nearly the whole rural population came forth to witness the
disgusting scene; the voice of mirth had issued from most of the common ale
houses whilst the preparations of death were being completed. At length the
fatal moment was drawing nigh, which was to be the last of three beings, whom
God had created in nis cwn image. At length the sky became clouded, and
exactly at twelve o’clock a sudden darkness veiled the sun. “ The thunders rolled,
the lightnings flew.” At this awful juncture the condemned were brought on the
scaffold, the rain then poured down as if the floodgates of hehven had been
opened wide, and th? authorities took the poor creatures away. When the
storm had abated the barbarous work was finished. Three of the victims ap
peared to yield up their lives almost without the least apparent struggle, but the
sufferings of one was agonising in the extreme, his frame quivered for fully seven
minutes before
“ The breath of heaven
Would quit its tenement of elay.”
So far from the above exhibition proving of the slightest value, by way of example,
it is an absolute fact that the following assizes exhibited a calendar stained with
every species of offence that could possiby darken the statute book of an age. The
crimes of murder, highway robbery, stood out in bold relief; indeed, the Lord
C Jef Baron, in his charge to the grand jury, admitted that the execution of crimi
nals appeared to be without avail. And, with regard to the crime of arson, it was
quite clear that if the Government were not prepared to compel the different
parishes, throughout the whole kingdom, to afford food and shelter to the wandering
outcast, it was equally manifest the insurance offices must either be ruined, or
else make such provision themselves.
Howeve;, to return to the direct subject, hanging was still continued, as will
appear from a perusal of the annexed letters. But another execution took place
at Stafford, namely, that of Abel Hill, for the murder a young woman and her infant
child, which appeared to convince the Government that the scaffold must go down.
�When the jury had returned their verdict in the 'case just named, the criminal said
with an oath, “had I a cask of gunpowder I would blow you all to----- • and
whilst the late Mr. Justice Richards was addressing him, in the most feeling terms,
the monster made use of the most impious expressions, nor was his conduct on the
scaffold in the slightest degree altered, indeed, he was wholly unfit to die; but, in
point of all human probability, the heartrending scene which took place at the
execution of Sarah Harriet Thomas, at Bristol, a few years back, did more towards
shaking public opinion, with regard to Capital Punishment, than any preceding
circumstances of the kind. I happened to be at Gloucester, on business, the pre
vious day, and always being desirous, at the earliest convenient period, to render
my humble aid in accomplishing the object under consideration, I went to Bristol,
and witnessed what was nothing less than a judicial murder; the girl was believe d
to have been insane, to a greater or less extent. When brought out, her screams
were piteous, and she struggled hardfor life. Calcraft and four powerful turnkeys
*
however, dragged her to the fatal tree ; the poor creature saying, “ Do, n >w, let
me go; I want to go home.” At length all was still, and a portion of the vast
assemblage at once sang of the beautiful hymn—
“ And am 1 bora to die,
To lay this body down;
And must my trembling spirit fly
Unto a world unknown."
I do not, however, suppose that it will become essential for me to say more on
this part of the subject; and will, therefore, now furnish the letters, which I gave,
in the first instance, to the press gratuitously : —
LETTER I.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ” CHESTER RECORD/’
Sir,—The alarming increase of the crime of wilful murder, during the compass
of the last few years, and the futile results of public executions on the minds of
the wicked, are events calculated to enlist serious consideration. Indeed, I much
question whether the subject is not one requiring from the Legislature a far more
urgent attention than any of the many amendments needed in our social and
political system, by an industrious and intelligent people. But, in making use of
this expresoion, I am, of course, not unmindful of the immense extent of savage
ferocity which exists in the midst of the religion and piety lately manifested in
almost every district of the empire. The recent meeting held in Chester, on the
subject of establishing homes for poor, destitute, neglected children, I regard as
another proof of the sincere desire of those who possess their good things in this
life, to assist by all judicious means, in sowing the seeds of virtue in the human
heart, so that when the season of youth shall be succeeded by that of riper years,
a strong hope may be entertained that England will be blest with a people on
whose hearts will be engraved the solid principles of brotherly love, so that the
�clouds of darkness, despair, and wickedness, and all its attendant horrors, will
have rapidly began to decline and wither away. However, the pressing questions
are, What is the cause of that awful state of things which, in after ages, will be
regarded as so great a stain ou this generation, inasmuch as it is scarcely possible
to take up a newspaper without reading the details of murders, and other outrages,
revolting to the feelings of that nature sown by the Creator in the breasts of all
when he formed the stupendous undertaking of creating the world, and man to
cultivate and enjoy it for a season, and afterwards to receive everlasting
life? Secondly—Is the punishment of death, inflicted by the law-makers of king
doms, authorised by the Almighty, or by any means calculated to accomplish the
great aim of all punishments inflicted by man, namely, the prevention of crime?
I feel that a temperate discussion of the above important questions may be
deemed interesting at the present period to a portion of your readers, and for this
reason. Notwithstanding all that has been published of late years on the expe
diency of abolishing Capital Punishment, little information has found its way
an 'mgstthe masses, who, since the abolition of the newspaper stamp, can afford
tc read such excellent productions as your own, which, although in its infancy, is
a credit to your ancient city. With these feelings, and also with the desire to
place before the higher classes some details supplied by a recollection of criminal
trials and executions, I will proceed to furnish my own views on the whole subject,
in all its important points, aud for this purpose must, of necessity, trouble you,
probably, upon a few other occasions. I do this, as experience tells me that long
communications, with whatever ability written, do not receive that general atten
tion to which, under other circumstances, they might be entitled.
1 am, of course, not insensible to the strong feeling entertained by a great
portion of society, that life is required for life ; and I am equally aware that many
persons, possessing not only strong religious sentiments, but extensive knowledge
on human affairs, regard the passage in Genesis wherein it is written, “ whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” as a positive command
from God that a murderer should die. Now if this were so, it is somewhat remark
able that the same authority was not given to inflict the like punishment upon
those convicted of the crime of forgery, and other offences, now visited with
imprisonment or transportation; and it is also remarkable that ages should have
rolled over without this important point being settled on the basis of sound
reason, which tells us, that if the Divine authority was needed to take away life for
one description of offence, it was also needed for every other. The plain truth,
however, to borrow the words of the late Sir Samuel Komilly, is, that man begins
to feel the conviction that he has been usurping the authority of God, who has
said, “ Vengeance is mine. To me vengeance belongeth. I will repay.” It does»
therefore, appeal1 strange if it was ordained in the manner suggested, that
murderers should be exterminated from the earth, that Cain was spared, inasmuch
s his crime was of the most atrocious description, and his conduct afterwards did,
not entitle him to the slightest leniency. The Almighty, in permitting him to ter
minate his existence as a vagabond and a wanderer, gave an unmistakeable exem
plification of his written word, that he takes “ no delight in the death of a sinner,
but, rather, that he should turn from his wickedness and live.”
Notwithstanding the above remarkable manifestation of the Divine Will, it is
�1
insisted by those in power that blood for blood is required. My own views are,
that the passage in Scripture to which I referred in the commencement, is open to
a very different interpretation to that generally put upon it. And, with regard to
the Mosaic Law, I must remark, although that truly pious person exhibited,
during the whole period of his lengthened existence, the most sincere desire to
carry out the will of his Divine Master, yet 1 completely dispute that his com
mands, promulgated on the eve of his departure from the people whom he
governed, and which breathed a spirit of philanthropy that seemed too bright to
die, were intended to be binding on all generations. Moses was only mortal; and
what might in his day have been exceedingly good laws, would not be adapted for
a period like the present. Indeed, the slightest consideration of the Edicts them
selves, which are very plainly written in the book of Josephus, must convince any
person of ordinary understanding of the correctness of my hypothesis. But as I
hope to resume tne subject next week, I will not omit to place a few extracts of
the Mosaic Law under the consideration of yOur readers, one clause of whieh
expressly prohibited females, on account of their great inquisitiveness, from giving
evidence in a court of justice.
.
I am, Sir, yours respectfully,
G. BAKEWELL.
I
Beeston, May 5, 1857.
.... '
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LETTER II. '
. . Jum ..
-•/.». lite
/
A, ' J;J ’
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “CHESTER RECORD.
f
Sir,—in concluding my communication of last week, I expressed an intention
of furnishing some extracts from the code of laws promulgated by Moses, previous
to his departure from the world ; I feel, however, upon further consideration, that
if I carried out the intention, I might, in all likelihood, lay myself open to the
imputation of wishing to bring contempt upon a great and good man; on one who,
most admirably, completed his earthly mission, and then announced to his people
the precise period when he would be called to his Maker’s kingdom in heaven.
But I must, certainly, strongly urge on the consideration of those who contend
that the Mosaic Law, requiring that life should answer for life, forms but a very
small portion of the whole. The Punishment of Death was also enjoined for
various other offences; consequently, the question arises, why was it not carried
out My answer is, that succeeding governors to Moses discovered that the
execution of criminals for crimes mentioned was contrary to the intention of God,
consequently Moses must have been in error when he gave the law publication.
But upon one point there can be no kind of controversy, namely, that mankind,
in relaxing the punishment fixed for one portion of the offences, possess an equal
authority to adopt the same course with regard to the whole.
In proceeding to the further consideration of the important subject before me,
I feel exceeding anxious to impress on the minds of your’readers that in advo-
�$
eating the total abolition of Capital Punishments, I aru not actuated by the horrid
principles of what is termed Socialism, which amounts to nothing less than
absolute infidelity. In short, I iiave no sympathy with a murderer, who, I am
well aware, can carry into the midst of many a happy family the utmost extent of
affliction which it is possible for the human mind to endure; indeed, in the neigh
bourhood wherein I reside, the blood stained hand has recently occasioned such
results. I am induced to take up the subject for the reasons already suited, and
because I feel that the revolting spectacle afforded by public executions is utterly
useless by way of example, and, moreover, that convictions for the particular
offence to which I refer, can, in a very general way, only be secured by the
adoption of what lias been emphatically termed, circumstantial evidence; a
description of testimony which has frequently misled the ablest judges, and the
most enlightened juries. With these remarks I will proceed to furnish some
details relating to the immense sacrifice of human life which has taken place
during the compass of the last three centuries, by the hands of the common hang
man, which, when compared with the statistics of a period, when the population
has so vastly increased, must, of necessity, excite one common feeling of sorrow in
every reflecting mind.
Before the reign of Henry VIII. thoud&nds of persons had perished for witch
craft and political offences; and when that monarch came to the throne, Parlia
ment enacted that robbers, forgers, and cattle stealers should undergo the like
punishment; in this reign no fewer than 72,000 persons had been put to death,
and crime steadily increasing during the whole period. This state of things was
carried on for successive reigns, without the slightest remorse or relaxation; and
George III. had governed fifty years before he began seriously to feel the enor
mous weight of guilt which, undoubtedly, rested somewhere. At this period a
jubilee was held, and it became the duty of both Houses of Parliament to vote
addresses to the throne, which, of course, led to a reply from the King, wherein he
expressed the joy he felt in having been spared to rule so long over a happy, con
tented, and loyal people. Some little time afterwards, the subject of doing away
with Capital Punishment for all offences except the crime of wilful murder, was
mooted in the Lords, the indignation of all the refined classes In England, Irelan^,’
and Scotland having been most painfully excited some years previously, by the
execution of Dr. Dodd, and the two brothers, Perreux, for forgery. The then
Duke of Portland is reported to have made use of the following remarkable
words:—
** His Majesty, in bis gracious reply to this house, mentioned the contentment of the
people over whom be had been so long spared to rale. Now my feelings are, that a deep
discontent exists in the minds of all candid men who are convinced that the execution of
at least one of the Perreux, as well as that of Dr. Dodd, were judicial murders, inasmuch
os the last-named person never really intended to cheat Lord Chesterfield by signing his
name; but if he did, the offence was condoned by the acceptance of a security for the
money; and upon these, as well as various other grounds, J hope the punishment of the
scaffold may be mitigated so far as offences against property are concerned."
Little, however, was done towards accomplishing so desirable an object, until after
the accession of George IV., in 1821, as will appear from the following returns:—
In the year jast named, there were executed in England and Wales, for various
�9
offences, 114 persons. Strong efforts were then made to induce the Government
to amend the law, and many able appeals to accomplish that object in the House
of Commons were made. One of the speakers quoted the following lines, with a
view to show that the human race was entitled to pity, and, consequently, that
God should deal out his own measure of punishment to the more serious offender:
" Man, in his first estate, by ill advice,
Lost his Creator, and his Paradise.
Caused, in the place of llowers, rank weeds to gvow;
And peace departed at the sight of woe.
Since then the world in bitterness haB known,
The sigh, the tear, the lamentable groan.
Eternal day has fled—and awful night
Hongs over ea; th in horror and affright.
Man suceeeds man, and time gives way to time,
Change rolls on ohange—but yet, through all is crime.”
The result was, that transportation for life was substituted for various capital
crimes, which had the effect of reducing the number of executions in the seven
years between 1821 and 18’28, to the average of 59- Eventually, urther mitiga
tion was effected, by which means, in the next seven years, the number hanged
was re duced to 17; and in the succeeding ten years to six annually. I am sorry,
however, to state, that from the year 1810 to the year 1833, the period when
William IV. began to reign, no fewer than 56 persons had perished every year on
the scaffold. The above facts exhibit a painful retrospect, and naturally raises
the inquiry, whether the enlightened period in which we now live has not only
served to banish crime from the calendars of our sessions and assizes, but to do
away with the necessity of Death Punishment, provided mtn ever received a
power to exercise it.
With regard to the first point, the reader who has only recently been ac
customed to take his weekly newspaper, will be very sorry to receive an answer
in the negative. And what is, perhaps, a more startling announcement, there
never was a season, in the whole history of the kingdom, wherein there existed a
greater extent of depravity and remorseless wickedness than the present. In
short, the large towns and cities, nay, the rural districts, are infested with vaga
bonds of the vilest cast. Of course I may be asked to explain how, and in what
manner, such a terrible state of things has been produced? I answer—'one
portion of this class have been their own destroyers, by imbibing habits of intem
perance, which clouds the mind, so that the light of solid understanding cannot
penetrate within; and, moreover, the heart become hardened, and capable of
perpetrating offences at which the finer feelings of humanity stand aghast.
Another class are the offspring of vagrants, or persons who always prefer a
wandering and idle life to that of honest industry. But it is to be observed that
the laws relating to the relief of the poor, although apparently liberal, are, in
their operation, exceedingly cruel; so much so, as to induce those who would
gladly betake themselves to industry, if they had the power, to rush into a career
of crime from which they very seldom escape in following years.
With such an hideous mass of depravity — which has now reared its head
amongst us, like some anoient ruin—to deal with, the important questions arise ;«•
�10
Would it be safe to abolish the scaffold? If so, what punishment should be
substituted instead? What is to be done with our criminals, both in prison and
out of them ? What measures are to be adopted so as not only to destroy the
whole fabric of vice, but to prevent, so far as laws can prevent, similar results
from arising1 either in the present or in any future generation ? And, finally, on
the assumption that a majority of both Houses of Parliament should decide in
favour of the right of earthly rulers to destroy the breath of heaven, I feel fully
convinced that a large portion of my countrymen, whose conduct has been as
chaste as the icicle that is curdled by the frost from purest snow, wi’l naturally
demand to be told whether life is to be taken on doubtful evidence. I am well
aware that such men as Lord Sidmouth and Lord Ellenborough had always ready
answers to give to those who, in days now gone by, made appeals for mercy on
the grounds suggested. I can well remember reading of the dismay occasioned
to a sorrowing nation when the fate of poor Eliza Fenning was trembling in the
frail balance of life and death. Alas! the joy it would have given, had even a
short respite been granted her before the cruelty of the Government had cut her
off, and removed her far beyond the pale of human reparation, inasmuch as her
guilt was questioned by ninety-nine persons out of every hundred (the unfortunate
creature was executed for poisoning her master). Scarcely, however, had the
bloody work been done, before the real criminal, stung by all the agonies of
remorse and wild despair, gave himself up to justice, and afterwards suffered the
extreme penalty of the law. The general affliction occasioned by the death of
the victim was somewhat alleviated by the Christian spirit and fortitude she had
exhibited throughout the period of her tribulations. Even when the shadows of
death encompassed her, and in the face of her destroyers, her demeanour was
great, firm, and equal.
I hope, in succeeding letters, to be enabled, by furnishing the details of other
cases that have occurred within my own recollection, so to shake the whole fabric
of circumstantial evidence, as to induce those who have hitherto held with Capital
Punishment, to falter in their opinions, and to agree with me in believing that
when it becomes necessary for any one to be put to death, that such a work
belongs exclusively to the King of Kings. The Scripture says, “The Lord gave
and the Lord taketh away.” I am, nevertheless, aware that society would naturally
expect, when such an important change as the one contended for, was made, that
a punishment should be substituted, calculated to convince those who choose to
imbrue their hands in blood, that their sufferings will not be confined to a few
mortal pangs, but that a continued gloom, throughout the whole period of their
natural existence, is the certain result, awaiting them after conviction. Such a
law would also be the means of weakening the chances of escape for the guilty,
and what is of far greater moment a reparation could always be made to inno
cence when it was discovered.
I am, Sir, yours very respectfully,
BAKEWELL.
Beeston, May 12th, 1857,
�11
LETTER III.
TO TEE EDITOR OF THE "CHESTER RECORD.”
Sir,—With regard to the adoption of circumstantial evidence, and upon which
convictions for murder are generally founded, I readily admit that owing to the
fact of the criminal selecting for the completion of his purpose a time, a place,
and an opportunity, when he thinks no eye can see him, that no ear can hear him,
it would often be found impossible to secure the conviction of the guilty, if the
description of testimony to which I have adverted was to be excluded. If how
ever, as I contend, it is true that circumstantial evidence has again and again led
to the execution of the innocent, it forms in my judgment, apart from all other
considerations, the strongest possible ground for the total abolition of the scaffold.
In short, it is known also, beyond all question of controversy—not only to the
judges, but to every individual fully acquainted with the administration of justice
—that the secresy with which a murderer generally veils his guilt, frequently leads
to a verdict of acquittal. I know of numerous cases of the kind, in which the
juries would have felt no kind of hesitation in finding a verdict of guilty, but for
** The Punishment of Death.” I need only mention the case from Manchester,
tried at Liverpool, before Baron Platt—not many years ago—wherein a man and
his wife were tried for murder, and escaped all punishment whatever, simply
because the jury durst not, strong as the evidence was, consign the prisoners to a
doom from which they could never afterwards be extricated. I may also mention
—I trust without impropriety—the cases of Evans, for the murder of Mr. Price,
and that of Hodge, for the murder of Mrs.’Moore, of Winnington, as affording un
answerable arguments in favour of the correctness of my views. Away then, I
say, with the scaffold—and for ever. In short, I do not hesitate to assert that the
root, the stem, the bud, the flower, from which Death Punishments have so long
flourished, has been in all times and in all ages, a source of bitterness to the well
being of kingdoms, and a kind of cankerworm from which has emanated the very
worst results. I know these remarks may not be acceptable to one portion of
society, whose indignation at a murderer lead them frequently to forget the pas
sage in Scripture, wherein it is written, “ Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do
right.” Supposing, therefore, the malefactor was consigned to imprisonment for
life, as previously suggested, the Almighty, whose power is infinite, could add to
his pangs every punishment that was required. The great aim, however, of
earthly rulers ought to be in allaying the ferocity of human passions; inasmuch as
all experience has proved that education, timely counsels, and the certainty of
punishment, are the surest and strongest barriers against lawless violence.
Murder is a crime not confined to poverty, or ignorance; men of a superior educa
tion, and of even refined sentiments, have been known to imbrue their hands in
blood; but it has been generally discovered that they have done so after being
permitted to pursue a long career of profligacy. * aurence, Earl Ferrers, for
L
instance, in the opinion of all sensible men, ought to have been confined, as a
dangerous member to society, for years before he sent poor Mr. Johnson to the
grave. In plainer language, the offence of drunkenness—the origin of every
* This nobleman was executed at Tyburn, in the last year of the reign of George II.
�12
social evil—ought to be punished with the greatest severity, and by whosoever
committed; and, until the Government has done this, all the effoitsof philanthrophy will be incomplete. The operation of the Poor L'aw, to which I briefly
alluded in one of the preceding letters, I regard also as a most fertile source of
crime. From the very best information which has been gained on the subject, it
appears there are no fewer than three hundred thousand persons, spread oyer the
surface of the kingdom, who are nothing more than mere wanderers, or vagabonds,
living without, of course, any lawful means of existence; and when it is con
sidered that a portion of such a class are men who have been frequently convicted
of violating the laws, and now at large on tickets-of-leave, I do not see how
society can be considered as safe. Nevertheless, the recent amendment of the
law, with regard to the abolition of transportation, I am induced to believe will be
productive of much good. I trust, however, that further measures may be urged
on the consideration of Parliament, in order to make a suitable provision for all
cases of destitution. The present treatment of the poor, particularly those who
are called wayfarers, is cruel in the extreme. At many of the Unions the poor
creatures are bedded down like swine, and fed worse than the rich mans dogs;
whilst the allowance to the regular recipients of parochial relief, is a scandal to a
civilised nation. I mention these things as, in considering the question of doing
away with the scaffold, I feel how important it is that the absolute causes of crime
should be considered at the same time. When alluding to the immense number of
persons who are outcasts, I do not wish an inference to be drawn that the whole
are vicious members of the community. It is far otherwise, to a certain extent;
a portion of them have been persons formerly in good circumstances, but being
reduced by misfortune, or overtaken by age, refuse the Work house. They look
with scorn upon the law, as well as those who made it, and elect to travel from
place to place, in order to gain, by the enlivening scenes of nature, a temporary
relief from their tribulations, until God shall call them to that kingdom where the
weary and heavy laden find everlasting rest.
In thus advocating a provision for the poor,I wish to impress on the minds of the
young, that I believe all have a chance at one period or other to do well, provided it
is embraced ; and with regard to the working classes, I am convinced that nothing
would be more just than for the Government to get passed a National Poor-rate,
and, at one stroke, abolish the whole band of locusts, called Union Officers, who
absorb more than one-half of the rates. A plan of this kind would render an
ample allowance to all cases of destitution, a matter of mere insignificance ; whilst
the good effects to society would be beyond calculation. Indeed, there has been
more money expended during the last century, in the prosecution and transporta
tion of criminals, in making good losses from fire wilfully occasioned, in the
destruction of machinery, and in useless removals, than would have been needed
had the amount been invested for the support of the poor for time evermore. It
is true that lawless violence must be repressed, but it is much better to prevent
than cure.
In resuming the consideration of circumstantial evidence, which I regard as so
important a feature in the abolition of Capital Punishment, I need not ransack
such books as the Percy Anecdotes of the Newgate Calendar, in order to render
manifest its mischievous tendency. Cases, too numerous now to mention, have
�13
occurred within my own recollection, so as to afford a complete illustration on
this head. I will merely refer to those of Rush, for the murder at Stanfield Halt
and of Palmer, for the Rugeley poisonings, to show how near two of the greatest
criminals were of absolutely escaping punishment. In the former ease, it is
generally believed that if the criminal had employed counsel, the prosecution
would have failed ; and as it was, Mr. Baron Rolfe remarked, in passing sentence
with reference to Emily Sandford’s evidence“ Had you have kept your promise
to that young woman, by marrying her, in point of probability, the rule of law,
which seals the lips of a wife in all proceedings against her husband, would have
allowed your guilt to have gone unpunished.” Whilst with regard to that of
Palmer, all thinking men are convinced that his conviction, in consequence of the
conflicting nature of the medical testimony, was wholly unjustifiable ; and, more
over, that the summing up of Lord Campbell was partial and unfair. Such
opinions might not have been so strongly and generally entertained, had the issue
not been a matter of life or death, and until that punishment has been removed,
great offenders will always have awarded to them a sympathy.
I will now mention the following cases, and leave the reader to form his own
conclusions:—
At the Stafford assizes, held in March, 1824, Thomas Powell, a labouring man,
was indicted for the wilful murder of a female named Anne, the wife of Edward
Spencer, who resided at Gorst Cottage, near Willenhall, by striking her on the
head with a hatchet. He was further charged with stealing a quantity of wearing
apparel. The evidence, as usual, was purely circumstantial; the strongest point
was, that the prisoner had pledged at the shop of Mrs. Moore, a pawnbroker, a
portion of the stolen articles, on the day following the murder. But in his defence
he alleged that a man, dressed in a blue smock frock, had given him the bundle
to pledge, under a promise of paying for a quart of ale; and he asked the judge
if it was likely, had he committed the murder, that he should instantly have
exposed himself to the consequences of detection.
Mr. Justice Littledale summed up strongly in favour of an acquittal, but the
ury returned a verdict of guilty, and the unfortunate man received sentence of
death, and was executed within forty-eight hours. Connected with this case the
Staffordshire Advertiser remarked, “ Whilst the dying knell toll’d for the living
man, he solemnly denied all participation in the robbery or murderand, more
over, the late Mr. Brutton, who was the governor of Stafford Gaol, with whom I
was on terms of intimacy in youth, told me that he believed Powell to have been
entirely innocent. I may also mention, that a solicitor, now living at Uttoxeter’
who had to attend the judges lodgings, shortly after the trial, heard Mr. Justice
Littledale say, " Well Brother Garrow, I must confess that I should have been
better satisfied with a verdict of acquittal.” A few months afterwards, the man
dressed in the blue smock frock was himself transported for burglary, and he,
although making no admission of the murder for which Powell suffered, stated
that he had been wrongfully convicted.
Several years afterwards two men, named Paul Rigby and John Grimes, were
convicted at the Lancaster assizes, for an highway robbery, at Scotworth, near
Garstang. The prosecutor stated that his name was Stanley, and that he was by
trade a ’oiner, residing at Market Drayton, in Shropshire. That although the
�14
night was dark when the attack was made upon him, yet he was convinced the
prisoners were the men who ill-treated and robbed him. The constable who
had charge of the case, also gave evidence that the marks of Bigby’s shoe
exactly corresponded with various prints he discovered on the spot where the
robbery was alleged to have been committed. The prisoners nrotested their
innocence, but Mr. .Justice Park strongly summed up against them, and the jury,
without hesitation, returned a verdict of guilty, and sentence of death was
pronounced, with no hopes of mercy. Fortunately a chain of circumstances
was discovered, proving that the prosecutor was a gross impostor, and a reprieve
obtained just in time to stay the execution, the judge remarking, “ If these
men are innocent there is no reliance to be placed on circumstantial evidence
and I shall consider it a dangerous thing to take away life upon it hereafter.” It
is, perhaps, needless for me to add that the persons thus rescued at the eleventh
hour, in the dreary passage to the grave, were restored to their liberty, and to
those who were well nigh made fatherless children and widows. S;anley was soon
afterwards apprehended, and received sentence of transportation for the perjury
he had committed, but with regard to the circumstantial evidence in the case, it,
of course, merely shows its utter worthliness in all cases, and, consequently, how
careful juries should be in acting under its influence, particularly in business
capital. That, also, of the Ashcrofts, convicted of the murder at Pendleton, was
never very satisfactorily proved. The men suffered, denying their guilt with
their last breath, and many persons, now alive, are strongly convinced of their
innocence.
In conclusion, I fed that I ought not to omit alluding to the case of Mansell, at
Maidstone, who being kept in suspense for six months, and many times respited;
after, also being removed from the condemned cell, was publicly strangled, to the
utter abborance of a great portion of the nation.
I cannot avoid also mentioning the case of John Blagg, now lying under
sentence of death in Chester Castle, and whose conviction was founded on ex
ceedingly dubious evidence; the case altogether manifests the gross injustice of
the present game laws; and, until these laws are amended, it will be in vain to
expect the causes of murder will become diminished. Most persons to whom the
facts have become known, are convinced that B'a-g, even if he was the destroyer
of Ribbington, did not premiditate the act; but, that it was committed under
sudden passion. The deceased was the game-keeper to Mr. Corbett, of Tilstone
Lodge, and had repeatedly assaulted the prisoner, and upon one occasion broke
two of his ribs, still the verdict has been considered urjust, inasmuch as the
evidence of the foot-marks was far from being satisfactory; and, moreover, the
cutting observations of Mr. Justice Crowder to the grand jury, were highlycalculated to destroy all chances of a fair trial.
Such scenes, however, as those lately enacted in various parts of England can
be of mo long duration, provided towns like Manchester will only give full expres
sion to their opinions on the subject. Let this he done, and tire scaffold will be
removed, and the convicted murderer consigned to a punishment far more terrible
than death, namely,—one continued suffering so long as his life shall last.
G. BAKEWELL.
Beeston, near Tarporiey, Cheshire, August 1857.
�15
Since the preceding remarks were written, the author has been enabled to
procure the following returns of the number of criminals who have perished on
the scaffold at Chester, during the last 300 years; and also of the offences for
which they suffered. Iu point of all human probability, another victim will have
to be added to the list before this work shall meet the public eye, no respite
having been granted for the unfortunate Blagg up to the time of its going to
press:—
LIST OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS IN CHESTER,
FROM THE lg-tH CENTURY.
1534.—George Marsh, burnt at Spital Boughton, for his attachment to the Pro
testant faith.
1588. —September 8: A woman burnt at Boughton, for poisoning her husband.
1589. —John Taylor, gaolor of the Castle, for the murder of Mr. Hockenhull, a
prisoner in his custody for recusancy.
1592.—William Geaton, servant to the Bishop of Chester, for the murder of James
Findlove, a Scotch pedlar; his body was hung in chains on Groppenhall
Heath.
1601. —A woman named Candey, executed for conspiring to murder her husband ;
her paramour, Boon, refusing to plead, was pressed to death in the Castle.
1602. —One Arnet, servant to a Mr. Manley, of Saltney Side, hung for murdering
his fellow servant.
1654.—Sir Timothy Fetherstonhaugb, shot in the corn market of Chester, by
order of the Parliament.
1750. Two Irishmen executed, and gibbetted on the Parkgate Road, near the
Two Mills, for a murder.
1768.—Three men hung for burglary; the rope of one of them broke, when,lifting
up his cap, he exclaimed in horrible agitation, “My God! what am I to
suffer?”
1776—May 1: Execution of James Knight, for a murder at Odd Rode.—Sept. 21:
Christopher Lawless, Isaac Hutchinson, Alexander Solomon, and Isaac
Josephs, executed for robbing the shop of Mr. Pemberton, jeweller. They
were buried behind the Roodee Cop, opposite Ovcrleigh.
1777.—April 10: S. Thorley, executed for the horrible murder of Ann Smith, a
ballad-singer, near Congleton. After cutting off her head, he severed her
legs and arms from her body, which he threw into a brook ! part, however,
he actually broiled aud ate! He was hung in chains on the Heath, near
Congleton.
�IB
1779.—April 16: William Ellis, for burglary, and William Loom, for discharging
a loaded pistol at Charles Warren, of Congleton, executed at Boughton.—
October 2: Sarah Jones, executed for stealing 28 yards of chintz, from the
shop of Mr. Meacock, Chester.
1783. —Resolution Heap, and Martha Brown ; the former for a burglary at Whaley;
and the latter for a similar offence at Over.
1784. —April 26: Elizabeth Wood, hung for poisoning James Sinister, at Bredbury.
—May 15: John Oakes, hung for coining.
1786.—April 24: Execution of Peter Steers, for the murder of his wife, by poison.
•—May 6 : Edward Holt, for a burglary at Knutsford.—October 1: Thomas
Buckley, aged 20, for a burglary at Chester.—October 7 : Thomas Hyde,
aged 35, for horse-stealing. —October 10: James Buckley, aged 22, for a bur
glary in Miss Lloyd’s house, in Newgate-street, Chester.
1789. —February 4: Thomas Mate, for the murder of John Parry, a constable, in
Handbridge. He was 64 years old, and when at the gallows, he charged his
wife, 70 years old, with infidelity.
1790. —John Dean, from Stockport, for the most brutal murder of his wife, who
was seven months advanced in her pregnancy. He was hung in chains on
Stockport Moor.
1791. —April 21: Execution of Lowndes, for robbing the Warrington mail. His
prosecution, it is said, cost ^02,000. He was hung in chains on Helsby Hill;
but the gibbet pole was in a short time after cut down by some people in the
neighbourhood, and was not again erected—October 8: Allen, Aston, and
Knox, for a burglary at Northern. Upon this occasion, the fatal tree was
removed from Gallows Hill to the opposite side of the road, where it continued
till 1801, when the place of execution was finally removed within the Walls of
the City.
1796.—April 30: Thomas Brown and James Price, for robbing the Warrington
mail. They were hung in chains on Trafford Green, and remained there till
1820, when the pole was taken down, the place having been previously inclosed.
In the skull of Price was found a robin’s nest.
1798.—John Thornhill, for the murder of his sweetheart, Sarah Malone, at Lyrnm •
—October 4: Peter Martin, alias Joseph Lowter, for firing at a boat’s crew
of the Actceon, in the Mersey, when employed in the impress service.
1800. —Thomas Bosworth, for forgery, and Alexander Morton, for felony.—
October 10: Mary Lloyd, for forgery, at Stockport.
1801. —May 9: Thompson, Morgan, and Clare, for burglaries. When near the
gallows, Clare made a spring from the cart, rushed through the crowd, which
made way for him, rolled down a gutter-way towards the Dee—a rapid
descent—and plunged into the river. He was drowned, having immediately
sunk, from the weight of the chains, but his body was found, and afterwards
hung up with the others, the other two malefactors being kept in the cart in
the interval. These were the last criminals hung at Boughton, which had
been the place of execution for some centuries.—October 3: Aaron Gee and
�17
Thomas Gibson, hung out of a temporary window way, in the attics, on the
south side of the old Northgate, a building not now in existence.—The unfor
tunate men were propelled from the window about five feet, and dropped near
40 inches, their bodies beating against the windows beneath, so s to break
the glass in them.
1809. —May 6: Execution of George Glover and William Proudlove, in front of
the House of Correction, for shooting at an officer of excise at Odd Rode.
When the drop (used for the first time) sunk, the ropes broke, and the poor
men fell to the platform, half strangled; new ropes were procured, and the
sentence was carried into effect about an hour after the accident.
1810. —May 2: Execution of John Done, for the murder of Betty Eckersley, a
woman of bad character, at Lyrnm. He denied the offence to his last moment.
—October 10: Execution of Smith and Clarke, for a burglary and felony in
the shop of Mr. Fletcher, watchmaker, Eastgate. The conduct of Smith on
the drop was exceedingly unbending and audacious, and the night before his
execution he played at cards with some of his companions. They were buried
in St. Martin's Church-yard.
1812. —June 12: Temple and Thompson for rioting. They were connected with
the Luddites.—August 24: Execution of John Lomas, for the murder of his
master, Mr. Morrey, of Hankelow.
1813. —Edith Morrey, executed for the murder of her husband. She was tried
with Lomas, and with him found guilty on the clearest testimony. Immediately
after conviction she pleaded pregnancy, and a jury of matrons being impannelled, she was pronounced quick with child, and her sentence, of course,
respited till after her delivery. It appeared that an illicit intercourse had
for some time existed between her and Lomas, which led to her exciting him
to destroy her husband, and the crime was perpetrated with circumstances
of peculiarly savage atrocity.—June 26: Execution of William Wilkinson,
James Yarwood, and William' Burgess, for a rape on Mary Porter, near
Weston Point. They were flatmen, and when Wilkinson (a fine stout man,
about six feet high,) mounted the scaffold, he exclaimed to his companions,
“Keep up your spirits; never mind, my lads—we are all murdered men; I’m
just as happy as if I was going to a play I” and when the halter was placed
round his neck, he added, “ My new handkerchief fits me nice and tight.”—
Simeon Betson, William Betson, and James Renshaw, for a burglary at
Henbury.
1814. —May 28: William Wilson, an old sailor, in his 70th year, executed for
arson, at Tiverton, near Tarporley. His exit was most extraordinary: on the
morning of his death he entertained a number of persons in the parlour of the
constable’s house, with an account of his naval exploits; and in his way' along
the streets to the City Gaol, he chewed bread in his mouth, and threw it at
the beadle, observing that he was like Peeping Tom of Coventry. On the
drop he said, “ What a many people are here to see an old man hung; here’s
as much fus'g as if there were a hundred to be hanged.”
181-5—April 22: Execution of Griffith and Wood, for a burglary in the house of
John Holme, near Stockport.
�18
1817. —May 10: Execution of Joseph Allen, for uttering Bank of England notes.
In a solemn declaration, made on the morning of execution, he denied his
guilt, alleging that he did not know the notes were bad ones.
1818. —May 9: Abraham Rostern and Isaac Moors, the former for a burglary at
Edgeley, the latter for a similar offence at Cheadle Bulkeley. Both of them
acknowledged their guilt.—September 26: John Moor, executed for a
burglary.
1819. —May 8: Joseph Walker, for robbing his former master on the highway
between Northwich and Manchester. He denied his guilt to the last.—
September 25: Samuel Hooley and John Johnson (a man of colour), for a
burglary at Bowden.
1820. —April 15: Jacob M'Ghinnes, for shooting Mr. Birch, at Stockport. He was
connected with the radical reformers, and his intention was to have shot Mr.
Lloyd, then solicitor of that town, and now prothonotary of the county court.
This unfortunate man had not only embraced the politics but the theology of
Tom Paine, but during his confinement, and before his execution, he was
brought to embrace the Christian system, and died with great composure.—
April 22: Thomas Miller, for a burglary at Bowden.—September 16: Execu
tion of Ralph Ellis, for a burglary at Elton, and William Ricklington, for
setting fire to a rectory house at Coddington.
1821. —May 5: Execution of Samuel Healey, for a highway robbery at Stockport.
1822. —May 4: William Tongue, for a rape on an infant, and George Groom, for a
■highway robbery on a man named Kennerley.—September 14: Thomas
Brierley, for a highway robbery near Congleton.
1823. —April 14: Execution of Samuel Fallows, for the murder of his sweetheart
. at. Disley. ■ Several galvanic experiments were made on his body previous to
dissection.—May 20 : Execution of John Kragon, for a rape on an infant, at
Stockport.—September 13: Execution of Edward Clarke, for a highway
robbery at Stockport.
1824. —April 21: Joseph Dale, for the murder of Mr. Wood, near Disley. He had
been convicted at the preceding assizes, but execution deferred, in order to
take the opinion of the judges on a point of law urged in his favour by Mr. D.
F. Jones, his counsel. He died with great composure.
1826 —April 26: Philip M'Gowan, for the robbery of an inoffensive man, near
Disley, and Abraham Stones, for the robbery of Mr. Marsden, a gentleman of
upwards of 70 years of age, near Cowlane Bridge, under circumstances of
great violence. On this melancholy occasion, the apparatus for executions
was removed from the east to the west end of the City Gaol, where these
melancholy spectacles have ever since been exhibited.—August 26: John
Green, for burglary.
1829. — May 9 : John Proudlove, for highway robbery, and John Leir, for burglary
in.the house of the Rev. Matthew Bloor, attended, with aggravated ciicum
stances of violence.—September 26: —Joseph Woodhouse, for a rape on his
�own daughter ; and Joseph Henshall, for firing at the keepers, while poaching
in the grounds of the Earl of Stamford and Warrington.
1832.—Samuel Cumberledge, for arson.
1834.—Samuel Thorley, for the murder of Mary Pemberton, at Northwich ; John
Carr, for felonious shooting; Thomas Riley, for felonious cutting; William
Naylor, for felonious shooting; James Mason, for attempting to procure
miscarriage
1841.—Bartholomew Murray, for the murder of Joseph and Mary Cooke, at Over
Peover.
1843. —James Ratcliffe, for murdering his wife at Stockport.
1844. —Mary Gallop, for poisoning her father, at Crewe.
1848.—William Bates, for murdering William Wyatt, at Adlington.
1856—December 20: William Jackson, for the murder of his two children, in
Handbridge, Chester.
'
THE EXECUTION OE BLAGG.
At eight o’clock on Friday morning, August 28th, the above unfortunate person
suffered the extreme penalty of the law with a degree of fortitude and composure,
never equalled since the execution of Lord Balmarino, on Tower Hill. John
Blagg, with whom the author had been well acquainted for many years, in conse
quence of their being close neighbours, denied his guilt to the last; and it is to be hoped
that his fate may be the means of inducing the parliament to pass, next session, a
short bill, depriving gamekeepers of the power of making a sudden arrest of
poachers.
Blagg died without the slightest struggle, in short, his body never moved after
the drop fell. About 1,500 persons were present. His poor widow has received
notice to quit her cottage from the agent of John Tollemache, Esq., M.P., of
Peckferton Castle.
, A. Ireland
On., Printers by Steam Power, Pall Mall, Manchester.
��
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The impolicy of capital punishment considered : derived from observations, supplied by recollection of public executions; to which is added Letters on circumstantial evidence by the Author; also, a return of the names of the criminals who have been executed at Chester during the last 300 years, specifying the offences for which they died; with much interesting matter on the varied causes of crime
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Bakewell, George
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Place of publication: Manchester; Chester
Collation: 19 p. ; 20 cm.
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Text
À GENERAL REVIEW
OF THE SUBJECT OF
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Reprinted from 11 The Soolal Science Review,"
BY
WILLIAM TALLACK,
Secretary to the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment.
SOCIETY FOR THE ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Samuel Gurney, Esq., M.P., Treasurer ;
Thomas Beggs, Esq., Charles Wise, Esq., Hon. Sees.
OFFICE : SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.
��A GENERAL REVIEW OF THE SUBJECT OF
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
By William Tailack, Secretary to the Society for the Abolition of
Capital Punishment.
The large amount of public attention which has been drawn
by recent events, and especially by the appointment of a
Royal Commission of Enquiry, to the subject of Capital
Punishment, renders the present a suitable time for a careful
consideration of the question, “ Whether the death-penalty
renders life more secure 1 ”
Before we proceed to answer this inquiry, it may be useful
to glance at the changes which have been made in our penal
code during the last fifty years.
At the commencement of the present century, about one
hundred and fifty crimes, some of them very trivial, were
punishable capitally, as for example, stealing one shilling from
a dwelling, five shillings from a shop, forty shillings from a
dwelling, or letting water out of a fishpond; and so frequently
was the fatal sentence executed, that throughout the “ good
old days ” of George the Third, London fully deserved the
name given to it by a popular writer—“the City of the
Gibbet; ” and there was at least some reason for the poetic
taunt of Dr. Johnson :—
“ Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die,
With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply.”
But notwithstanding the number of executions, there were
so many motives for interference with, and obstruction to,
the enforcement of the law, that the great majority of criminals
escaped. Mr. Wilberforce said in the House of Commons in
the year 1812, “I remember having, many years ago, been
informed by Mr. Justice Buller, that out of thirty-eight capital
convictions, not more than one execution, upon an average,
took place. Can it then be doubted that offenders will calcu
late upon the probability of escape ? ”
The first steps towards ameliorating the state of the law, in
�2
respect of Capital Punishment, were taken in 1808 and 1810,
when Sir Samuel Romilly introduced a bill into Parliament for
abolishing the death-penalty for stealing from bleaching grounds.
In 1811, this bill became law, chiefly through the earnest
petitions of the Irish linen manufacturers, who pleaded the
utter insecurity of their property in consequence of the
determined resolution of juries not to convict capitally for an
offence so comparatively small as that of stealing linen.
Several other proposed ameliorations of the penal code were
rejected, both at this period and in subsequent years.
Nearly a quarter-of-a-century elapsed without further progress
in this direction.
In 1828, an Association for promoting further appeals of
the capital statutes were organized (under the patronage of
the Duke of Sussex) by Messrs. Sydney Taylor, Fowell Buxton,
William Allen, and other gentlemen, including the Right Hon.
Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., and the late Peter Bradford, Esq.
With these was also associated the late John Thomas Barry,
whose exertions were most indefatigable and effective. His
friend, William Allen, records of him, on one occasion in his
Journal : “ I called on J. T. Barry, at Trinity Square; he
Works there constantly, doing almost all that any committee
could do.” In 1830, this Association procured the signatures
of a thousand bankers to a petition for the abolition of the
death-penalty for forgery; and although the Government did
not immediately alter the law, yet no execution for that
crime subsequently occurred.
In the year 1832, William Ewart, Esq., M.P., commenced
that series of vigorous parliamentary efforts towards diminishing
the number of capital statutes, which continued session after
session, until, at the commencement of the reign of Queen
Victoria, there were only ten capital offences remaining on the
statute-book, as compared with one hundred and fifty in the
previous generation. In 1833, the barbarous statute of “hanging
in chains” was abolished; and in 1836, Mr. Aglionby carried
a bill repealing the law for executing murderers within forty
eight hours after sentence. In 1836 and 1837 there was a
sweeping abrogation of the death-penalty for a number of
offences, leaving about eight nominally capital, and of these
�3
only three continued virtually so. In 1840, the first parliamentary
motion for the total abolition of Capital Punishment was
introduced by Mr. Ewart, and receives the support Lof ninetythree members.
During the twenty years intervening between 1840 and
1860, the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment
steadily continued its operations, which were greatly aided by
the assistance of Messrs. Charles Gilpin, Thomas Beggs, and
A. H. Dymond. These three gentlemen from time to time
visited the principal towns in the kingdom, and held influential
meetings, by which the expediency of totally abolishing the
death-penalty was brought prominently and repeatedly before
the public mind. During this period the parliamentary efforts
of Mr. William Ewart were continued, and were especially
aided by the co-operation of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, and the late
Lord Nugent. Important service has also been rendered to
the cause by the writings of Messrs. Charles Neate. M.P.,
Charles Phillips, Edward Webster, Frederic Rowden, and
Thomas Beggs. Mr. Phillips’ pamphlet, in particular, entitled
“ Vacation Thoughts on Capital Punishment ” (London : Ridgway,
Piccadilly, price one shilling), has had a very extensive
circulation. Very recently two excellent pamphlets on the same
subject have been put forth by Lord Hobart and Mr. Sheldon
Amos. Lord Hobart’s Essay (London: Longman and Co.)
is distinguished by its impartiality, breadth and cogency.
In October, 1860, the Manchester Town Council unanimously
memorialized the Home Secretary for an inquiry into the
operation of the present law, on the motion of Mr. Councillor
Fildes, whose speech on the occasion (published by John son
and Rawson, 89, Market Street, Manchester) is one of the most
valuable of modern essays in favour of the abolition of the
death-penaltyBy the consolidation of the Criminal Statutes in 1861, several
crimes, including attempts at murder, ceased to be capital—
leaving actual murder the only crime, except treason, punish'
able with death in this country.
Considering the marked success that has attended this long
course of repealing sanguinary laws;—considering the increased
security from the crimes once capital, such as forgery, horse-»
�4
stealing, burglary, and sheep-stealing; and also considering the
greater proportion of convictions now resulting from committals
for these crimes;—it is strange that there has not been a
universal readiness to effect a similar reform in the treatment
of the crime of murder.
The plea of the necessity of Capital Punishment to ensure
public safety and to deter the criminal, has been abundantly
answered in relation to those crimes against property to which
reference has been made. They have been removed from the
imposition of the extreme penalty with the most favourable
practical results. And there is every reason to believe that a
similar course in respect to the crime of murder ‘would also
be efficacious. Indeed, experience has proved it to be so in
various countries, as in Tuscany, Michigan, Wisconsin, Rhode
Island, and in several States of Germany and Cantons of
Switzerland, as well as, approximately, in Belgium, Prussia,
Russia, and elsewhere, where murders have decreased as a less
extreme penalty has been substituted for the punishment of
death.
The experience of Tuscany is very interesting, as it has
extended over a long period. Capital Punishment was virtually
abolished in that State by the Grand Duke Leopold, about
the year 1770, and absolutely so in 1786. The result was a
remarkable diminution of murders. In consequence, eventfully,
of the political confusion attendant on the wars of the
French Revolution, and chiefly through Austrian influence and
the dread of conspiracy, the death-penalty was re-enacted in
Tuscany in 1790. But the remembrance of former experience
procured its repeal a second time. Once more, however, did
Austrian influence, as it is alleged, effect a re-imposition of
Capital Punishment; but yet again have Tuscan convictions
obtained for the third time the abolition of death punishments
in the State. In 1864, the new code of the recently formed
Kingdom of Italy, whilst nominally recognizing Capital
Punishment as the extreme penalty throughout the Peninsula,
yet makes provision for the virtual maintenance of its entire
abrogation in the province of Tuscany, The infliction of
permanent imprisonment is the substitute imposed.
The German States of Oldenburg, Anhalt, Nassau and Bremen,
�5
abolished Capital Punishment in 1849, jyid have not seen
reason to restore it. In Brunswick it has been virtually
abolished since 1854. During the last five years it has also
been abandoned in Venezuela, New Grenada, Equador, Mol
davia, Wallachia, San Marino, and the Swiss Canton of
Zurich. Also, virtually, in Portugal.
Two other Cantons abolished it at an earlier date, viz.;
Neufchatel in 1854, and Freiburg in 1848.
In the latter Canton the effect of the repeal has been
recently investigated by an official commission of inquiry, and
the result is thus stated in a letter (dated January 4, 1864)
addressed by the Swiss Minister of the Interior at Berne, to
the -writer, as Secretary to the Society for the Abolition of
Capital Punishment:—“ The Deport resulting from this inquiry
stated that neither crime in general nor special crimes against
life and personal security have been, in any way, relatively
more numerous in the fifteen years since the abolition of
Capital Punishment than in the fifteen years which immediately
preceded that abolition.”
In the debate on Capital Punishment in the House of
Commons, May 3, 1864, Mr. Bright read extracts from three
letters addressed to him a few weeks previously by the Gover
nors of Bhode Island, Michigan, and Wisconsin, in which
they reported favourably on the practical experience of the
abolition of the death-penalty in their respective States. The
dates of the repeal in those States were as follows:—by
Michigan in 1847; by Rhode Island in 1852; and by Wis
consin in 1853.
It is thus evident that both at home and abroad there is
no ground for asserting that an increase of crime has resulted
from the abrogation of Capital Punishment, so far as it has
been tried.
The principal, and now almost the only plea, urged in
defence of the gallows, is its necessity as a deterrent. It is
agreed, that abstractedly no influence is so powerful for the
repression of crime as the fear of death. The same plea
was formerly set up for the retention of the extreme penalty
in the case of other offences. But practical results have not
justified these alarmist fears and objections,
�6
There is no doubt but that the dread of absolutely certain
death is a most powerful and overmastering feeling, although
even this is often successfully defied, under the influence of
duty, love and patriotism, and under the denomination, of
the fiercer passions. It is also beyond dispute that after
arrest and sentence, condemned criminals are found to welcome
almost any form of punishment, however enduring and severe,
rather than be deprived of life. But none of these facts
prove that Capital Punishment is the most deterrent of penal
ties. Its preventive influence ought to operate before the
commission of crime, and with sufficient power to hinder its
consummation. Dread of punishment only felt after the act,
implies the impotence of that punishment to deter. And, on
the other hand, even assuming the deterrence of a death
penalty under abstract conditions of positive certainty, this can
no longer be logically urged for its retention, if it is found
in practice that public feeling and the general circumstance of
criminal trials necessarily impart a large and peculiar degree
of uncertainty to its infliction. It is notorious that no
secondary punishment can be compared with the capital penalty
for the uncertainty of infliction, or for the great difficulties
found to attend upon the attempts to convict the criminal.
This special accompaniment of peculiar uncertainty is uniformly
ignored by the defenders of death-punishment, although
practically, it is the great difficulty—and one which goes far
to nullify the claims for the assumed deterrence of what is
only formidable under imaginary conditions not found to exist
in reality. And further, it is found that a large proportion
of the murders committed are perpetrated under circumstances
either of headlong passion, blind fury, sudden impulse, intense
jealousy, or drunken frenzy—conditions which show that the
dread of punishment is not present, or not sufficiently powerful
at the moment of temptation. Those temporarily overmastered
by passion are often too exclusively possessed by such emotions
to admit, of calm and sufficient reflection upon probable con
sequences, and, if they are, they speculate upon the chances
of escape. Again, it can be shown by numerous instances
that there is a peculiar tendency in executions, and with the
crimes which are rendered specially notorious, to reproduce
�7
themselves through their inflneiice on morbid minds of a
certain type. At any rate, it is often observed that the occur*
rence of an execution in any town is a strong presumptive
evidence that another will, before long, be witnessed in the
same place.
Thus at Liverpool, in the spring of 1863, two men were
hanged for the Ribchester murder. Again in the autumn,
eleven persons were on trial for murder: of these, four men
were hanged for four separate murders, all committed in Liverpool,
Here were spectacles, sufficiently deterrent one would think, if
capital punishments are deterrent at all. Yet in spite of them,
at least four more murders occurred in the same town before
the year 1863 ended.
Similarly, at Chatham, in 1863, a youth named Burton
murdered an inoffensive child, and immediately afterwards
surrendered himself to the police, exclaiming, “I want to be
hangedand hanged he was. A few weeks afterwards, in
the same town of Chatham, Alfred Holden, a soldier, murdered
another innocent child. He too exclaimed, “ I want to be
hangedand he too was hanged accordingly. A third murder
was subsequently perpetrated in Chatham in 1863. What
evidence of deterrence is to be found in such instances?
As examples of the peculiar manner in which circumstances
calculated to excite a morbid imitation and love of notoriety are
peculiarly associated with Capital Punishment, and with the
interest in the criminal, attendant on its prospective or actual
execution, we may notice that a fortnight after the execution, in
1863, of George Vass at Newcastle, for a most horrible murder,
there were at least two wax-work exhibitions of his effigy,
conspicuously displayed as “correct models,” and in leading
thoroughfares of that populous town. Por many years past,
in a similar manner, the most notorious metropolitan or other
murderers have been duly “ immortalized ” by being placed in
effigy amongst the historic worthies at Madame Tussaud’s
Exhibition, for the contemplation of an admiring public. But
it is rarely, if ever, the case that either transportation,
imprisonment, or confinment in a lunatic asylum, is thus
Surrounded with such perverted “glorifications,” The evil is
�one of the class of mischievous accompaniments, peculiarly
incident to the death-penalty.
As to the great “moral lesson” taught by the gallows, it
has been most ably treated of by Dickens and Thackeray. Mr.
Dickens five letters to the Daily Neics, in January, February,
and March, 1846, form a masterly exposition of the impotence
(except for evil) of the extreme penalty of the law. And
we may add, that if anything was wanting to explode the
plea for the “ teachings ” of the gallows, it is to be found in
the report of Muller’s execution, as given in the Times of
November 15th, 1864. The reporter of that newspaper writes,
“ It was one long revelry of songs and laughter, shouting and
often quarreling,—worse in conduct it could not be.” And,
after the drop had fallen, he adds, “For five or ten minutes
the crowd who knew nothing of his (Muller’s) confession, were
awed and stilled. The impression however, if any real im
pression it was, beyond that of mere curiosity, did not last for
long, and before the slight slow vibrations of the body had
well ended, robbery and violence, loud laughing, oaths, fighting,
obscene conduct, and still more filthy language reigned round
the gallows far and near.”
A similarly powerful testimony to the failure of death
punishments to deter their witnesses, was recently borne by Mr.
Sheriff Nissen, in a paper read at the Social Science
Congress at York. That gentleman is peculiarly qualified to
give an opinion on the subject, inasmuch as during his shrievalty
in 1864, he had to witness, officially, more executions in
London than it has probably fallen to the lot of any sheriff,
in England and Wales, to witness during the past quarterof-a-century.
So far from securing the community from murderers, the
enactment of Capital Punishment peculiarly aids their escape
and non-conviction,—and more especially because, at present,
there is no intermediate course possible, for a jury in murder
trials, between absolute acquittal and a verdict involving an
irreparable result. There is no alternative. The prisoner is,
by the law of murder, either entirely innocent or guilty
to the utmost extent ; and no legal plea but that of
insanity can avail him. Yet it is evident that there may be
�9
circumstances, and such, constantly occur, of greater or
less aggravation or qualification, which largely modify the
guilt. It is true that a recommendation to mercy may be
expressed by a jury, but it is by no means a uniform
practice to act on that recommendation. Neither can a verdict
of manslaughter be substituted for one of murder; or at least
not in a variety of cases of homicidal crime.
Thus at the
trial of Taylor, for the Manchester murder, the judge told
the jurors that it was “ murder or nothing.” (Times, March
31st, 1863.)
The Hon. George Denman, recently stated in the House
of Commons (May 3rd, 1864), that “ The escapes in trials for
murder are fifty per cent. In cases of murder, evidence to a
perfectly ridiculous extent is required to insure a conviction.”
This is not unreasonable. For a capital penalty being irreparable,
renders necessary an amount, and an absolute certainty, of
evidence, which would not be demanded with any penalty
short of death. But such evidence it is very difficult, and
often impossible, to obtain. Such difficulties in coming to a
decision would be obviated by the substitution of a secondary
punishment, however severe. Opportunity and time would be
afforded for the ultimate discovery of possible mistakes in
conviction ; and in such an eventuality, some amount of com
pensation could be made to the sufferer. Meanwhile, under
any circumstances, no irrevocable error would have been
committed, and none of that awful responsibility incurred
which specially attends the taking away of human life. Jurors,
in repeated cases, have been left no option but either to acquit
a man, of whose partial inculpation in guilt they had no doubt,
or else to condemn him to the fatal sentence, whilst grave
reasons existed for doubting his absolute and entire guilt.
What wonder that in such cases they have adopted, though
most reluctantly, what has appeared to be the less of two
serious evils. If it be argued that jurors ought not to take
such a course all experience shows that, whether rightly or
wrongly, they have done so ; and it cannot be doubted that
they will continue to do so, until the law relieves their
irrepressible scruples in such difficult cases. The abolition of
�10
Capital Punishment would effect the removal of this evil, and
largely increase the certainty of punishing the murderers.
At the Hertford Assizes, some years ago, two men were
tried for two different offences, one capital and the other not
capital, but under circumstances otherwise very similar and
with evidence almost identical in nature in each case respec
tively.
The man tried for the non-capital offence was
convicted and transported. The one tried for the capital
crime was acquitted.
A juror was afterwards remonstrated
with for such apparent injustice and inconsistency, considering
the identical circumstances of evidence.
He replied, “ Why
surely you wouldn’t hang a man on the same evidence that
you would transport him for ? ” He was right. For, as
already observed, a man if wrongly transported can have
compensation made, but if wrongly hanged, the injury is
irreparable. Thus it occurs that, not unfrequently, murderers
escape conviction, sorely against the feelings both of the
public and the jurors themselves.
One of the jurors empannelled to try the six persons
charged (March, 1856) with the Matfen murder (a peculiarly
brutal one), near Newcastle, was remonstrated with by a
gentleman who expressed the astonishment of himself and of
the local public generally, at the verdict of acquittal then
returned. The juror admitted that he and his fellow jurymen
believed the charge to have been substantiated, but added
that there was not absolute certainty, and, said he, “We
could not consent to hang six persons except on perfectly
certain evidence.” Now, as a legal gentleman has remarked,
murder, of all crimes, is the most likely to be secretly
committed ; for example, murders by poison, murders by night,
or in lonely places, and on solitary unprotected persons.
How can perfectly indubitable evidence of such murders ever
be expected 1 The statement of Lord Tenderden, that in such
cases we should be satisfied with “ that certainty with which
you would transact your own most important concerns in
life,” is not a fair comparison. For, in the first place, a
probability, however great, can never constitute a “ certainty,”
and, secondly, even the “ most important concerns in life ”
stand in a quite different position from, a matter of death,
�11
even the most important step in ordinary life, that of mar
riage, is not absolutely irreparable, if a mistake has been
made. Either the divorce court or some kind of modifying
arrangement can qualify its worst abuse ; but the infliction
of death stands widely apart from all such comparison, by
being absolutely irrevocable, and capable of being qualified
by no kind of reparation to an innocent sufferer.
It is the wide spread and irrepressible feeling as to the
possibility of mistake which gives rise to frequent interferences
with the executive authorities in capital cases. Thousands of
signatures are appended to petitions; committees sit daily;
deputations besiege the Home Office; all kinds of private
pressure and influence are exerted on the authorities, in the
efforts to obtain a commutation, or at least a delay in those
instances (and they form a majority) where there is not
absolutely certain proof of the guilt of the condemned. This
was evidenced in the atrocious murder case of Miiller, Not
only was there the vigorous action of the German Defence
Association, but even the King of Prussia, it is stated, and
the Duke of Saxe Cobourg, telegraphed for her Majesty’s
interposition, and a similar message was sent by the Duke
of Saxe Weimar to his consul in England.
Such interferences are, in themselves, most undesirable.
They are mischievous in their effect on the certainty and
dignity of legal administration.- But at present they are
inevitable, for they are a less evil than the danger and
difficulty inseparable from a capital penalty.
This interposition with judicial procedure is rendered still
more frequent, and even justifiable, at times, by the collision
which often arises between the highest legal and the most
experienced medical authorities. These collisions have occurred
in numerous cases of murder committed by persons whose
physiological or mental condition has raised just apprehensions
of their moral responsibility.' The Law, at present, virtually
declares that however powerless a man may be to control
an homicidal impulse, yet if he commits the act, he
ought to be held responsible, so long as he knows the
difference between right and wrong. It is universally admitted
that in such a case he ought to be held responsible. The
�12
safety of society demands it. But the question is, shall he
be held responsible to the extent of forfeiting his Ufe or
merely of his liberty for the rest of his life ? The Law
pronounces that he ought to die, however morally impotent,
provided only that he knows the nature of an homicidal act
as being a criminal one. The possession of knowledge is
here confounded with the possession of self-control. But
experience shows that the former often exists where the
latter has not been possessed even from infancy. Indeed the
very government of lunatic asylums is generally based on the
principle that their inmates have a sense of right and ■wrong,
independently of indubitable and dangerous insanity. As a
proof of the inevitableness of the medico-legal collisions
which at present frequently interrupt our courts of justice, we
may quote from the Lancet of July 30th, 1864, the following
important resolution, which was carried unanimously at a
meeting of eminent medical men, at the Royal College of
Physicians on the 14th July :—“At the seventeenth annual
meeting of the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums
and Hospitals for the Insane, it was resolved unanimously,
‘That so much of the legal test of the mental condition of
an alleged criminal lunatic which renders him a responsible
agent because he knows the difference between right and
wrong, is inconsistent with the fact well known to every
member of this meeting, that the power of distinguishing
between right and wrong exists frequently among those who
are undoubtedly insane, and is often associated with dangerous
and uncontrollable illusions.’ ” Certainly as long as the law
on this subject remains, there will also continue the vigorous,
and often successful, opposition of persons resolved to prevent,
if possible, the unseemly spectacle of an unfortunate person
labouring under an attack of homicidal mania being punished
with death for a natural and unavoidable calamity. Yet we
see no prospects of any such attainments in medical science,
or any such careful alteration of the law, as shall secure a
positive and clear line of demarcation between sanity and
insanity. The removal of the death-penalty for murder would
remove the cause of the present collision, so much to be
deprecated, between jurists and physicians. Under any cir
�13
cumstances a murderer, -whether sane or insane, should be
permanently separated from society; whether this takes place
in a penal or a medical establishment is a matter of com
paratively little moment, and would at any rate involve little
if any practical dispute. Again, such anomolies and difficulties
as were presented by the trials of Townley, Mac Naghten,
and others, would disappear with the abolition of Capital
Punishment.
One other objection to Capital Punishment may be thus
stated: that it makes no classification of the criminals. Is
it real justice to recognize no difference between a cold calcu
lating murderer like Palmer of Rugeley, and such exasperated
passion-driven wretches as Wright of Southwark (18G3), and
Hall of Birmingham (1864) ? Does justice truly balance her
“scales,” when the vast actual difference in cases like these is
not even recognized by her award ? It is however very doubtful
whether it will be found practicable to decrease the present
difficulties of the question, by an attempt to classify murders,
whilst retaining the capital penalty. For whilst some anomalies
would thereby be lessened, other new sources of impediment
would be opened up. But the abolition of the fatal punish
ment would entirely obviate such difficulties.
With a particular reference to the medico-legal embarrassments,
and to the inequalities of punishment just alluded to, it may
be further remarked, that those who plead for Capital Punish
ment in all cases of murder, should consider the serious
mischief of effecting a separation between the national conscience
of justice and the statutes of law. Law and justice should
be synonymous, or at least united, where the former is to
retain that uniform reverence and authority which all true
Britons would wish to be ever associated with it.
The substitution of an absolutely certain punishment, of
whatever kind (in some countries it is permanent imprisonment,
with active employment for body and mind), in place of
Capital Punishment for murderers, would remove the difficulties
and dangers of the present system, would meet the scruples of
conscientious and just jurors, would promote certainty of
conviction, would secure society from future violence from the
murderers, and would also destroy their present abundant
chances of escape.
�Ï4
The practical experience of other countries proves that
these advantages do accrue from the total abolition of Capital
Punishment, and that the advocacy of the repeal is not
based on mere theoretical grounds. But even if there were
no such foreign experimental confirmations, the result of
British Legislation, so far as it has proceeded in this direction
during the past half-century, is abundantly sufficient to warrant
the adoption of the remaining measure needful to complete that
long and noble work of justice and mercy which has removed
from our administration for every offence save one, that
impotent and brutalizing remnant of barbarism—the gallows.
With reference to the objection sometimes made that the
substitutes proposed in lieu of Capital Punishment are open
to grave objections, we may briefly reply that :
Firstly, permanent detention is, when rightly managed, as
for instance, at present in some of the American States,
found to be neither productive of physical nor mental disease.
This statement is confirmed by recent official documents.
Secondly, a considerable proportion of our murderers are at
present and long have been (by the commutations of their
capital sentences) punished by secondary penalties without any
grave injury to the public security or to the prison officers.
Thirdly, the most dangerous class of all criminals, viz. :
insane murderers, are committed to the Government Asylum
at Broadmoor, where about 500 of these most ferocious and
incurable homicidal lunatics are permanently confined with
absolute safety to the public and also with scarcely any ex
ception, even to their care-takers. See a lengthy and most
interesting account of Broadmoor, in the Times of January
13th, 1865. The writer, amongst other observations, records
“A committal to Broadmoor for murderous madness is as final
as regards the chances of return to the world, as death itself.”
Fourthly, it appears clear that, however difficult the question
of a substitute may be, the capital penalty is attended by
still greater difficulties and by far graver evils than any that
exist under the strictest secondary systems.
In conclusion, we may just allude to the religious argument
sometimes adduced in favour of retaining Capital Punishment,
chiefly because of certain texts in Genesis and Deuteronomy,
�15
From these and others, it is undoubtedly evident that Capita
Punishment was both sanctified and commanded temporarily,
and on account of the semi-barbarous and comparatively dark
condition even of the most favoured people in those early
ages. But who will claim as binding amid the generally
diffused lights of modern Christianity and civilization, the
institutes of a race just emerged from centuries of bondage,
amid the degrading influences of pagan Egypt.
Those who plead for Capital Punishment on the basis of a
Mosaic permission, must, to be consistent, also plead for its
full restoration for the thirty offences for which it was enacted.
Further, if the Mosaic civil system is still binding on one
point, it is so in all. On the same plea, both slavery and
polygamy might be enforced, as indeed the former is still in
the Southern States of America. And in reference to polygamy
and easy divorce under the Mosaic system, a greater than
Moses declared that such arrangements were temporarily per
mitted as the less of two evils, or, “ because of the hardness
of your hearts.”
There are some persons who relinquished the Mosaic defence
of Capital Punishment, but yet plead the Noachian or Patriarchal.
These also, to be consistent, must demand the restitution of
altars for sacrifice, of circumcision, and. of the penalties of eating
any flesh containing blood. Of at least one of these institutes,
our Saviour declared that it had been re-embodied by Moses
in his ordinances, “not because it is of Moses, but of the
Fathers,” thus indicating that the Mosaic system entirely took
the place of the Noachian, as Christianity has of both. By
the quotation of isolated texts, apart from the spirit and scope
of scripture, almost any form of wrong and injustice may be
apparently authorized. Thus the Devil quoted texts to tempt
our Lord.
We may, however, securely rest on the broad principles of
love, mercy, and true justice, which characterize Christianity.
No isolated texts can be fairly interpreted if they appear to
justify evident injustice, to legalize cruelty, or to promote the
insecurity of society and the confusion of law.
No scripture can fairly be adduced, warranting us in taking
away criminals’ lives, when abundant experience demonstrates
�16
that such- an extreme measure can be safely dispensed with.
Christian mercy never teaches us that, by our laws of
homicide, we should visit with the gallows, in any instance,
the unfortunate victims of natural moral impotence or hereditary
mania, however subtle in its manifestations.
Nor can any reasonable definition of Christian justice
accord with the irrevocable infliction of death on uncertain
proof of guilt, and still less with the inexorable enactment of
such a doom, even on the most violent of criminals, apart from
any virtual consideration of the circumstances which rendered
them such. Christian justice implies no sentimental weakness.
It involves no impunity to murderers; but neither does it
sanction that even these should be hurried out of life, without
any regard to possible reform on the one hand, or on the other
to the often almost irresistible temptations which have formed
their usual antecedents :—as orphanage, parental neglect, or
perhaps even parental nurture in vice and crime ; a childhood
of squalor, ignorance, and of strongly hereditary deficiencies;
a youth too frequently trained amid want, profligacy, and
evil companionship :—“ dragged up ” rather than brought up—
and often a manhood (like that of Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean)
not a stranger to noble efforts and aspirations, but again and
again repressed, dwarfed and finally petrified, by repeated
failure, by excess of difficulty, and by an overwhelming sense
of aid withheld and sympathy refused.
To assert that Christianity authorizes, or that the Bible
admits, the infliction of the gallows under these circumstances,
appears to us inconsistent with the glorious perfection of the
one, and with the sacred wisdom of the other.
Since the foregoing article on Capital Punishment was
prepared, the writer has received an interesting letter (dated
Heidelberg, Dec. 6, 1864), addressed to him by Professor
Mittermaier, and from which the following is taken :—•
“Concerning the experience
“ the Capital Punishment, we have
“ abolished this punishment since
“ Oldenburg. Unfortunately, in the
“ are not published.
of the countries which have abolished
only three governments which have
1849, Anhalt Dessau, Nassau, and
three states, official criminal table?
�17
“ But I am In correspondence with eminent lawyers of Nassau and
“ Oldenburg, and can assure you that, according to the letters received,
“ the general opinion among the lawyers and citizens of Oldenburg and
“ Nassau is, that the number of murders is not increased, and that
“there is not any reason to re-establish the punishment of death.
“ Mittebmaieb.”
The writer has also received a letter from Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, enclosing another letter from the well-known
American author and theologian, Professor Thomas Upham, of
Maine, to whom Mrs. Stowe has applied for information on
the subject. He gives the following brief extracts :—
“ In answer to Mr. Tailack’s first inquiry, namely, what has been
“ the result of the abolition of the death-penalty in Rhode Island, Michigan,
“ and Winconsin, I would say, so far as my information goes, the majority
“ of the people continue to be satisfied with the change. Were it otherwise
in any considerable degree, they would be likely to return to their
c‘ former system. I have not learned that any of the States of the
“ American Union, which have abolished capital punishment, or have
greatly modified their criminal codes, in that particular, have taken any
“ steps backward. I understand that some attempts of this kind have
“ been made in Rhode Island and Michigan, but have failed.
“ On the third question, namely, whether imprisonment with hard
“ labour for life, or for a term of years, can be adopted as a safe
“ substitute for the gallows, it is certainly right to say, that the experiences
“of this country look favourably in that direction.
“ It is right, in my opinion, to remember that the criminal is still
“ a man; and while we make the protection of society the first object,
“we are not to cease to do him good. In some cases at least, only the
“ Infinite Mind can understand the amount of liis temptations and
"sufferings. And we all stand in need of forgiveness.
“Thomas C. Upham.”
P.S.
The most recent work in advocacy of the Abolition of
Capital Punishment, is entitled “Capital Punishment, based
on Professor Mittermaier’s Todes-strafe,” by John Macrae Moir,
M.A., of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-law.
London :
Smith, Elder and Co., 1865. Price Six Shillings.
Printed by William H. Wabb & Co., 17, Featherstone Buildings, W.C.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A general review of the subject of capital punishment
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Tallack, William
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 17 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from The Social Science Review. Printed by William H. Ward & Co., London. Tentative date of publication from KVK. A general review of the subject of capital punishment, and the laws of capital punishment and the treatment of condemned criminals in Pennsylvania.
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Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment
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[1866?]
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G5393
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Crime
Capital punishment
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A general review of the subject of capital punishment), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Capital Punishment
Conway Tracts
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STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY,
COMPRISING
The Agonies of Hanging.
By One who was Cut Down from the Gallows.
LONDON:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.
��(isogo
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY,
COMPRISING
THE AGONIES OF HANGING.
It has been my fortune to meet with some of the
strangest characters that ever trod this planet. I myself,
I admit, am not over-like Mr. John Smith, nonconfor
mist and cheesemonger, and like draws to like. I have
been more than once pronounced daft; and, be that as
it may, I feel certain that during my lifetime more than
one daft person has had my friendship. As I make a
retrospect it occurs to me that, upon the whole, the
daftest person that was ever enrolled on my list of friends
was Major F------, who had been twelve years in the
East India Company’s service, and who belonged to an
old county family. I was a big boy at school when
Major F------first took notice of me. It was the Annual
Examination, and he and several other persons of influ
ence were present, along with a contingent of the local
clergy. I had distinguished myself by reading my theme,
a wild, weird, Monk Lewis composition, full of dream and
lightning and gloom and phantasy. It was certainly as
unlike anything else that any other boy in the school
could produce as it is possible to imagine. Some of
the pupils could beat me at mere feats of commonplace
drudgery; but they had all the leaden-footed mediocrity
of the farmers and country parsons into which they
�4
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
ultimately vegetated. My command of language and
flight of imagination took Major F——’s breath away.
He was heard muttering to himself: “This is a devil of
-a boy! I must do something for him. May I be
jiggered if I don’t!” And the masters and my classfellows congratulated me; for the Major was known to
be a man of his word, and to be both loyal and liberal
to those to whom he felt attracted.
Only a few days after the school examination a report
.spread like wild-fire through the district that the Major
had hanged himself 1 Throwing aside my FEschylus
and Dunbar’s Greek Lexicon, I hurried off to the resi
dence of my prospective patron. He was reported to
be dying, and for me to gain access to his chamber was
exceedingly difficult. The principal obstacle was his
daughter, Julia, who stood in the passage that led to his
room and positively refused me entrance thereto. I
.attempted to crush past her, but she got hold of my ear
and pulled it to the length of ear that is worn by an ass,
but by no other of God’s creatures. I was young, with
a frame unknit, and with bones that were little more
than cartilage; and this Julia was a perfect Amazon in
physical strength. Howbeit, her mental prowess was as
small as her personal vanity was inordinate.
“ I know you,” sneered she; “ you are the school
brat who wrote the ode to Aggie------ ’s ankle!”
As she pronounced the word “ ankle ” she gave her
skirts an opportune sweep, which revealed both her own
ankles and a trifle more. I took the hint.
“Yes,” quoth I, in a tone of well-simulated admira
tion. “ But now that I have seen your ankle I repent
me bitterly that I ever wrote a line upon Aggie------’s.”
“Will you write upon mine now ?”
“ Yes.”
“ Quite sure ?”
'“Yes.”
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
5
“You will write prettily ?”
“Yes.”
“You are a dear 1”
And with this tender exclamation she seized me in
her arms and inflicted a loud, smacking kiss upon my
forehead, and then gave me a push that nearly sent
me abruptly and head foremost into the chamber where
her father lay dying.
Thus, by a skilful blend of blandishment and impu
dence, I succeeded in being shown into the room
where the Major lay. He was in bed. He raised
himself up on his elbow and, staring at me, politely
asked, “Who the deuce are you?” Then, steadying
his gaze, a gleam of delight shone in his wild, mad eye,
and he murmured, “Oh, it’s Wully Ross.” Next,
putting his hand under his pillow, he drew out a few
sheets of sermon-paper, all written over with his strong,
determined handwriting, bold as a cavalry charge and
straight as a sword.
“Thank you, Major F------,” said I. “What am I to1
do with this ?”
There was no answer. The Major was dead.
And now, after the lapse of many years, I put that
MS. of his into the hands of the printer, with a trust
that the manes of the writer may not disapprove.
MAJOR F-------- ’s MS.
My studies have been so peculiar that I may be
excused for digressing for a moment to show whence
and how I inherited the bias for the dreamy, the
mystical, and esoteric. The bias is not hereditary. My
mother’s milk was not full of inspirations and visions. It
was thus she became the wife of my prospective father,
who, unlike myself, was, by all competent authorities,
believed to have had a slate off his upper storey.
The night was dark and stormy, and my future father,
�6
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
who was then about twenty-two, was returning alone
from a military review when he got benighted and lost.
The rain splashed furiously, “ the wind blew as ’twad
blawn its last,” and only glares and flashes of lightning
lit up ever and anon the Cimmerian gloom.
“ The gods have doomed and damned me,” quoth my
father; “ I will lie down on the moor and perish !” But,
at the moment, a faint gleam, as if from a distant glow
worm, shimmered through the blackness; and, clenching
his teeth and his fists, he who was destined to be my
male parent toiled on desperately in the direction of the
light. At the light he arrived, after much scrambling
through the bushes and not a few tumbles into the
ditches. The light proceeded from a large oriel window
in an old-fashioned country house with picturesque
facades and romantic gables, which now, in a lull and
hush of the storm, shone out with dim grandeur in the
sheen of the waning moon. Through the gauzy curtajns
and the glass flowed the waves of instrumental music
and the sound of the measured footfalls of the dance.
It was evident that something was being enacted within
in the way of mirth and revelry.
My prospective father knocked at the front door.
The door was opened by a half-drunken footman carry
ing a lamp, who, observing that he who had knocked
was a dejected-looking youth, drenched with rain and
bedabbled with mire, politely advised him to “ go to
blazes,” and at once slammed the door in his face. The
door was, however, immediately re-opened, and an old
white-haired gentleman, with a wild, wandering eye,
asked decisively, but not unkindly :
“Well, what do you want ?”
My prospective father told his tale, and impressively
asked for the favour of a lodging till morning.
“ This is my second daughter’s wedding night,” quoth
the old gentleman, “and every bed in the house is occu
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
7
pied, as the guests who have not already gone will stay
over night.”
“ I am utterly tired out, and would gladly sleep on a
sofa, a hearth-rug, or anyhow and anywhere,” urged my
prospective male parent.
“ There is only one spare bed, and I do not care to
send you to that,” rejoined the old gentleman moodily,
and with a strange light in his eye.
“ Pray, sir, have no misgivings about its not being
soft in feathers and luxuriant in drapery; I am too tired
to be critical,” urged my prospective parent.
“You know not what you ask,” responded the old
gentleman. Then, sinking his voice to a solemn
whisper—'‘''The room is haunted/”
His would-be guest laughed a derisive laugh, and
replied: “ Kind sir, show me into the room, and I will
put up with the haunting.”
To the room he was shown—a room handsome, taste
ful, and even opulent.
“ Haunted indeed,” soliloquised he; and, divesting
himself of his torn and sodden garments, he extinguished
the candle, placed his loaded pistol under the bolster,
and was soon fast asleep. Two hours later a hand was
placed upon his brow, coldly and firmly, and under the
mysterious pressure thereof he awoke. He sat up in
bewilderment, not unalloyed with a vague terror. A
white and ghostly figure loomed by the bedside, softly and
hazily limned against the opposite wall, upon which,
through the spars of the Venetian blind, fell the last rays
of the waning moon or the first beams of the rising sun.
My prospective father recollected that he had been
apprised that the chamber was haunted.
“ Some knavish trick,” murmured he grimly. “ By
God, I will make a real ghost of this sham ghost,
or may I ------and he thrust his hand under the
bolster to grasp his pistol. Then he recollected that the
�8
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
report of fire-arms ringing through the house in that
stilly hour would create intense alarm, and his rash act
would be a poor return for the hospitality which had
been accorded him. Still, determined that he would
unmask the ghost, he leapt from his couch and seized
the vague, white semblance vigorously in his arms. The
figure fell supinely to the floor, and shriek after shriek
rang hysterically through the chamber and echoed and
re-echoed through the halls and corridors outside,
“What, in the name of all the saints, has happened
now?” exclaimed my future father, as the shrieking
form lay before him on the carpet, dimly, almost in
visibly. Another minute, and the chamber-door burst
open, and the grey-haired gentleman, in his night-gown
and slippers, with a lighted candle in his left hand and
a cocked pistol in his right, entered excitedly. He
glanced at the figure prostrate on the floor, and then at
his guest. “ My daughter—scoundrel 1” was his laconic
exclamation, and he presented the muzzle of his weapon
to my future father’s head. Then he dashed the pistol
on the floor, and cried bitterly, “ Devil, was it for this I
sheltered you in my house! My daughter 1 my daughter 1”
Quite suddenly he left the room, leaving the candle
burning on the floor beside the prostrate lady. In the
light of this candle the youth beheld her. He beheld
her and was vanquished. Her loveliness, as she
lay there in the loose white drapery of the night, with
the wealth of her rich brown hair falling over the lily
whiteness of her bosom, sinking and rising in its con
vulsive breathing, was too much for the man for whom
was reserved the distinction of being my father. The
free sweeping symmetry of these arms had enthralled
him. That bosom, that might have put that of Aphrodite
to shame, made him love’s willing slave, and the tangles
of that heavenly hair, which the flicker of the candle
now flung into raven blackness, now touched into ruddy
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
9
gold, had forged the fetters of a bondage that made the
young cadet forever and forever the thrall of the lady
who lay at his feet. “ Thine, thine,” he murmured ;
“ come life, come death, thine, only thine.”
Suddenly the chamber door again burst open, and the
old gentleman re-entered, still arrayed in his slippers and
dressing gown. With him he brought a clergyman with
his black coat on and his white choker, but with bare
legs, and his unsocked feet stuck into a pair of unlaced
boots. In his right hand he carried a Bible. He
appeared more than half drunk, and, having been suddenly
and abruptly summoned from his bed, he seemed dazed
and only half awake. At his side walked a servant maid
with bare neck and feet, and arrayed in a hurriedlydonned and solitary petticoat. The maid applied a
small bottle of smelling salts to the nostrils of the
prostrate lady, and baptised her brow and breast and
hair with the contents of the water bottle.
The old gentleman was livid with rage. “ Sir,” said
he sternly, “ it pains me beyond expression that I have
to give my girl in marriage to a blackguard ; but, since
things are as they are, I feel constrained to try to make
the best of an infernally bad bargain. You have dis
honoured the girl and her family. This parson will wed
you to her, here—here on the very scene of your diabolical
crime, or, by heavens, I will blow your brains out if I
hang for it to-morrow from the highest tree on my
estate.”
The young gentleman who was destined to be my
father did not prefer even the ghost of an objection to
being united for life to her who had already, even in her
mute unconsciousness, quite vanquished him. The lady
at length stood up, utterly dazed. The parson performed
the nuptial ceremony, and the father and the maid
servant were witnesses. The bride’s father lifted his
pistol from the floor and soliloquised :
�IO
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
“ My second daughter was married yesterday, and my
eldest to-day. My second was married to an earl’s son ;
my eldest and most beautiful is married to—oh, damn
it all 1” and he raised his pistol and fired point
blank at the wash-stand, shattering the basin and ewer
to shivers. This was too much for the excited nerves
of the bride. She shrieked, and fell into the bride
groom’s arms in a swoon, from which she was recovered
with difficulty.
The day after the marriage the mystery of the haunted
chamber was solved, the riddle read. Matilda Clinton
had been a confirmed somnambulist, without any one
having suspected the fact; and the chamber which was
reputed to be haunted had evidently been the goal of her
nocturnal wanderings. To her dying day she remained
“ beautiful exceedinglybut to her dying day the
villagers set her down as “ cracked,” so disastrous had
been the effects of awakening her in that room under
the circumstances which I have just narrated. My
father, too, was reputed to be “ cracked,” and the great
wonder is—a wonder that occasionally overwhelms me
—that, under the circumstances, I should be the posses
sor of mental gifts of an exceptional order, and of a
genius to which neither of my parents could lay any
valid claim. However, a man’s history commences
before he is born; and, having ventured to give so much
of my own hereditary biography, I proceed to my
narrative.
MAJOR F-------- AT HIS STUDIES.
I have frequently been induced to contemplate in
theory the physiology and psychology of “ Hanging by
the neck till dead,” and also some of the more salient
points in the more salient exigencies of human life and
destiny. The results have occasionally been, to the un
initiated, impregnated with burlesque and eccentricity,
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
II
as the inductions of all experimental philosophers in the
occult sciences must necessarily be. However, I have
succeeded, to my own satisfaction, in establishing that
the Rosicrucian theory is correct, and that heaven, earth,
and hell are severally playing their role on the land, the
water, and the welkin. We are roaring, “ Cash—no
abatement!” the angels are chanting “ Hallelujah !” and
the damned are yelling, “ Oh, dear me !”—all mixed up
together upon the same arena here. It is literally, and
not figuratively, that we have each our good and evil
spirits concerning themselves in the colouring of our
destinies. They are not perceptible to the material, but
they are to the psychal, man. Consequently, it is pre
sumable that the determining of the number of good or
evil spirits we may have is much in our own hands.
If we can win the good graces of every one around us,
supposing they amount to a few hundreds, the strong
probability is that some of them will pass before us
through that transformation scene vulgarly called “dying,”
and then we can depend upon their good offices. It is
presumable that they cannot be friendly to those who
offended them when they were as yet sealed up in the
anatomical soul-envelope ; nor perhaps with any who,
subsequent to the transformation scene vulgarly called
'“ dying,” may grow potatoes, or make bricks out of the
said soul-envelope lately warm and perambulating about
invested in a hat, a pair of boots, or perhaps a pair of
petticoats.
Nor is this state of matters strictly confined to that
order of animals called human. I apprehend there is
danger from the malevolent spirit of a murdered beetle.
Life is life—the same mysterious afflatus, whether it
animate Benjamin Disraeli or a cockroach; but in
Disraeli it operates through a more high-strung deve
lopment of nervous organism. What we so pompously
designate “ soul ” is only “life” thrilling through finer
�12
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
nervous fibres than are possessed by a beetle or a cock
roach, or any of the intermediate links between them
and the homo sapiens of Linnaeus. How else can it be ?
Shall I who write deny the cockroach immortality, its
chance for the felicity of heaven or the torment of hell,
because its nervous organisation is defective compared
with mine? It may have a very noble and elevated
soul, without material to work with or through. Take
my so-called soul from me and infuse it into the cock
roach, and it would be an ordinary cockroach still; and,
if I were to have its soul in return, I should simply be the
living, breathing, scribbling, fighting creature that I am.
How the idea originated that the life of man alone has a
monopoly for immortality baffles the conception. It
must be maintained, too, in the face of most awkward
contingencies.
In pursuit of my studies in psychology, only a few
months ago I procured a pauper just on the point of
shuffling off this mortal coil. As I was defective in
experimental apparatus bearing upon the peculiar modus
operandi in which I was about to experiment, I
ordered at the brass-founder’s a brass cylinder, twelve
feet long by twelve feet in diameter. The cylinder
was hollow; but the walls were several feet thick, of solid
brass. On one end of the cylinder was a square of glass
of five feet in thickness, through which was visible the
interior of the cylinder. This square of glass was a
door, which, at pleasure, could be opened, and again
secured with screws of immense strength. This was the
only opening into the cylinder.
As soon as the physician informed me that the pauper
could not survive over half-an-hour I had him placed
inside the cylinder, and the hyaline door strongly secured
with screws. I pressed my face to the glass, and, with
breathless anxiety, watched what was going on inside.
The pauper was a sickly yellow, and a cold, oily perspira
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
13
tion glistened upon his deeply-corrugated forehead. One
of his brown and toil-hardened hands held a convulsive
grasp of the dirty blanket in which he was wrapped. A
portion of his hirsute and muscular breast was visible
where two of the buttons of his faded blue stripe shirt
were open in front. That breast heaved a long, long
heave. Oh, God, would it ever fall ? Aye, it must. For
there was a low mortal rattling audible through the five
feet of solid glass—the death-rattle—and the old pauper
could not live long now. I confess I felt somewhat
terrified—not at the mere phenomenon called death, for
I had witnessed it a thousand times on the field of battle,
the hospital, and elsewhere; but, then, there was plenty
of scope for the soul to fly heavenward, or wherever it
might be labelled for; but, now, in the brass cylinder
—close, air-tight—good Christ! A hundred-weight of
gunpowder would hardly burst the “ everlasting brass ” of
old Horace in which the pauper was expiring ! What
if the disembodied spirit should burst it with a fearful
explosion, and blow me to atoms ! But, from the time
I was a cornet at sweet seventeen, I had sought the
bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth, and at the
dear coral mouth of Miranda; and I resolved not to
turn upon my heel now to save my head in anticipation
of the explosive character of a pauper’s soul.
The cylinder was secured to prevent its flying up into the
air by appending to it several cables with heavy anchors.
The uncertainty of what the results would instantly be
became absolutely harrowing. The dark-coloured and
hairy breast, visible through the faded, striped shirt, fell
at last. I looked with a rivetted gaze : would it ever rise
again ? The yellow, oily appearance of the complexion
faded away into a ghastly white; not that lily whiteness
which is lovely, not that snowy whiteness which is beau
tiful ; but that horrible whiteness which is death-like.
The baked lips were dry and shrivelled up, revealing the
�14
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
pale gums and the grinning teeth, worn away in front by
the common clay pipes which the man had smoked for
forty years. His grey beard bristled grimly, and the
forlorn lock of hair which time had left upon his temples.
The eyes were wide open, and stared upward, as though
they would stare through the worlds and the ages. Then
the death-rattle ceased, the breast under the faded, striped
shirt rose no more, the eyes glazed, the jaw fell, and the
pauper was a clod of the earth he, grub-like, had toiled
and moiled in so long.
I saw no spirit make its escape; but I knew that it
was in the man in the cylinder no more. I knew I had
him there soul and body, although the two had dissolved
partnership. I could not tell whether the elements of
felicity or vice versct were in the brazen prison, but I
knew that I had therein the two constituent parts of an
animal, even a human one, and those two constituent
parts no longer in functional conjunction. For the
cylinder had not exploded, nor had I experienced the
slightest concussion. If that soul were now reaping the
rewards of the deeds done in the flesh, then the interior
of that cylinder must be a portion of heaven, or, rather,
there is no heaven or no hell, except what the soul
contains in itself—a disembodied soul qtia a disem
bodied soul. Re-united with the body in ultra-sepulchral
life, the economy must of necessity be essentially dif
ferent.
I had clearly got heaven or hell inside that cylinder ;
but the business was to find out which. The matter
could, however, be determined by finding out what kind
of life the pauper had led. From the conduct of his
life I should be able to infer whether he had merited a
harp in his hands in heaven or a gridiron under his hips
in hell. So I went round the parish inquiring of all
who had known this pauper as to what sort of a person
he had been. I heard no good of him. There was a
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
15
chalk up against him at the public-house. He had
fractured three of his wife’s ribs and broken his motherin-law’s thumb. He had, furthermore, not partaken of
the holy sacrament for three years; he had pulled the
half of his mother’s hair out, and had attempted to blow
up his father with gunpowder; he gave up reading his
Bible, and had refused to take tracts; and it was in
sinuated that he had actually poached and taken the
name of the Lord his God in vain. So, of course, I
had no doubt that he was in hell, and that consequently
hell was inside the brass cylinder behind my coach-house.
There are several reasons (too obvious to warrant my
occupying space with them here) for supposing that dis
embodied spirits are, with qualifications, subject to the
restraints of matter. A sound anatomical organisation
can contain a spirit; but it sooner or later escapes from a
defective and impaired organisation. If we could have
a guarantee against bodily malady, we would have a
guarantee against death. Never yet did the soul escape
from man but through some flaw in the physical organism.
There was no flaw or mode of egress in the cylinder,
consequently the soul must be there. If the cylinder
had been organised, the internal spirit might have ani
mated it. If a robin swallow a spider which expires in
the gizzard, it is presumable that the vital principle of the
spider goes to augment that already animating the
animal organism of the robin—a strange, but somewhat
feasible phase of metempsychosis. With a conviction of
the truth of this principle, when I am oppressed with
lassitude, lowness of spirits, and nervous prostration, I
am in the habit of swallowing a live frog, which, expiring
in my internal arrangements, its life goes to auxiliarate
mine, and the experiment seldom fails to inspire me with
healthful and exuberant spirits. At my instance, several
of my friends have also tried the experiment, and pro
nounce it a most decided biocrene.
�16
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
Further, in corroboration of the principle of spirit
being imprisoned in matter, St. Peter writes of Christ:
“ Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the
spirit, by which also he went and preached to the spirits
in prison.” This is the preposterous “ He descended
into hell ” of the creed explained by the indefinite, “ that
is remained in the state of the dead and under the power
of death,” which may mean anything or nothing. Who
were the “ spirits in prison ” which Christ preached to
after His “ being put to death in the flesh ” ? It is not
on record that, after His resurrection, he preached to
any, if we except the expounding of the Scriptures to the
two men journeying to the village of Emmaus, and the
admonition to the eleven whom He found gathered
together at Jerusalem. They cannot certainly be meant
by the expression, “ spirits in prison.” The “ preaching ”
must then refer to the interval in which the body of
Jesus lay in the rock-hewn sepulchre. But it seems
quite obvious who are meant by the “ spirits in prison.”
St. Peter distinctly designates, at least, a portion of them.
His words are : “ He went and preached to the spirits in
prison, which some time were disobedient when once
the long-suffering of God awaited in the days of Noah,
when the ark was preparing,” etc. Since Scripture never
once intimates, and the very Apostles’ Creed itself vacillates
on the subject of the descent into hell, and perhaps the
ascent into heaven on that awful occasion has never been
yet contended for, the spirit of Jesus must have remained
in the material world to preach to the spirits of the ante
diluvians whom St. Peter expressly mentions. Neither
am I aware that it has ever been contended for that
there is more in the universe than matter and spirit;
and since spirits are in prison, a spirit imprisoned in a
spirit seems more untenable and enigmatical than a spirit
imprisoned in matter. Hence it appears that, during the
three days of his interment, the disembodied spirit of
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
17
Christ, “ ekeruxen,” assembled together the spirits of the
dead, “ phulake,” under watch or guard—that is, as we
have seen, in this material world—till the resurrection
day again unites the body with the spirit, and man,
psychological and physiological, becomes subject to an
essentially different economy.
Reasoning in this manner, I set about experimenting
further upon the pauper in the cylinder. Ocular proof
of the presence of a spirit can be arrived at only under
peculiar circumstances. Man is seldom conscious of the
maximum of his own physical force till some imminent
emergency calls it forth ; and it is even so with the capa
bilities of his spirit. One on the point of drowning will
lay a grasp upon an object, the strength and tenacity of
which, in ordinary circumstances, he might regard as
absolutely superhuman. So is it in abnormal conditions
of the soul. It puts forth energies for the exertion of
which the ordinary senses do not afford a competent
medium. It grasps at more than the material eyes and
ears have been constructed to convey to it—views into
the realm of shades, sounds from the shores of the
Eternal. By a week’s morbid contemplation upon the
most revolting developments of human depravity and
crime, and the most deep and awful mysteries of exist
ence, I fitted myself to become aware of the presence of
the soul in the cylinder by another process than that of
ratiocination. Having schooled myself at the solemn
hour of midnight, through the darkness and the thunder
of the storm, arrayed in a long white sheet, I glided
along in the direction of the cylinder. I carried in my
right hand a half-rotten splinter of fir, which had formed
part of the bottom of a murderer’s coffin. It was deeply
saturated with the putrid grease of his viscera, and,
being ignited, burned fiercely in the tremendous might
of the storm. I brandished the red fire wildly around
my head, and it threw a weird, wild radiance upon the
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
dim outline of the tombstones, the black and terrible
rocks, and the rank hemlocks as they were crushed
beneath my hurrying feet.
Where on fields of fire hiss rains of blood,
I go ! I go I I go !
A gore-bubble on the infernal flood,
Io ! Io ! Io 1
Ten thousand grave-worms wriggle here,
And on their backs I ride,
In a long black coffin, grim and drear,
And my skull on its dexter side—
Nail’d with a nail through the bare white skull
To the coffin’s dexter side !
Io ! Io 1 Io !
And I shout Io 1 on the slimy shore,
’Neath the palls of the ages unfurl’d ;
And the worms go with me round evermore,
In the weird rolling round of the world !
Oh, the damned stench of my rotted brains !
Oh, the crawling that ceases, oh never !
Of worms, horrid worms, o’er my thighs, in my veins,
Of worms, horrid worms, in my eyes, in my reins,
And the burnings forever and ever !
Ride helter-skelter down to hell,
’Neath the Banner of Darkness unfurl’d !
Ring—ring my death-toll on Destiny’s bell,
In the weird rolling round of the world !
Io ! Io ! Io !
To the waist in eternal burnings I go !
I kept waving the horrible torch round my head, and, in
a voice high, husky, terrible, and unearthly, chanted the
dithyramb which I have just transcribed. I reached
the cylinder. I crushed a skull which I carried down
into the soft earth opposite the glass door, and stuck a
lighted candle into each eyeless socket. By this light,
which I managed to shelter from the wind, I ventured to
look into the interior, where the mortal remains of the
pauper lay. He was there, cold and rigid, just as I had
left him—ghastly, ghastly 1—with his hand still grasping
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
I?
a handful of the miserable blanket, in which lay his poor
remains............. The voice of God shouted in the black
heaven. The foundations of the earth reeled under the
tremendous roll of the thunder. The rain splashed
down in the darkness, and extinguished the two candles
that burned in the sockets of the skull............ A black
cloud lay on the eastern, a blacker cloud on the western
horizon, and the devil himself—I knew him at a glance
—leapt from the one cloud to the other with a yell to
which the thunder was a mere whisper. In his leap
across the world, by a blow of his club foot he knocked
the planet Mars out of the solar system, and gave the
moon a switch with his tail which nearly blotted that
satellite from the face of the heavens forever. I stag
gered forward, half suffocated with the fumes of brim
stone. Something struck me on the head which sent
stars flying out of my eyes three times in succession,
and by the light of those stars I beheld my hands and
found that they had become as large as frying-pansand were dripping with blood........... Yes, the spirit
was there, inside the cylinder. But it was a fearful
ordeal: I would not pass through it again to be lord of
a thousand worlds. The spirit was there ; but I had
better say no more, aided only by a human vocabulary
and the limited capacities of a human brain. When
there is no blood in my arm, and my skull is filled with
cold clay, I shall write it.
My next study in psychology was my endeavouring to
obtain a glimpse of what was going on behind the eternal
curtain through the medium of strangulation—“ hanging
by the neck till dead.”
I, perhaps somewhat unwarrantably, took it for granted
that the portal of the Future opens gradually in propor
tion as the soul succeeds in disengaging itself from the
body in the hour of death; and, consequently, in the
agonies of dissolution I might have some degree Oi
�20
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
insight into the arcana of the Future. Accordingly, I
gave instructions that a gallows should be erected on
the lawn in front of my residence.
To keep touch with the otherworld, I had the scaffold
constructed from the more or less rotten boards of
exhumed coffins; and I had a canopy erected over the
noose mounted with the blackest and heaviest of hearse
plumes. When the south wind swept up the lawn it
waved these sombre plumes with most sepulchral effect:
I was seized with a befitting sensation of shudder and
nausea; and, in spite of the fragrance of the birch, the
narcissus, and the rhododendron, the air was heavy
with stench, which seemed to proceed from the marrow
growing putrid in my own bones. Considering the
nature of the study in wffiich I was engaged, this was as
it should be. One adjunct, however, was still wanting
—the rope. In order to have all things as far as pos
sible appropriate, I determined to have this rope made
of a murderer’s entrails. At the town of D------they
had just hanged a miscreant who had done to death his
own mother. You have no idea what difficulty I had
with the authorities in obtaining this scoundrel’s, to me,
exceedingly valuable viscera. However, by the dint of
persistency, diplomacy, and hard cash, I managed to
have him exhumed from amid the earth and quicklime
where he lay under the flag-stones of the gaol floor.
Then, at midnight, I had him carried by three ticket-ofleave men to the haunted thorn in L------moss. By my
command, to this thorn they secured the lower extremity
of his intestinal canal, and carried him round and round
the tree till the whole length of his intestines was coiled
round the thorn, as you have seen an anchor-chain
coiled round the capstan. While they carried the
wretch round and round the tree I whistled the “ Dead
March in Saulbut I had to whistle till I was
utterly out of breath. It seemed to me that the scoun
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
21
drel’s intestinal canal must have been at least ten miles
long.
The next trouble was to get some one to tan and
prepare the ten miles of viscera, preparatory to spinning
them into the rope with which I was to hang myself. With
the whole concern on my back in a fisher’s creel, I called
upon the local chemist at two o’clock in the morning,
and, ringing him up, I threw down the basket before
him, and explained to him what I wanted him to do.
That chemist was an utter ass, without a scintilla of the
heroic self-sacrifice that is indispensable in him who
would dare to travel on the path of scientific investiga
tion. First he threatened to have me locked up as a
lunatic; next, looking into the basket of viscera, he
swore he would have me arrested on the suspicion of
murder. I took out my cheque book and wrote three
figures; and, in the chemist’s eyes, I became at once
sane and innocent, and, taking the basket and its contents
on his back, he descended into the cellar, assuring me
that what I wanted done was not only aesthetic, but
highly rational.
The murderer’s intestines made as much tough, cat
gut-looking cord as would have rigged a sloop of war.
I cut off twelve feet, sufficient to hang me. But, after I
had run on a beautiful noose, and had got the cord
properly fixed to the gallows’ beam, the next business
was to test its strength. I was over eleven stone : what
if, under my weight, the cord should give way ? I
remembered that my wife was rather over twelve stone.
I determined to see if it would bear her. If it would
bear her, it would bear me.
I found my wife even more intractable than the
chemist. Not all my blandishments could induce her
to allow the noose to be placed over her head.
“Miranda,” said I at length, “I conjure you by the
moon'that looked down through the quivering leaves of
�22
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
the aspen under which we sat as boy and girl forty-five
years ago, when first I ventured to whisper to you of
love—by that moon I conjure you to humour your
Harold now.” She let her head sink upon my bosom
as she sobbed forth: “ Harold, Harold darling, tie me
up by the feet?'
Good! The noose round the ankles would do as
well as the noose round the neck, as far as the mere
testing of the strength of the cord was concerned. I
took off my braces and knotted them round her skirts,
that there might be no unseemly garmental disarrange
ment as my darling danced from the gut with her heels
to the sky. I put the noose over her ankles and
launched her into the air. Round she gyrated in three
glorious whirls, and the cord brake not. Hurrah ! I
took her down. She was black in the face and speech
less. “ A swoon,” muttered I; and I took her up in
my arms and ran off with her to the fish-pond, into
which I plunged her. It occurred to me that that would
put her all right; but, in my absorption in my transcen
dental studies, it did not occur to me to wait and fish
her out of the water. However, the butler, assisted, as
I understand, by a policeman, did so; and she was
clean dead for the space of three hours, though she is
now more or less alive again. But I am digressing into
a subsidiary and trifling matter.
Some whisperings of my design got abroad into the
surrounding districts with marvellous rapidity, and for
days bands of roughs, such as go to witness public exe
cutions, might be observed hanging about the avenue
gate and the preserves. I was painfully apprehensive,
however, that the proposed experiment would not partake
of the character of amusement to myself individually,
and I resolved that it should not become so to the
public. My wife implored me, as I valued her love and
the love of God, to desist from what she in her sim
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
23
plicity was pleased to call “ a mad and ludicrous pro
ject.” But her entreaties and remonstrances were of no
avail in moving me from undertaking at all hazards an
enterprise for the promotion of science and in the sacred
cause of truth. My only marriageable daughter threat
ened to make off with the ostler, or do some other
horrible thing, if I would persist in disgracing and
making the family ridiculous by what she called exhibi
tions of “ crazy eccentricity.” I dismissed the ostler, and
locked her up in the spirit-cellar. In short, I gave the
whole household to understand that I was not a man to
be trifled with, and that, although I was thoroughly do
mesticated and a little uxorious, yet my connubial and
paternal obligations were secondary to those I owed to
the pursuit of science and the elucidation of truth. I
took to the gallows with me the key of the cellar in
which my daughter was confined. I had a settee with
the softest of cushions drawn up into the recess of the
drawing-room window, that, reclining there, my wife
might, if she chose, witness the scene to be enacted. I
arose rather before my accustomed hour—ten o’clock—
and partook heartily, with her, of our matutinal meal,
and ordered a cup of coffee and a slice of buttered toast
to be taken down to Julia in the cellar. Then I returned
to the seclusion of my study, and, to while away the
hour till the clock struck twelve, I set myself to sketch
ing with a crayon several monsters I found scattered
through the Revelation of St. John. I intend shortly
to put the Revelation cartoons into the hands of the
engraver. I was specially struck by the “ great red
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven
crowns upon his heads.”* I drew this dragon with all
the skill I possessed as an imaginative limner; but, as
he did not look red, according to St. John, he did not
" Rev. xxii. 3.
�24-
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
appear formidable. So I resolved he should be red,
according to the Scriptures; and I accordingly threw off
my coat, rolled up my left shirt sleeve, cut my arm with
my pen-knife, and, dipping a tooth-brush in the blood,
I therewith reddened the dragon. The “ four beasts ”
were next honoured by my attentions as an artist. “ And
the four beasts had each of them six wings about him;
and they were full of eyes within.”* I managed pretty
well with the six wings a-piece, which was twenty-four
wings in all; but to draw or paint the “ eyes within,”
and yet make them visible, called for a supreme effort
of ingenuity. I thought first of printing under the
picture :
m
“foitljin/’ ob nf nnw latuiuf
But it occurred to me that some might doubt my word
and question whether indeed the eyes were there at all.
Utterly non-plussed as to how to get the eyes painted
“within” these four apocalyptic beasts and yet visible,
I, in a prayerful spirit, read the fifth chapter of Daniel,
and how to represent the internal eyes flashed upon me
like a revelation. In each beast I, with a bodkin, punc
tured seven holes through the paper—that is, twenty
eight holes in all. As the paper lies flat on the table
these twenty-eight eyes are not over-distinct. They
show to the greatest advantage when you take the paper
into a dark room, hold it up vertically, and get some
one to stand behind it and to strike a match all of a
sudden. Each of the twenty-eight eyes then becomes
distinctly visible, and a small gleam of light is emitted
from each. Of course, under the circumstances, you
see nothing but the eyes—you cannot see the beasts;
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
25
but you know the beasts are there; and it is too much,
in the mystery of divine things, to presume to try to be
able to see both the four beasts and their twenty-eight
eyes ‘‘'within” at one and the same time. I am, no
doubt, an amazingly able man. When I quite recover
from the hanging I shall saw away one side of my skull,
in order that I may see my mental machinery at work.
Having completed my apocalyptic drawings, I fell
down on my knees and preferred the following prayer to
Heaven :—
Omniscient Power, whose dominion extends alike over
the worlds of Mind and Matter, sustain me in the pur
suit of Knowledge, even to a comparative disregard of
the life which Thou gavest me. I thank Thee, O Lord,
for the rooted impression that true intelligence is a
synonym for Religion and Virtue, and Ignorance only
another name for Depravity and Sin. And I would
humbly desire to thank Thee for that boldness by which
I can disregard the derision and sneers of vulgar and
narrow prejudices, and for that originality of conception
which ranges afar into undiscovered lands, spurning the
hackneyed and beaten pathways of experiment and
thought. I thank Thee that Thou hast given me no
reverence for social landmarks, however time-honoured,
unless they have been placed there true to the theodolyte of Reason and the geometry of Truth—not that
I love what is time-honoured less, but that I love
Truth more. Give me none of the arrogance but
all of the humility of Philosophy, and enable me to feel
that, to whatever degree I may be able to dispel the
mists which brood around the presence of the Eternal,
I am still immeasureably far from grasping the immensity
of knowledge which, perhaps to the exclusion of the
archangel, it may be Thine own special prerogative to
know. Enable the wrorld to feel, O Lord, that all
�26
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
knowledge is generically divine, and that strenuous
toiling towards its attainment is the only pursuit worthy
of the lofty and sacred destinies of man as a defaced
specimen of Thy noblest handiwork. Pardon all my
frailties and shortcomings, and-----Here I heard the old clock in the dining-room begin
ning to strike twelve ; so, muttering “ Amen,” I drew
on my gloves, lifted my hat and cane, and with a fear
less heart and a steady step I strode downstairs to the
gallows.
Tony, the footman, acted as executioner, and not
another individual of the household was allowed to be
present, under pain of my most severe displeasure.
Tony, with evidences of the most terrible reluctance,
put the noose over my head, and I was swung into the
empty air. A white silk handkerchief which I carried
in the outside pocket of my coat was to be drawn out
by me as a signal that the hanging process had become
absolutely unendurable, and then Tony was at once to
cut the rope by which I was suspended. The instant I
felt the trap-door give way under my feet the sensation
became utterly indescribable, and I thrust my hand
into my pocket to pull out the handkerchief, when I
discovered—oh, heaven and earth !—that I had left it
where I had thrown off my dressing-gown.
I could not speak a word, if on it had hung the event
of my soul’s salvation. Every sin of mine—of thought,
wTord, and deed—blazed before me in characters of fire,
and from amid the lurid blazonry the meek, calm face
of my mother, who had been thirty years in the grave,
looked upon me with unutterable tenderness and love.
Then the earth gave way, and I was hurled down head
long into the unfathomable darkness. In my descent I
•was dashed against revolving and tremendous worlds,
with rivers of blood rolling into oceans of fire. Portions
�STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
27
of my agonised frame stuck to every fearful world against
which I was driven, whereupon they seemed to become
part of myself, and their oceans of blood lashed the
shores in darkness and thunder in sympathy with my
torture, which, increasing with an inconceivable rapidity,
already amounted to ten thousand times beyond what
mortals can conceive to be the agonies of ten thousand
hells. I became unconscious of my material identity,
and had only a mysterious existence as a spirit of
suffering infused through the worlds—boundless,
limitless, and horrible embodiments of darkness and
death—the condensed breathings from the yells of the
damned. The myriad world-shadows rolled into one
mass with a diameter of millions and millions of
miles, and my suffering soul writhed through the
minutest part of the mass in the fires of unutterable
agony. The amalgamated planets became identified
with my brain. Then innumerable gigantic forms of
shadow shot through it arrows of red fire, and it reeled
millions of miles away through the darkness and horrors
of immensity in the wild madness of ever-increasing
torture. Anon it seemed that, after the lapse of many
thousand years, all the thunder-peals since the creation
of the world combined in one tremendous roar, the
skull of the tortured brain was split, and the boundless
world-shadow of agony rolled down—down into vacuity
and nothingness !
I understand that Tony had discovered that I had
not the handkerchief, and instantly cut the rope of the
gallows. I am yet in bed, severely indisposed; but I
hope soon to be able to subject the agonies I suffered
to the ordeal of scientific and philosophical analysis.
Meanwhile I am nearly perishing for a draught of water;
but all the servants have, without their wages, gone off
in terror. My wife is with me in bed. She never
�2S
STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGY.
speaks, but only stares at me wildly, and falls into one
fit of hysterics after another. I am told Julia has
effected her escape from the cellar, and has gone off,
heaven knows where 1
�APPENDIX.
LETTER FROM MAJOR F----- ’s DAUGHTER, JULIA.
Sir,—A friend of mine has sent me copies of your horribly
wicked and abominable journal, in which I see that you have dared
to publish, disfigured by the grossest exaggerations and most fearful
absurdities, the manuscript which, to my eternal regret, my poor
dead father so mistakenly entrusted to your care. You know per
fectly well that I never, never, never showed you my ankles, and
never asked you to write your foolish verses about them, which were
just suited to the fast and silly young hoydens who were taken in
by your ranting and raving about “ knights and fair ladies,” which
is a habit I see you have by no means lost as you have grown older,
but not apparently wiser, except that you have added wickedness to
foolishness by blaspheming Jehovah and ridiculing His holy Book,
for which you will certainly suffer hereafter in the fire that is not
quenched and the worm that dieth not.
As for your abominable calumny that I threatened to run away
with the ostler, I can only put it down to the fact that I once re
fused to run away with you, and that you are now trying to punish
my maidenly modesty by mean spite and wicked lying. Let me
remind you, Sir, if you have conveniently forgotten it, that at the
time of my poor father’s untimely decease I was engaged to a deacon
of the Established Church, who has since become a humble but
ardent minister of that Word which you are so continually reviling
to your eternal damnation, and whose name I have now the happi
ness of bearing as his loved and loving wife. You are a wicked,
unprincipled man to divulge in your lying paper family secrets and
matters which should always remain sacred to the privacy of the
hearth ; and God will judge you for it, seeing that my husband
cannot so forget his character as a man of God (what you irreve
rently call a “ beetle ”) as to horse-whip you as you deserve in this
world. But wait till the next.
i I admit that my dear papa was considered to be a little eccentric ;
but that he ever suffocated a poor pauper in a brass thing, or hung
my sainted mother up by the heels with such a hideous rope, is
�30
APPENDIX.
as wickedly untrue as that he tried to commit suicide, as you have
so unscrupulously said he did. The manuscript, which I sometimes
suspect you stole from under his dying pillow, was simply an
account of some dreadful dreams he had one night after going to
have supper with the man of God and my husband, who distinctly
remembers the occasion, because he helped to bring poor papa
home after being taken seriously ill as he was about half-past eleven.
I remember myself how frightened I was by his cries after he got to
sleep, poor dear.
If you are not ashamed of what you have done, a Day will come
when you will be—I mean the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord,
when, if you do not repent and be saved, you and all who write
and read your horrible paper will be burned up with chaff and fire
unquenchable.—Yours indignantly,
Julia Heywood (nee Fraser).
[I publish the foregoing that the public may have an idea of the
refined and delicate character of the daughter of Major F----- . I
would have corrected her prosody and set her shambling sentences
on their feet; but I do not care to run the risk of placing a document
before the world which she can assert is ‘ ‘ disfigured by the grossest
exaggerations.” In reply to her charge, I can only say with Pilate,
“What I have written, I have written,” and, moreover, every word
I have written is true. I have several more MSS. from the pen of
the lady’s late father, one particularly on a “School Thrashing
Machine,” which he claimed to have invented, which I had thought
to suppress out of deference for the Julia I knew of old, but which
I now feel inclined to publish out of lack of deference for the sweettempered and soft-spoken parson’s wife into which this Julia seems
to have developed. Moreover, a certain delicacy restrains me from
being more explicit when I say that I have a large bundle of loveletters tied together with a silk ribbon of now faded green, and that
the perusal of these letters would astonish the Rev. Mr. Heywood.
—Saladin.]
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Studies in psychology : comprising the agonies of hanging, by one who was cut down from the gallows; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin
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Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Stamp on front cover and elsewhere: Bishopsgate Institute. Reference Library. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC WorldCat). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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W. Stewart & Co.
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[1894]
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N598
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Capital punishment
Ethics
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Studies in psychology : comprising the agonies of hanging, by one who was cut down from the gallows; based upon a MS. in the possession of Saladin), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Hanging
NSS
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Text
&
THE ROYAL COMMISSION
and the
PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.
Eeprinted from "The Sooial Science Review.”
BY
THOMAS BEGGS,
F.S.S.,
Honorary Secretary to the Society for the Abolition of Capital Tunishment.
SOCIETY FOR THE ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Samuel Gurney, Esq., M.P., Treasurer ;
Thomas Beggs, Esq., Charles Wise, Esq., Eon. Secs.
William Tallack, Secretary.
OFFICE : SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.
��THE
ROYAL COMMISSION AND
PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.
THE
By Thomas Beggs, F.S.S., Honorary Secretary to the Society for the
Abolition of Capital Punishment.
There is much, doubt whether the Royal Commission appointed
by Her Majesty in the last Session of Parliament, will be able
to report during the present year, and it is impossible to
conjecture what that report may recommend, or the results
to which it may lead. From the known sentiments of several
members of that Commission, it may be inferred that several
alterations in the present law will be suggested. In all
probability it will be the aim of the Report to relieve the
Home Secretary from the discharge of duties which must
have become intolerable to himself, and which in many
instances give so little satisfaction to the public. There may
be an attempt at a classification of the crime of murder into
those of the first and second degree—discriminating those which
have been the consequences of deliberate design from those
which have been the result of sudden impulse, or temptation;
and it is possible that the substitution of private for public
executions may be recommended. It may also report in favour
of a Court of Appeal.
Something will be gained by the
adoption of any or all of such expedients, but they can • only be
looked upon as steps towards the attainment of total abolition.
Much will depend upon the public opinion out of Parliament,
as well as the senti-ments of those who sit within it j and it
is therefore proposed in the present paper to discuss some
of the more important points pressing for consideration.
It
is desirable to inquire, what is the real issue involved, and
to separate from it all that is irrevelant, or that is only
remotely related to it. To this end it may be necessary to
look at some of the principal objections to the punishment
of death, and then to examine how far these objections are
likely to be met by any of the alterations to which reference
has been made.
One of the principal objections to a death penalty is, that
it provides the same punishment for all gradations of crime.
�4
There is no offence against human law which presents so
much difference in the shades of guilt—so far as men are able
to judge of motive and to appreciate the force of circumstances
acting upon the human will. In the case of Annette Myers,
who was condemned for shooting a soldier, who had first
seduced her and then tempted her to a life of prostitution to
supply him with means to gratify his vices, and in that of
Palmer, there is as wide a distinction as can possibly exist
between two offences of the same kind. They were both
cases of murder, and both were punishable by death. In the
case of the poor girl, the prerogative of mercy saved her from
the gallows. It would be easy to find cases within the pre
sent century where that prerogative might have been just as
properly exerted—and probably the unusual and somewhat
romantic character of the crime for which Annette Myers was
condemned, had much to do with exciting that public sym
pathy which preserved her life. An instance is on record of
a working man who perished on the public scaffold at Not
tingham, and whose case furnished as good a plea for a mer
ciful interposition on the part of the crown. The wife of this
man was seduced from his home. He followed her to the
house of her seducer, and begged her to return, promising to
forgive all. She refused; when in a fit of desperation he
took up a table-knife and cut her throat. What is there of
guilt in such a case when compared with that of the Man
nings 1 There can be no defence for a law thus indiscrimina
ting in its awards but that which was given by the ancient
lawgiver, and which justified the death penalty for all of
fences—that the smallest crime merited death, and there could
not be found a heavier punishment for the gravest offence
against the law.
The evil consequences of a law dealing out the same
punishment to offences so variable in their delinquency, are
seen in our daily experience. In some cases a false sympathy
is created for the condemned, and after the judge and jury
have decided upon the case, and the Home Office have con
firmed the decision—the public take it up—put the case under
another trial—go into the evidence, and demand a reversal of
the verdict, or a mitigation of the sentence. No one who is
�5
acquainted "with the conduct of our criminal courts will
hesitate to deprecate a course like this. If appeals from the
decision of a criminal court have to be made, they ought to
be made to a tribunal, capable of sifting evidence, and not
to public opinion, which at all times, but especially in periods
of excitement, is incapable of looking at facts with judicial
eyes. It is only in cases of condemnation to death that
these interferences are made.
In cases where the severest
secondary punishments is inflicted, any interference is exceed
ingly rare. It is the inevitable result of the death penalty
that the public will sometimes think it too severe for the
crime committed, or will be alarmed at the prospect of
executing a man who may possibly be innocent, and therefore
the excitement and the interference.
Although the cases
where men have gone to death with strong protestations of
innocence, whose guilt admitted of no reasonable doubt,
are numerous, still an uneasy feeling will always pervade the
public mind when such declarations are made by men upon
whom the door of earthly hope has closed for ever.
This is not the greatest evil. The worst part of it is in
the sympathy which gathers about the murderer when any
doubt of his guilt affects the public mind, or where there are
mitigating circumstances in the case—a sympathy which seems
to absorb all horror, or even recollection of the crime. In
the case of Annette Myers, whatever the nature of her pro
vocation, however gross the wrong and the insult to which
she had been subjected, she had provided herself with a
pistol, sought out the man, and deliberately shot him. She
had in an instant sent a guilty man to his account without
time for preparation, and this consideration seemed to weigh
heavily upon her in the condemned cell, for there she called
with much bitterness of feeling—“ Oh, what has become of
his soul1?” It would be impossible to censure the feeling of
commiseration which sprang up for this distressed but guilty
girl. But it is not for the welfare of society that we should
allow a sympathy like this to efface all horror of the crime.
In some quarters she was looked upon in the light of a
Roman heroine—as a sort of Lucretia, who had done a
praiseworthy act in avenging her own shame. A reverend
�6
gentleman, in a public meeting, declared—“It requires all my
Christianity to check me from saying that I honour the
woman.” What can be expected from the uneducated and
the vulgar, when men of education and position thus allow
their feelings to overrun their sense of propriety ? Is not this
teaching indirectly that there may be and are circumstances
which justify an act of vengeance even to the taking of
human life? The fault is in the law. Had this unfortunate
girl been condemned to a severe secondary punishment, there
might have been some feeling of compassion, but no sound
mind would have found an apology for the crime. “ The
safety of human life depends,” as Mr. Bright expressed in
the last debate, “upon the public reverence for life,”—and this
reverence cannot be created or preserved by public exhibitions
of death, nor by maintaining a law which by its very severity
creates a sympathy for those who commit murder.
Another case presents in a still stronger light the evil
complained of. On December 31st, 1841, a man of the
name of John Jones, who sometimes 'bore the name of Moore,
a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart, Mary Hallam, the
daughter of a respectable labourer at Mansfield, in the county
of Nottingham. He was executed on March 23rd, 1842. He
was a man of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent
fits of passion. The girl declined his addresses, and he said
that if he did not have her no one else should. After he
had inflicted the first wound, which was not immediately
fatal, she begged for her life; but seeing him resolved, asked
for time to pray. He said that he would pray for both,
and then completed his purpose. The wounds were inflicted
by a shoemaker’s knife, and her throat was cut barbarously.
After this he kept on his knees some time and prayed to
God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers. He made
no attempt to escape, and confessed the crime. After his
confinement he behaved in the most decorous manner. He
won upon the good opinion of the gaol chaplain, and he
was visited by the Bishop of Lincoln. It does not appear
that he expressed any contrition for the crime, but seemed
to pass away with triumphant certainty that he was going
to rejoin his victim in heaven, He was visited by some
�pious and benevolent ladies of Nottingham, some of whom
declared that he was a child of God if ever there was one,
meaning, it is presumed, that his state of religious feeling
after condemnation had wiped away all transgressions. The
same lady sent him a white camelia to wear at his execu
tion.
Of course great crowds gathered at the execution,
multitudes coming in from surrounding towns and villages;
Mansfield, Newark and Derby supplying a large per centage
of the strangers present at the scene.
The crowds came thronging in from six o’clock in the morning.
It would be well for those who contend for the deterrent
influence of death punishment to mingle with such crowds.
The expression was almost universally, one of sympathy with
the man about to suffer. The painful part of it appeared to be
this—that the offence seemed to be entirely lost to the minds
of those who were conversing about his fate. A horrible crime
had been committed. A poor girl had been barbarously
murdered; the supplications for her life, as well as those she
made for a few minutes’ time, that she might prepare for
death by prayer, were disregarded. Her bereaved family were
left with stricken hearts to mourn the loss of a daughter by
a violent and sudden death; and yet all this seemed to have
passed away from the minds of those who had come to see the
murderer die. He was looked upon by many as the victim of a
misplaced and unrewarded affection, and the sufferings of his
victim were wholly disregarded. One man was heard to say
to a companion, who seemed to be his son, I wish you and
me were as ready to die -as he is.” Similar extravagances were
committed, so far as the treatment of the criminal was con*
cerned, by benevolent visitors, in the case of Cook, who
murdered Mr. Paas, and afterwards attempted to destroy the
body by burning it.
By the way, the wretched man Jones was fondled, caressed,
and flattered by a number of indiscreet persons, injury would
be done to himself. Such treatment to a man whose hands
were reeking with a foul murder, were calculated to nourish
that vulgar, but profound egotism, which was the most marked
feature in his character, and little calculated to awaken that
humility which is essential to true peniterce. An intense
�8
egotism is the characteristic of all great criminals. In the
case of a man who has consummated an irregular and criminal
career, by the commission of a murder, it must be highly
injudicious to inflate the mind by false hopes, either temporal
or eternal. The result of such attentions as were paid to
this man, were calculated to produce a display of ostentatious
penitence, or to create a self confidence ill-suited to his position.
The highest aspiration of the guilty, ought to be that taught
in the prayer of the publican, 11 God be merciful to me a
sinner.”
On the public mind outside, the effects were
equally deplorable. To some, by the extraordinary attentions
paid to him, he was raised into a hero or a saint, and made
almost an object of envy among his own class.
There is another "case of more recent date, that of Joseph
Castle, who was executed in 1860, for the murder of his wife.
His own confession made it clear that the crime was deliberate.
After his condemnation he was petted much in the same way.
His conduct was brutal and sensual throughout—and in his
last moments he manifested no concern for the poor woman
he had murdered, nor in fact any true penitence. He was
eager for his meals, and anxious to secure all the indrdgences
the prison rules allowed, and the gaol authorities were lavish
in their attentions. It is the doom of death which surrounds
these men with all this factitious interest. What they say
and do becomes an object of inquiry, and their daily state of
health is looked for more greedily than is a royal bulletin.
The man whose hours are fixed, becomes an object of pity to
the gaol officials. It is the duty of the chaplain to awaken
him to a sense of his condition, and prepare him for the world
he has to enter. If there are circumstances in his case of an
exceptional or extraordinary kind—he becomes an object of
interest to a number of pious and kind people outside. The
lesson taught to the multitude loses its impressiveness and its
power, and that solemn awe which ought to be present at the
punishment of a great criminal, is overwhelmed by other
feelings. Change the doom of death to that of penal servitude,
or any other equivalent, and he becomes at once an ordinary
criminal. As soon as the respites for Hall, Townley, and
Butler left the Home Office, the interest in them ceased. No one
�9would dare to assert that Victor Townley, doomed to penal
servitude for life, receives more than his deserts,—and more
than the law ought properly to inflict in any case, where a
man invades the life of another. In the case of Roupell, he
perpetrated a crime as flagrant and as heinous as any forgery
ever committed. This punishment to a man of education and
position, and who had once occupied a seat in the British
Parliament, was perhaps more severe than even death. He
passed away to commence his life-long punishment, without
any of that maudlin sympathy being drawn out, which in all
probability would have followed if the statute book had still
retained the death penalty for the crime of forgery. It is
therefore necessary to devise a punishment that will meet the
national sense of justice—and divest atrocious criminals of
the terrible interest with which their position as death doomed
men is invested, and which will prevent those interpositions
with the administration of the law which are so often made,
to the injury of public morality, and the lowering of the
dignity of the judicature in the eyes of the people.
These interferences with the law have the tendency to
embarrass both judge and jury, and to throw a difficulty in
the way of the Home Secretary, In fact the Home Office
has become a court of appeal. Without being constitutionly
judicial in its character, it is called upon to exert judicial
functions. The recent cases are pregnant with much instruc
tion. The Home Secretary has been in one case, that of
Hall, compelled to yield to an expression of opinion outside
in the correctness of which he could not acquiesce. It is
known that under the pressure of great excitement the mur
dered woman was traduced to the affliction of her surviving
relatives, in order to establish the plea urged on behalf of
the convicted man. In the case of Jessie Maclachan again,
an old decrepit man whose years and physical infirmities would
seem to preclude the possibility of his having committed the
crime, of which she was accused, was brought under a cloud
of suspicion, in order to make out a case in her behalf.
All doubt of her guilt was removed by her confession after
the respite had been granted.'
These are some of the gravest objections to the punish-
�10
ment of death. The escape of the guilty is favoured. But
besides this there is an amount of feeling created in relation
to atrocious criminals, where the popular voice would approve
the sentence, which leads to inflame the passions and dete
riorate the morals of the multitude. It is not only that
scenes of cruelty and death are demoralizing in themsp,1 yes,
but the discussions and descriptions given in the public press
are calculated to do mischief. The town of Nottingham will
supply another example.
On May 18th, 1844, a man of
the name of William Saville murdered his wife and three
children under particularly atrocious circumstances. He was an
idle and dissipated man, known among his vicious companions
as “ liar Saville,” and one of his former employers stated that
his fellow-workmen often said that he ought on account of
his fierce character to be called savage. In consequence of his
bad conduct and neglect, his wife and three children had to
go to the workhouse. Saville then formed an attachment to‘ a
servant girl of the name of Tait, residing at Badford, a
village three miles from Nottingham. It is supposed that
he wished to get his wife and children out of the way, in
order that he might marry this woman. Be that as it may,
he went one day to the workhouse and took out his wife
and children for a walk, the three children being respectively
of the ages of seven, five, and four. He took them to a retired
place in Colwick wood, and there murdered them by cutting
their throats with a razor. He placed the razor in his wife’s
hand to favour the idea of suicide, but it was found to be his
own razor, which she was not likely to have had in her
possession, but he was seen leaving the wood over a stile,
by a milk-boy, who identified him after his apprehension.
This crime created great excitement. There was no doubt of
his guilt, no palliation for so horrible a crime The public
indignation was most intense, and the crowd assembled to
witness the execution was greater than ever known at any
previous one. At the execution a horrible scene took place.
Almost immediately after the drop fell, some commotion took
place in the crowd, and a number of people were thrown
down the steps leading from the street in which executions
take place to oue of much lower elevation. The result was
�11
that some sixteen or seventeen persons were killed, and fifty
or sixty more or less maimed for life. By some it was
supposed that the panic was created by a body of pickpockets
from Derby, who had done it to avail themselves of the
confusion to follow more easily their vocation.
This was never proved ; but if it was the case, it shows
another instance of crime being committed at the foot of
the gallows—of which there are so many on record. This is
not the fact however, to which the case points. A gentleman
who took much interest in the humbler classes, embraced the
opportunity of mingling among them on this occasion, for
purposes of observation.
A letter of his is preserved, and
the following quotation may suffice. “ I wish our legislators
who insist upon maintaining capital punishment, could have
been present this morning. It has made me sick with horror
and shame. I do not refer to the horrible disaster which has
ended in the destruction of so much life, for that I did not
hear of until two hours after the execution—but to what
took place among the crowds coming in at an early hour in
the morning to witness the execution. The crime was bad
enough—but the people seemed turned into savages. Indians
round the stake to which one of their prisoners is pinioned
could not exult with more wild ferocity in the tortures they
inflicted, than these people did in imagination over what they
would do to torture such a wretch if he was given up to
them.
I heard one group of women relating to each other
what they would do to punish him, and the devices were
certainly ingenious, but made me shudder,—the prevailing
opinion was that hanging was much too good for him.”
It will be said that much of all this feeling was the
effect of the crime and not the punishment, and there is no
doubt much truth in that. Ko doubt, whatever, had been the
nature of the punishment the popular indignation would have
been fierce and loud, especially among women, at the murder
of a neglected wife, and innocent children ; but by those who
have studied the habits, feelings and opinions of the humbler
classes, it will be at once acceded that it is most impolitic
to gather them in large crowds under such circumstances. By
communion with each other these natural feelings of indigna
�12
tion and rude desires for vengeance get stimulated. In truth,
the passions are inflamed from which acts of violence arise.
The hour of death concentrates in that brief space of time all
passion and indignation which under other circumstances would
gradually consume itself away. In the case of the execution
of the pirates—and in that of Muller—it may be fairly doubted
whether the riot and demoralization which have been so vividly
described, are the worst results of such exhibitions; probably
the savage vengeance which is brought to its culminating point
at the time of an execution, but which is in some cases left
unsatisfied, leaves behind it more dangerous elements. The spec
tators are gathered from the vicious and depraved of all
classes—the uneducated—the rough and the brutal—those with
morbid tastes and inclinations. A spectacle of death, and a
lesson of vengeance can only render more inveterate their own
evil desires. Those only who know nothing of the crowds
who hasten to such spectacles can say a single word in
favour of the example of the gallows. By some imperfectly
understood law of sympathy large assemblages of people are
affected by almost simultaneous emotions of grief, anger, and
fierce passion. It is therefore unwise to gather them in crowds—
where they may be excited to strong sympathy for a murderer,
or to gloat over his punishment.
Private executions may at first sight appear to remove some
of these objections. The evils would not seem to be much alle
viated—so long as a large portion of the press have an interest
in finding aliment for the lovers of sensation, so long will the
morbid appetites of the people be fed by reports of the daily
conduct of the criminal. The accounts of the executions, with
their ghastly accompaniments would find their way out, and the
apparent mystery by which they were attempted to be con
cealed, and would add to the interest in the minds of the
people.
Whether death punishments are deterrent or otherwise does
not admit of positive demonstration, but it is worthy of grave
consideration whether men led to the commission of a great
crime ever think of the consequences at all; or if they do,
whether they do not flatter themselves with the notion that
they had laid their plans with such care and circumspection
as to escape detection or conviction. It is no novelty in the
�13
an rials of criminal jurisprudence to find cases like that of the
man Wane who was lately executed at Chelmsford for murder.
He said—“ I had the thoughts on me for months that I must
do it, and I struggled with them over and over again, but it
was no use, they were too much for me.”
There is one part of this subject which must not be passed
without remark. An objection has been raised that death
punishments operate as a deterrent upon the criminal classes,
and that chaplains and governors of prisons state that it is
only the fear of death which in many instances prevents the
warders and attendants being murdered. Now, it so happens
that it is not the criminal classes that produce the
murderers. What we understand by the criminal classes are
those who systematically follow a course of crime and fraud.
Very few murderers are from such classes—Palmer, Bush, the
Mannings, Townley, Hall, Wright, Mullens, and many others,
were not criminals in that sense, and only became so by the
committal of the offence for which they suffered. Those who
lead a life of crime content themselves with depredations upon
property. This notion of a deterrent upon the criminal classes
is most probably derived from the strange and savage threats
in which practised thieves will indulge. They often say to an
officer who has captured them, that if it was not for the law
they would kill him.
Too much importance must not be
attached to utterances like these, which after all mean little
more than a mere angry defiance. The criminal classes—those
trained in crime—have their own way of calculating chances ;
they throw their all into a lottery, which presents blanks and
prizes.
They are usually men of some degree of physical
daring, but of no moral courage.
It is a part of their daily
occupation to brave the dangers of detection; but they are too
much accustomed to measure consequences, to incur unnecessary
risk. If there were anything in the argument, it would appear
much more likely that they would endeavour to destroy the
officer who first detected them than the one who was ap
pointed to detain them in prison.
In the latter case, from
the discipline of our prisons, it would' be all but impossible
for a criminal to murder his gaoler and escape. But in
the other case, the chances are somewhat in his favour. Sup
�14
pose a man. to be detected by a policeman or other person in
the act of burglary or robbery from the person. There is the
temptation to destroy the only witness of his offence from the
fact that it is more difficult to convict a man for the crimp, of
murder than for any other offence. The chances of escape are
as three to one. Mr. Francart, an avocat at Mons, in a
speech made at Liege, makes use of a fact corroborative of
the experience of practical men in this country.
He is
speaking of the impunity which is afforded to the murderer
from the difficulty of securing convictions.
This speech was
made at Liege, 29th November, 1863 :—
il Let another result of these researches be mentioned; in
eight hundred and twenty-six cases of assassination, murder,
poisoning, &c., there have been twenty-three executions,
that is to say, about one execution for thirty-six crimes.
2Economiste Beige, made this remarkable comparison. In the
decennial period from 1835 to 1844, it was estimated that
about thirty-five thousand colliers worked in the interior of
the mines; there were two thousand and thirty-five victims,
of whom one thousand one hundred and seventy-five were
killed. The risk of death was then one in thirty for the
collier; it was only one in thirty-six for the assassin.
“ That signifies, adds ‘ VEconomiste ’ with much reason, that
it is more dangerous with us to expose one’s-self to the
fire-damp than to the guillotine.”
“I should admit with ease, as may be imagined, the efficacy
of the punishment of death, if the author of every crime
against which it is in force, might consider it as almost certain
that he would be discovered* arrested, condemned and executed.
But when I see that he may hope for such chances, first of
escaping from all pursuit of justice, then of being acquitted,
often for want of sufficient proofs, and lastly, of not being
executed, I say, that the criminal has every reason to regard
the menace of death only as it appears to the collier who
descends into the mine, and, in general, to every one liable to
a certain extent to lose his life in consequence of the profession
that he exercises; it is nothing more than a remote danger,
the ordinary risk of a trade more or less dangerous.”
The argument of Mr. Francart would of course only apply
�15
to cases where the murderers had entered into calculations of
their chances of escape. It could not apply to cases like that
of Jones, which has been cited in this article, or that of Hall
of Birmingham. It could not apply to cases where the murder
was committed under sudden impulse or provocation.
But surely the people who urge this objection of danger
to warders and gaolers—overlook what is done at Broadmoor
Asylum. In that establishment there are above four hundred
and fifty inmates, about four hundred men, and from fifty to
sixty women. They are nearly all persons who have committed
murder, but who have been respited during Her Majesty’s
pleasure, on the ground of insanity. There is this large number
of criminal lunatics, and if they are really such, a most
dangerous class. Many of them no doubt will have strong
desires to escape, and as it is the character of the class to
be artful and cunning beyond that of sane men, they will
be adroit in their attempts to do so. It is only necessary to
adopt the same system of precaution and restraints in relation
to the murderer, whether pronounced sane or insane. From
the known capabilities of the human mind, it may safely be
inferred, ceturis paribus that what a man has done once, he
will be liable to do again. It would therefore follow, that the
protection of society demands that the man or woman who
has committed murder, should be prevented from repeating the
offence. If the arrangements carried out at Broadmoor be fully
considered, they supply in great part an answer to the inquiry
so often raised, what is the. substitute you would recommend,
if you abolish Capital Punishment?
In the last number of Meliora, a publication which has
obtained a reputation for its advanced opinions on most social sub
jects, this objection—for it really assumes that shape—appears in
a report of the last Social Science Congress. It is stated “that
it is doubtful whether one of the real questions at issue has
attracted the full share of attention it deserves.” And again
that “there would seem to be less difficulty in obtaining the
abolition of Capital Punishment, than in providing a substitute.”
This is an instance of common place reasoning, and the writer
has obviously not considered the propositions he lays down.
It ought to be known by the writers in Meliora, who have
�16
as yet, an unpopular but correct principle to advocate, that
it is usual for objectors and opponents to ride off upon issues
which are only remotely connected with—or which are totally
irrevalent to the main, issue. It is often honestly done—and
not intended for that purpose, but whatever be the motive,
it succeeds in creating a diversion, and delays the acceptance
of the truth embodied in the major proposition, or great
principle enunciated.
Thus the men who came forward to advocate the anti
slavery cause, on the broad, plain and intelligible ground
that it was a crime against God to make a commercial
article of a man-—like a horse or a pig—were met very often
by the plea that it would be dangerous to liberate all the
slaves; or by thequestion—What do you propose to do with
all those slaves unused and unfit for freedom, if you carry out your
doctrines of abolition ? It was of course a matter of sound
policy, and wise statesmanship, to consider well what should
be done to put the slaves, which the infernal system of
slavery had degraded, in the pathway of civilization and im
provement. It is a question which prudent men would not
neglect, but it did not affect the main issue.
The first
principle was to decide whether it was right or wrong for
man to hold property in man. All questions of policy,
expediency and precaution, were subordinate to the settlement
of that question ; and in fact it was absolutely necessary in
that, as it is in all other cases, to settle the principle
before the questions of policy could be entered upon. First
establish whether the slave - is properly held in bondage, and
then it will be much easier to decide what is the duty to
him when his chains are struck off. It is the misfortune
of all movements that the details are mixed up with prin
ciples, and men are accustomed to reason from the tail to the
head of a series of propositions rather than in the logical way.
Another instance may be named. A number of economists,
among whom is Mr. Cobden, have protested against the
increase of our armaments on the ground that such increase
was unnecessary and mischievous.
There was a principle
enunciated, and the answer would have been to show that
the increase was necessary. In how many instances was the
�17
to a,in question. evaded, and in how few was it ever met 1
But it was attempted to show the danger of disbanding the
whole army and navy, throwing upon society a large body
of men who had been trained to the use of arms, and who
by that training had been rendered unfit for any other
pursuit.
Not to multiply illustrations—abundance of which are at
hand—the Alliance movement, of which Meliora is one of
the organs, is a case strictly in point. The Alliance advocates
a Permissive Bill which seeks to give power to every
municipality, on the petition of two-thirds of the rate-payers,
to pass a local law, to prohibit the sale of intoxicating drinks,
on the ground that such traffic is productive of crime, poverty,
and a host of social evils. The question is a simple one
enough, and before a single step is taken—it is necessary to
ascertain whether this allegement against the traffic be well
founded, and then whether such power ought to be plaeed in
the hands of the people. It is simply absurd to discuss details
until this principle be settled. But what are the advocates
of the Permissive Bill called upon to do ? They are drawn
away upon a number of minor issues, and at York, one of their
ablest advocates, occupied nearly all the time allotted to him,
as one of the speakers, at a public meeting, in chasing through
a number of fantastic mazes the fallacies uttered in the House
of Commons in a recent debate—it would seem just as reason
able for the advocates of Prohibition, to be expected to show
what is to be done with all the interests engaged in the liquor
traffic, before an assent is given to their first principle—as to
ask what is the substitute for the gallows.
The main issue, so far as capital punishment is concerned,
rests therefore upon the expediency of retaining or abolishing
it. It would argue a great poverty of resources in a Christian
and civilized state to confess that we do not know what to
do with men if we do not hang them. We execute on the
average some dozen murderers in a year. Would there be any
great difficulty in sending them to Broadmoor for a limited
time to admit of proper scientific examination. If they were
pronounced of sound mind, put them to labour which would
be remunerative to the society whose laws they have violated—
�18
treat the sane murderer as Victor Townley has been treated.
If he be insane, let him be treated as Macnaughten is. In
either case he is under restraint; and surely the devices of our
prisons and asylums, which have had expended upon them
so much money, skill and labour, can protect society from the
return of the murderer, just as effectually as by hanging him
and interring the body in the precincts of the prison. Under
the present system it is a question whether some of the most
dangerous murderers do not escape from death and also from
restraint, o'wing to the growing repugnance to capital punish
ment.
It is not incumbent upon those .who seek the abolition of
the death penalty to find or suggest the substitute.
They
object to the penalty as not answering its purpose, and they
have proved their case. It is quite a supplemental matter to
design the substitute. It is a stale objection. In all debates
in Parliament, whenever a capital penalty was sought to be
abolished, the argument was used. There is no difference ex
cept in the form which the argument assumes. When Mr.
Thomas Fowell Buxton moved, May 23, 1821, for mitigating
the severity of punishment in certain cases of forgery, he was
met by the Solicitor-General, who pleaded for the retention of
the punishment of death on the ground of—(1) its necessity;
(2) that no efficient substitute had been provided. In the very
second sentence of Mr. Buxton’s speech, he thus refers to it.
“The Solicitor-General has stated that no efficient substitute
for capital punishment has as yet been discovered, and there
fore as yet the House is not in a condition to discuss that
species of penalty.” This was in 1821.
The death penalty has however been repealed in cases of
forgery, burglary, arson, and a host of other offences, with a
decided advantage, and a substitute has been found; and so it
will be in cases of murder, whenever public opinion is prepared
to abolish the office of the hangman. No one wishes to re
turn to the errors of a past and sanguinary jurisprudence,
Improved manners and milder laws have kept marching on
together, acting and reacting upon each other, and whatever
may be the report of the present Commission, the Abolition
of Death Punishment must ultimately be carried out in all
�19
civilized communities.
Jurists in all parts of Europe have
lost reliance upon punishment of any kind as a deterrent
from crime in any large degree, and this is the best guarantee
of progress in the amelioration of criminal codes. Wherever
fjiey are more severe than the temper of the people, they
lose their efficacy altogether, and promote the perpetration of
crimes they are intended to repress.
The following statement, made by Professor Thonissen, of the
University of Louvain, is worthy of attention.
“ In Belgium, as we shall see further on, all those condemned
to death received a commutation of the punishment from 1830
to 1833 ; and yet capital crimes were more rare there than
under the regime of the Low Countries, where the judicial
power constantly displayed an unusual severity.
“ After the revolution of September, during three years, from
1830 to 1833, the punishment of death was in reality repealed,
and, according to official documents which must inspire entire
confidence, the following results are arrived at:—
“ In 1830, the number of capital condemnations was two;
in 1831, nine; in 1832, fourteen, comprising four condemnations
by outlaw; in 1833, seven, comprising two condemnations by
outlaw.
“The adversaries of the punishment of death lay hold of
these results as a peremptory demonstration of the excellence
of their doctrine. Under the government of the Low Countries,
where out of one hundred and fifty condemnations, there had
been seventy-four executions, the number of capital decrees
reached, on an average, nearly fourteen per year for seven
provinces; while, under the regime issuing from the barricades
of September, in the absence of all executions, the number of
condemnations, for the nine provinces of the kingdom, had only
reached, on an average, the number of eleven.”
Printed by William H. Wabb & Co., 17, Featherstone Buildings, Holborn, W.C,
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The Royal Commission and the punishment of death
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Beggs, Thomas
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 19 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from The Social Science Review. Printed by William H. Warr & Co., London. Date of publication from KVK.
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Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment
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[1866]
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G5392
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (The Royal Commission and the punishment of death), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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Crime
Capital punishment
Capital Punishment
Conway Tracts
Death Penalty
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CRIMINAL TREATMENT-DESIDERATA
[Issued by the Howard Association.]
1. Abolition, of the prevalent practice of repeated short sentences where the first has
failed to deter.
2. Such a modification of the present prison system as shall make it more reformatory,
by means of training the inmates in remunerative occupations which will support them
honestly after discharge. [“ Unfortunately, criminals are detained, but they are not
reformed” (J. T. Hibbert, Esq., M P., at Manchester, 1869). Prisoners in England cost
£35 each per annum on the average, earn barely £2 each, not ljd. per day, and on dis
charge are often less able than previously to support themselves.]
3. In connection with this reformatory treatment, the Mosaic principle of restitzition, and
the exaction of pecuniary compensation in prison, or after discharge, under satisfactory
guarantees and supervision, may be beneficially adopted.
4. Increased central power of repression, by means of systematic supervision of persons
habitually criminal, or the associates of such ; also by the appointment of public prosecutors,
such as the District Procurators Fiscal in Scotland. (75 per cent, of English crimes are un
detected and unpunished.)
5. Diminution of the excessive number of drinking licenses, and, in particular, some
effectual regulation of certain places of popular resort, which, under the pretext of harm
less entertainments, are, practically, large brothels, and wholesale sources of vice
and crime.
6. The Prison Act of 1865 requires modification. It was useful in so far as it extended
the system of separation, a system which (if not pushed to intemperate extremes) is neces
sary to prevent contamination, and which ought to be carried still further than at present
as regards the association of the inmates of convict prisons. The serious defects of the
Prison Act are, firstly, its attaching too much importance to “marks,” by which the
practised and cunning “gaol-bird” may derive undue advantage over others; secondly,
and chiefly, its very objectionable tendency to restrict and discourage remunerative and
reformatory labour, and to promote useless, unreforming occupations, such as “ grinding
the wind.” The treadmill, crank, etc., are only of service as a reserve power to enforce
tasks of useful hard labour.
ILLUSTRATIONS OR SUGGESTIONS.
USELESS SHORT SEKTEUCES.
“ Weary of Life.—Mary Mahony was charged with being drunk in
Arundal Lane, Waterford, on Sunday night. The offence was proved.
The magistrate, Dr. J. Mackesy, said that he had given the subject a
great deal of consideration, and he saw that there was not the slightest
use in sending such' persons to j ail week after week, it did them no good.
They should be taught industrial habits, and have time to reflect on the
sinfulness of their past career. The prisoner—“Do, for God’s sake,
send me to penal servitude. What is the use of sending me to jail day
after day. I have no home in Waterford. I am weary of my life
(bursting into a flood of tears), oh, that I were dead. I come out of jail
in the morning to get drunk at night, and then I am sent back again. I
�2
live in. jail nearly all my time. My life is a trouble to me.” The
prisoner was sent to jail for one month.—“Waterford Standard,” Feb
ruary 10, 1869.
EXPIATION AND REFORMATION. .
“ At present, every man who steals, say a sheep, has to pay a different
penalty. This man is sentenced to six months, that other to twelve
months, and then another to fifteen years of penal servitude, according
to the discretion of the judge; and instead of being made to pay the
price of the sheep and the costs of his prosecution, he becomes a grievous
harden to the honest tax-payer, who has to supply him with chaplains,
schoolmasters, surgeons, cooks, bakers, tailors, and a whole host of
servants in livery to minister to his wants, and so unJit him for the practice
of economy, frugality, and other kindred virtues when his fetters are cut.
Under a law based on the principle of restitution, the man of good cha
racter and industrious habits might be able to find sureties to enable him
to discharge his debt to the State under the surveillance of the autho
rities, without being surrounded by prison walls. The man of middling’
character might only have a limited amount of liberty, such as the responible authorities might grant him. Whilst the man of bad character
would have to discharge his debt inside prison walls, where he might
still continue a villain in habits and heart, and increase his debt by fresh
acts of dishonesty; but this would be his own fault, and the safety-valve
of the machinery. If we except the tailoring and the shoemaking done
for the use of the establishment, there are really no other employments
suitable for the general class of men who find their way into prison. The
professional thief—and I am now speaking of the reformation, as well as
the punishment of criminals—requires to be taught some trade for which
he has a natural aptitude before it is possible for him to gain a livelihood;
and he must be taught it well, for unless he is a skilled workman he would
not be worth the wages necessary to keep him out of temptation. To go
on punishing such men in the hope that we will make them honest, is
absurd; and to persevere in “reforming” them without teaching them
practically that which is indispensable to their remaining honest, is
equally ridiculous,—“ Six years in the Prisons of England,” by a
Merchant, in Temple Bar Magazine, February, 1869.
AN OBJECTION TO REMUNERATIVE PRISON LABOUR ANSWERED.
“As far as the interests of society are concerned, the sooner a criminal
can be turned into a honest and industrious citizen, the better; the
‘ protection ’ afforded is the more complete, the more prompt, and the
less costly. One class of objectors urge that, by taking all this pains to
reform and train the criminal, to teach him a trade, to instil habits of
industry, and to inaugurate him in a respectable way of life, the State
incurs the risk of disheartening honesty^ and encouraging crime.
This is an objection for the forum,—rather showy than substantial.
�3
A ™ry slight consideration of the facts of prison discipline, and a
VTOFsuperficial acquaintance with the peculiar character of the class of
professional offenders, will suffice to convince us of its futility. No one
would willingly select so circuitous and so painful a channel by which to
arrive at a respectable and self-supporting position. Months of separate
confinement, entire and continuous seclusion from all old associates, severe and
unremitting labour, monotony of scene and thought, enforced regularity, abstin
ence from all sensual indulgences, and the indefinite duration of all these condi
tions, constitute a picture which, we may be sure, presents nothing that is
^attractive to the criminal, nothing that can seem enviable to the honest labourer.
The most marked and universal characteristics of the criminal population
are self-indulgence and a hatred of order; a scene where hours are early
and toil is regular,—where there are no women, no tobacco, and no spirits,—
is, in their eyes, little better than a hell.”—“St. Paul’s Magazine,” Feb., 1869.
COMPETITION.
The competition of prison labour with free industry is found, in B
practice, to be almost infinitesimal, on account of the comparatively very X
small number of prisoners, as compared with outsiders. If not taught
to earn a living by an honest trade, the prisoner, when discharged,!.so
will live at a terrible cost to the ratepayers’ purses, property, and persons.!!©
PRISON ACT OF 1865.
j
r “ The present Prison Act operates most mischievously, and has given '
new strength and encouragement to anti-reformers. I am constantly
met by the objection—‘ Oh, the Prison Act will not allow us to do this—
and leaves us no choice about prohibiting that''1'—(Letter from Sir John'- '
Bowring to Mr. Tallack, Secretary of Howard Association, February^*’613th, 1869.)
' ' ’<obra
“ The Justices should report to the Secretary of State, yearly at least, ‘
as to what they are doing. There is no real responsibility at present.”— >J
(Same Letter.) (Similar testimonies are borne by experienced prison
.officers, as to the Act of 1865).
.
• .nj■ n ,'.<71!
ip!
H<T>
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE MAY BE PONE.
. J.’:;.' pdt
'•
■, W (’
Wakefield Prison—One of the very best in Great Britain (thanks to'no’z’
Lord Houghton, and other visiting Magistrates, Mr. Shepherd, Governor, z f |
Captain Armitage, Governor, Mr. Whitely, etc.). Average number of -0 f
inmates, 1,269, of whom four-fifths are for short terms, not exceeding three
months. This prison is at present what many other prisons ought to
f
be, viz., regular manufactory, with steam power. In the four years 1 ’’
(1865-8) the prison has purchased £159,176 worth of material, and sold :
its products (chiefly mats) for £189,652, cash, paid by the public, over the jj
office counter, and not mere artificial value, per official estimate, (as in '
the case of much of the value of labour reported from English Convict !ifI ]<■
Prisons.) Average yearly stock on hand, £16,888. Profit in four years
�4
(net) £31,132. Annual profit (net) £7,783. Average earnings per
worker, £7 14s. 4(7. (or, including non-workers, £6 3s. 3(7.)
The prisons at Manchester New under Bailey, Capt. Mitchell, (with
Mr. J. T. Hibbert, M.P., etc., as Visiting Magistrates); Bedford, unchr
Mr. R. E. Roberts ; Liverpool, borough, under Capt. Veitch ; Newcastle,
under Mr. Robins; Holloway, under Mr. Weatherhead ; Leeds, Durham,'
Cardiff, Birmingham, Petwcrth, Hull, etc., have also done much, con
sidering the great difficulties of the present system.
French Prisoners (on average) cost half as much as English, and earn
double (with fewer re-committals.)
Massachusetts State Prison.—Mr. Gideon Haynes, Governor, reports
to the Howard Association, 1869, that in 1868, the prison labour of 558
convicts earned £25,230 (126,151 dollars, cash paid by contractors,)
which, after paying all prison expenses, salaries, etc., left a clear net
profit of £5,529 (27,646 dollars.) (Average earnings of each prisoned]
about £46.) Net profits of prison (over all expenses) £10,000 in two
years, i.e., a revenue to the State.
Vice Versa.—The prisoners at Exeter gaol, for years past, have’
earned about one farthing each per day, or about 5s. per annum ! Many
other prisons are little better.
\ |
Test oe “Deterrence.”—In 1868, Rev. David Dyer, Chaplain of
Albany Prison, New York (self-supporting), visited the chief prisons of
the United Kingdom. He has recently, 1869, published a report of his
observations. After remarking, 111 was greatly surprised in my visits to
learn how very little the prisons in Great Britain generally yield to their own
support
he states that he was told that the present system was con
sidered more “ deterrent.” “ I asked if this was the practical result of
this course, and was assured it was not, for that the number of re-j
committals was very large, not less than 39 pei’ cent.”
Again—In the Massachusetts State Prison, a system chiefly designed
for deterrence, was adopted, from 1847 to 1857, with the frequent use of
the lash, and comparatively little remunerative labour. From 1857 to
1867 (under Mr. Haynes,) a more reformatory system was adopted. Not
only have important pecuniary advantages resulted, but the committals
AND RE-COMMITTALS HAVE DECREASED IN THE LATTER PERIOD ABOUT 20 PER,
CENT.
The Howard Association was instituted (under the patronage of the: | $
late Lord Brougham) for the promotion of the best methods of Penal
Treatment and Crime Prevention. Treasurer, R. N. Fowler, Esq.,
M.P. ; Secretary, William Tallack ; Office, 5, Bishopsgate Street Without,
London, E. C. It has laboured, with much success; to indoctrinate the
public mind with the importance of a more reformatory and radically,
preventive treatment of criminals.
. J
J
�2
persons so detained. Also, that experience, both home and foreign, proves
that protracted confinement, for thirty years and upwards, may be carried
out compatibly with the health of the prisoners as to mind and body.
That the capital penalty often endangers the sacrifice of innocent persons,
and has sometimes caused the death of such.
That, in modern times, this danger repeatedly tends to facilitate the
escape of the guilty, inasmuch as jurors rightly feel that, in the case of
an irrevocable fatal punishment, a more absolute certainty of evidence is
requisite for conviction than under any other circumstances, however
extreme. On the other hand, in murder cases, it is generally more difficult
to obtain certain evidence than in any other forms of crime.
That the great number of homicidal criminals rightly exempted from
execution, on the ground of insanity, offers another inevitable obstacle to the
enforcement of capital punishment, inasmuch as it causes special hesitation
and interposition in the case of criminals whose sanity may be reasonably
doubtful. This is the more frequent at present, inasmuch as the highest
medical authorities have pronounced the English law of criminal lunacy to
be irreconcilable with the facts of science and experience.
That capital punishment is, particularly on some or all of the above
grounds, opposed to the spirit of Christianity, and to the plain scope of
Holy Scripture ; and, although a very few isolated texts may be quoted in
its apparent warrant, such a method of quotation may support, with much
greater force, slavery, irresponsible despotism, and polygamy, evils which
are now, nevertheless, condemned by the common consent of Christendom.
For these and other reasons, your Petitioners humbly solicit your
Honourable House to abolish the capital penalty, and to substitute one
exempt from its peculiar evils.
And your Petitioners will ever pray, &c.
_ Petitions are of value, not merely as informing Parliament of public
opinion, but still more as affording opportunities whilst being signed for the
discussion of important principles. Their utility may be enhanced by their
being noticed with some detail in the local press.
Petitions pass post free if open at the end, and addressed to an M.P. at
the House of Commons. They should always be accompanied by a note to
the M.P., addressed to his private residence.
Petitions need not be written with expensive elegance, but in plain
handwriting throughout. There must be no writing on the back of the
sheets, and no erasures or interlineations.
A Petition with a very few signatures, from any locality, is much better
than none at all.
N.B.—It is not desirable that Petitions from various localities should
be identical in form. The above form is therefore merely meant to be
suggestive. Parts of it may be omitted, modified, or added to, at pleasure.
�FORM OF PETITION
FOR THE
ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
(Issued by the Howard Association, London.)
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom in Parliament
assembled.
The Petition of the Inhabitants of ...
Humbly showeth,
.
That, in the view of your Petitioners, there are many strong reasons for
abolishing the Punishment of Death.
. That, inasmuch as familiarity with the deprivation of life, even of brute
animals, tends to lessen the repugnance first felt towards such deprivation;
so, in like manner, the deliberate putting to death of crim in ala diminishes
rather than increases the popular reverence for human life, which is so
essential to public security.
That this decreased reverence for human life, as an effect of capital
punishment, has been further abundantly proved by the fact, often ascer
tained by the authorities of various gaols, that the great majority of
murderers committed thither had previously been witnesses of executions.
That the “ Judicial Statistics ” show that the chief proportion of the
murders perpetrated in this country are committed through drunken rage
or ungovernable jealous fury—conditions which, practically, preclude the
idea of deterrence by any legal penalty whatsoever, and against which the
severest secondary punishment therefore offers as great a security as any
other infliction.
. That, , as regards murders deliberately planned, the deterrence which
might, with some apparent reason, be claimed for the capital penalty in
these cases is greatly lessened, if not altogether nullified, by the constant
uncertainty of its infliction, which all experience of the conditions of modern
jurisprudence, and of the various difficulties peculiar to that penalty, uni
tedly show to be inevitable.
That the experience of many foreign States, where capital punishment,
has been abolished for periods of twenty, or even fifty, years or upwards,
has proved indubitably that at least equal security from murder is effected
by the substituted penalty.
That the experience of our own country, for many years,’’proves the
practicability of a safe substitute, inasmuch as the “Judicial Statistics”
show that a large number (in some years more than half) of the murderers
sentenced to death have had their sentences commuted to life-long con
finement ; that, again, many murderers of the most dangerous description
(criminal lunatics) are safely confined for life at Broadmoor ; and that, in
neither instance, does such secondary infliction give rise (unless in the
rarest exceptional case) to further murders, of their guards or others, by the
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Criminal treatment - desiderata
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Howard Association (London)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 4, [2] p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Last two pages bound in wrong order. Includes text of a petition against capital punishment. The Association now known as the Howard League for Penal Reform.
Publisher
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Howard Association
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[187-]
Identifier
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G5390
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Rights
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Criminal treatment - desiderata), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
Subject
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Crime
Capital punishment
Capital Punishment
Conway Tracts
Prison Reform
Prisons