Any act which The Bloody Code lasted from 1688 to 1815. 149 Paul Muskett, English Smuggling in the Eighteenth Century (Open Univ. While it is true that in such areas, and particularly in Wales, legal traditions tended to emphasize restorative rather than punitive justice in cases of property crime, many other forces were at work.124, In England and Wales, the core area studied here, several broader social and economic factors also correlate well with very low execution rates. Even though the judges thought it necessary to make an example, the Glamorgan jurors and petitioners won the day, their key counter-arguments being that the condemned man himself was a victim of this policy, and that, the execution of the sentence would undoubtedly operate unfavourably in this country by preventing prosecutions in future and the frequency of such offences is certainly likely to be increased by resorting to such extremes as will deter humane sufferers from arraigning future offenders.86, There is also considerable evidence that county sheriffs, who were responsible for organizing hangings and therefore experienced them much more directly, were especially prone to oppose the capital punishment system in areas on the periphery. The pattern is clear. 9 Peter King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 17401820 (Oxford, 2000); J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 16601800 (Oxford, 1986); Douglas Hay, Hanging and the English Judges: The Judicial Politics of Retention and Abolition, in David Garland, Randall McGowen and Michael Meranze (eds. Gradually during the middle of the nineteenth century the number of capital offences was reduced, and by 1861 was down to five. It has been estimated that over one-third of all criminals convicted between 1788 and 1867 were transported to Australia and Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). By analysing how reformers used the scandal surrounding forgery to foster the notion that the law was a bloody code, this article presents a new perspective on the early nineteenth-century penal reform debate. Moreover, since prosecutors were drawn from much the same social groups as jurors, historians have suggested that they would have resembled jurors in their outlook.67 If this was the case, prosecutors on the periphery would almost certainly have been more reluctant to prosecute, and more reluctant to use capital charges, which may help to explain why indictment rates for capital property crimes were much lower.68 It is therefore likely that the pattern of differential erosion in conviction rates for capital property offences, which we can definitely trace across jury decision-making, may well have begun much earlier in the prosecution process.69. It was known as the Bloody Code because of the huge numbers of crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed. The potential impact of linguistic differences was also particularly great in Wales, though it may well have played an equally important role elsewhere on the periphery. Has data issue: false Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. Entries can be 2D artworks in any medium (except exclusively photography) and relate to the themes of Construction or Technology. The pattern was also broken in 1786 in Cumberland: see TNA, E 389/247, T 90/165; NLW, Crime and Punishment, searching the database for the offence category of sheep-stealing for the years 17301800. Wales at this time. The Bloody Code isnt an official name: it was coined some time afterwards in acknowledgment of the justice systems increasingly gruesome nature, though precisely when isnt clear. In the same year, the Judgment of Death Act also allowed judges to use their own discretion when passing sentences, and gave them the power to commute a death sentence to imprisonment except in cases of murder and treason. Allow us to analyse website use and to improve the visitor's experience. Two others were recorded as guilty of felony, but no punishment is listed: figures for Essex based on assize records as listed in King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 133. and included: stealing sheep; poaching fish; cutting down a growing tree; 71 J. M. Beattie, Policing and Punishment in London, 16601750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror (Oxford, 2001), 3467, and on the role of the recorder, 4502; Simon Devereaux, Peel, Pardon and Punishment: The Recorders Report Revisited, in Devereaux and Griffiths (eds. However, those on the receiving end of official punishments are disproportionately drawn from the most marginalised sections of . 'Bloody Code' is the term sometimes used to describe the legal system in place in England between the late 17th and early 19th centuries, when more than 200 offences came to carry the death penalty - many of which appear trivial today. Historians accounts of the nature and timing of the growth of opposition to the capital statutes may also need considerable modification. Victorian writers Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray were also strong critics of public executions and questioned the effects they had on spectators. For another contrast, Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 5367, states that Surrey hanged 101 property offenders in the years 174975; while in Durham there were only two hangings for property crimes between 1755 and 1775: Report on the Criminal Laws, 2424. There are many factors to why the Blood Code was abolished. 36 The returns for 1819 contain good data for an increasing number of areas by the final quarter of the eighteenth century, and Figures 1 and 2 use this data, along with information from the sheriffs expense records prior to 1780. Criminals were often These changes were known as the Criminal or Bloody Code. Similar evidence about potent local opposition to executions for burglary can be seen in 1813 when William Morgan was left to hang at Cardiff against the explicit recommendation of the jury. under-valued stolen goods so that the accused would no longer face the Why was there a revolution in punishment and policing 1750 -1900 By 1850 the Bloody Code had been swept away Prison sentences became the most common punishment Professional police forces set up. Rethinking the Bloody Code in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Capital Punishment at the Centre and on the Periphery by Peter King and Richard Ward. Green (eds. (eds. 70 Pardons and executions have been identified using the following sources: TNA, Sheriffs Cravings, T 64/262, T 90/14866, Sheriffs Assize Calendars, E 389/2428; Cal. * See the sources cited in nn. When she escaped the cell was not locked, he pointed out, because the sheriff had failed to provide locks and bolts. ), Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 16601850 (Manchester, 2003). 31 Using population estimates for 1760 based on Scottish Population Statistics including Websters Analysis of Population, 1755, ed. Historians working on criminal justice in particular regions have occasionally made reference to the possibility that the geography of execution was uneven. Hilary M. Thomas (Cardiff, 1987), 130. By 1841, only murder and treason remained capital crimes, which. 58 TNA, ASSI 35/189215. photography exhibition on the theme of Freedom. If the Bloody Code was often a dead letter on the periphery, it was primarily because the citizens of those areas chose to make it so. Providing there was strong evidence of malice behind their crimes, youths aged 714 could also find themselves facing the gallows. Welsh jurors mainly used a different method: they were much more willing to acquit fully these types of offender. 49 King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 18. } See also a thirty-year claim in Brecon in A Circumstantial Account of the Evidence Produced on the Trial of Lewis Lewis the Younger (Brecon, 1789). Engraving In London about 590 property offenders went to the gallows in 175075. The 'Bloody Code' was the name given to the English legal system from the late 17th Century to the early 19th Century. ), Centre et priphrie: Bretagne, Cornouailles/Devon. At the assizes were the grand jurors more willing to dismiss the accusation as not found, and if the indictment was sent on to the petty jurors, were they less willing to convict, and/or more willing to use partial verdicts to reduce the conviction to a non-capital one? In some cases, offenders were offered mercy if they joined the army or navy. It is conceivable that some not found indictments in Essex were not kept. First, the attitudes of the wealthy men who made the law were They felt that people who committed crimes were sinful, lazy or greedy and deserved little mercy. of Leicester Ph.D. thesis, forthcoming). By 1815 it was 215! Gatrells emphasis on the sudden revolution represented by the dramatic and rapid retreat from hanging in the 1830s may also need revisiting.138 If, as he suggests, it was not obvious to most people before the 1830s that capital punishment for relatively trivial crimes was an inhumane way of dealing with crime, how can we explain the strong tradition of wide-scale reluctance to execute property offenders that had already been in place for nearly a century on the periphery?139. We catch up with our former ghost tour extraordinaire Claire Finn to see whether she has any spooky stories to tell. Attitudes of wealthy men who made the law were unsympathetic. for this article. 73 The period covered was 17551815: see King, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 274. This was frequently charged by sheriffs in the cravings, but never allowed by the Treasury: TNA, T 90/168. Seven sheep-stealers were tried: he left two to hang. Over two hundred cases of horse and sheep theft in Surrey in 16601800 produced no partial verdicts. She was under the wing and shield of the country and her escape, he claimed, was no accident.96 The Home Office was not always powerless in such situations, but the difficulties they experienced in extracting sufficient information, and their desire to keep such matters out of the public eye, often forced them to compromise. However, Moreover, two of the three counties in Wales with less radically low execution rates were among the few areas where Welsh speaking was also less prevalent.122 Unfortunately very limited evidence has survived for eighteenth-century Ireland, the other major Celtic region that could be used for comparison. 2023 is the 150th anniversary of The Technology and Construction Court (TCC), a major specialist Court that deals with disputes about building, engineering and all kinds of technology including software. A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England, 15501750, 2nd edn (London, 1999), 902. Grab a signed and hardback copy of Tom Holland's Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age - worth 30! Of approximately 35,000 people sentenced to death in England and Wales between 17701830, its thought that only 7,000 executions were actually carried out. Around 25 per cent of inmates died each year during the mid-18th century a figure that was often higher than the annual execution rate. off a limb such as an arm or a leg). However, the actual figure for Durham may have been three: TNA, DURH 16/12; Maureen Anderson, Durham Executions from 1700 to 1900 (Barnsley, 2007), 225. The First, the Welsh judges themselves were much lesser figures than their equivalents in England. Towns did have constables, but they were unpaid and only worked during their spare time. Many of the new offences related to property, including damage to gardens and cattle, and it was hoped that the severity of the resulting punishments would act as deterrents to further criminal activity and protect landowners interests. 68 Prosecutors may also have been more willing to create an acquittal by inadequately presenting the evidence at the assizes. By entering your details, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and privacy policy. eye, it seems like it was a lottery whether the accused would be found 202 (Feb. 2009), 174. Saturday, 12 March 2011 Punishment and the Bloody Code Between 1830 and 1914, there were three major changes in the ways convicted offenders were treated. Later, MP William Ewart led a campaign to ban the practice of hanging in chains, and removed the death penalty for stealing cattle in 1832. World world-renowned photographer, writer and director Brian This was partly because Scotland, which had a different legal system, had largely resisted importing new capital offences from England.141 However, since Wales had the same legal code as England, the fact that Welsh policies towards the hanging of property offenders were also much more merciful than those found in England suggests that differences in statute law were not necessarily the key factor, although administrative differences such as the lower status of the Welsh judges may have played a role. Decommissioned ships known as prison hulks were also used, while those who fell behind on payments could find themselves in debtors prisons. The Essex figure was over five times higher at 58 per cent.64. 59 This difference may have had a long history: 28 per cent of known verdicts in Denbighshire in 16701730 were not found: see Howard, Law and Disorder in Early Modern Wales, 134. ), Penal Practice and Culture. 55 On the strong Welsh traditions of informal punishment, compounding etc., see Sharon Howard, Investigating Responses to Theft in Early Modern Wales: Communities, Thieves and Courts, Continuity and Change, xix (2004), 41315; Jones, Crime in Nineteenth-Century Wales, 213. judges Amanda Sinclair and Ofilaye, will choose from hundreds of applicants to award File previews. The National Justice Museum is looking to expand its collection to reflect the diversity within the legal profession, and to share the lived experiences and the contributions made by Black legal professionals. As Joanna Innes has pointed out, English historians have rarely set studies of crime or poverty within a wider British frame.10 By exploring the uneven implementation of the capital code in England, Wales and Scotland, this article aims to remedy this for at least one important aspect of the criminal justice system. Hostname: page-component-68c7558d77-kf8sx 95 (May 1982). 94 The following account is based on TNA, HO 47/36/4. Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, for example, noted briefly that the north-east had long periods without a hanging, while the limited writing available on Scotland has just started to explore whether Scottish justice was less exacting than the English Bloody Code.5 John Minkess examination of the Brecon Circuit in the 1750s and David J. V. Joness brief article Life and Death in Eighteenth-Century Wales have tentatively suggested that Welsh capital convicts received more favourable punishment, but this work has been largely ignored by those investigating capital punishment in eighteenth-century England.6 While J. S. Cockburn and others have shown an awareness that executions were disproportionately concentrated in London, very few historians have gone beyond a simple and largely unexplored dichotomy between the metropolis and the provinces.7 Although Gatrell mentioned that there were parts of the country where hangings were rare, he did not analyse hanging rates in different areas and, following Leon Radzinowiczs earlier analysis of the execution data found in the Report on the Criminal Laws of 1819, the only eighteenth-century statistics Gatrell quoted related to the south-east of England.8 Detailed studies of Surrey, Essex and Staffordshire have since been published, and Douglas Hay has recently produced some nationwide graphs of pardoning rates after 1760, but we still have no county- or regional-level analyses of execution rates per head of population, which are the key to making effective geographical comparisons about the impact of the Bloody Code.9 Using a hitherto largely neglected set of sources, this article will show that execution rates varied systematically across Britain, and that the Bloody Code was widely used at the centre of the British state but often ignored on the periphery: in the far west, the north and north-west of England, as well as in almost all of Scotland and Wales.
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