Execution: A History of Capital Punishment in Britain by Simon Webb Read Free Book Online Page A

until the late twentieth century. The penalty of hanging, drawing and quartering was abolished by the 1870 Forfeiture Act, which made ordinary hanging the mandatory sentence for High Treason. Whether by oversight or otherwise, the 1870 Act did not remove the right of the monarch to substitute decapitation for hanging. The death penalty for treason was not removed from the statute book until the passing of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, and so until that year it was technically possible for traitors to be hanged. However, until 1973, they could instead, at least in theory, be decapitated if this was the express wish of the reigning monarch. In that year, section 2 of the 1814 Treason Act was repealed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973. It was only from that time onwards, three quarters of the way through the twentieth century, that beheading was finally removed from the statute book.

T HE R ISE OF H ANGING
     
    W e have seen that the first identifiable victims of capital punishment in this country suffered death by beheading. The method of execution most associated with Britain though, is hanging. The adoption of hanging, as the standard form of punishment for a wide range of offences, was a slow and gradual process, which began a few centuries after the end of the Roman occupation in the fifth century AD .
    The first recorded instances of hanging as a judicial punishment in this country are to be found during the Anglo-Saxon period, which immediately preceded the Norman Conquest in 1066. Generally though, during the periods when the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings ruled much of this country, executions were rare. An extensive system of financial compensation was the norm instead. Every injury, from a lost eye to the murder of a husband, could be calculated in monetary terms; the criminal simply paid the victim or his relatives the appropriate sum in silver or gold. Alfred the Great set out a complete scale of compensation to be paid for various offences – starting with the loss of a tooth and going all the way up to the murder of an Archbishop. This changed after the arrival of the Normans. It was William the Conqueror’s youngest son, William Rufus, who made hanging a standard punishment in England. It was at first laid down as the penalty not for murder, but for poaching Royal deer. William Rufus’ brother Henry, who became King Henry I on the death of his brother in 1100, really began the wholesale use of hanging as a judicial punishment in Britain. During his reign, hanging became the accepted punishment for a wide range of offences, ranging from theft to murder.
    Why this enthusiasm for hanging, combined with mutilations such as the removal of eyes and hands? The answer is simple. In Britain today, we rely upon a complicated and expensive nationwide system for the detection and punishment of crime. Prisons for example, cost a great deal to run and are funded by central government from money raised by taxes. The idea of paying to feed and house a criminal, for years at a time, would have seemed utterly bizarre to a Norman baron. Some of the money which he raised from his tenants would have been sent to the King in London, but otherwise, he was free to hang on to as much as he could. Why would he use this money to feed and house poachers, rebels, outlaws and thieves who threatened the smooth running of his district? Hanging or beheading a man disposed of the problem quickly and neatly, with little expense. For lesser offences, cutting off a man’s hand would ensure that if he was caught again, it would be obvious that this was a second offence and thus justified inflicting the death penalty. Branding sometimes served the same purpose. As well as identifying repeat offenders, these measures were also intended to act as deterrents in themselves.
    The great advantage of hanging from the point of view of a pre-industrial society, as opposed to other methods of execution, is that requires no special equipment, nor any