Capital punishment in the United Kingdom
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Capital punishment in the United Kingdom refers to the use of capital punishment in the United Kingdom and its constituent countries, predating the formation of the United Kingdom itself.
Although abolished for murder in 1965, it is a matter of historical curiosity that the death penalty remained on the statute book for certain other offences until 1998.
Origins in English Law
Hanging by the neck as form of capital punishment
was introduced to England by the Anglo-Saxon invaders of
the fifth century. By the tenth century it had become
a common method of execution. William the Conqueror decreed that hanging should
only be used for conspirators or in times of war and ordered that criminals should instead be castrated and have their eyes put out. Waltheof, Earl of
Northumbria was the only lord to be formally executed during his reign. William
Rufus (William II) re-introduced hanging but only for those found guilty of poaching royal deer. He too is known to have
executed only a single aristocrat, William of Aldrie. Henry I brought hanging back as the main means of execution for many crimes. William Fitz Osbern was the first recorded execution at Tyburn in 1196. The hanging tree (near present-day Speakers' Corner in
Under the reign of Henry VIII some 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed by various methods including boiling, burning at the stake, beheading and hanging with perhaps the added punishment of drawing and quartering.
Sir Samuel Romilly speaking to the House of Commons on capital punishment in 1810, declared that "..[there is] no country on the face of the earth in which there [have] been so many different offences according to law to be punished with death as in England." Known as the "Bloody Code", at its height some 220 different crimes were punishable by death. These crimes included such offences as "being in the company of Gypsies for one month", "strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age" and "blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime". Many of these offences had been introduced to protect the property of the wealthy classes that emerged during the first half of the eighteenth century; a notable example being the Black Act of 1723 which created fifty capital offences for various acts of theft and poaching.
Whilst executions for murder, burglary and robbery were common, the death sentences of minor offenders were often not carried out. However, children were commonly executed for such minor crimes as stealing. A sentence of death could be commuted or respited (permanently postponed) for reasons such as benefit of clergy, official pardons, pregnancy of the offender or performance of military or naval duty[1] Many believed the situation to be a farce[citation needed]. Between 1770 and 1830, 35,000 were condemned to death in England and Wales but only 7,000 executions were carried out.[2]
Reform
In 1808 Romilly had the death penalty removed for pickpockets and lesser offenders, starting a process of reform that continued over the next 50 years. Since the death penalty was mandatory (although it was frequently commuted by the government), the Judgement of Death Act 1823 gave judges the power to commute the death penalty for all capital crimes except treason and murder. The Punishment of Death, etc. Act 1832 reduced the number of capital crimes by two-thirds. Gibbeting (the public display of executed corpses) was abolished in 1832 and hanging in chains was abolished in 1834. In 1861, several acts of Parliament (24 & 25 Vict; c. 94 to c. 100) further reduced the number of capital crimes to five: murder, treason, espionage, arson in royal dockyards, and piracy with violence (as well as offences under military law). The death penalty was still mandatory for treason and murder, unless commuted.
The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1864–66) concluded (with one dissenter) that there was not a case for abolition but did recommend an end to public executions and this proposal was included in the Capital Punishment (Amendment) Act 1868. From then executions on the island of Great Britain were carried out in prison. The practice of beheading and quartering executed traitors was stopped in 1870.
In 1885, John 'Babbacombe' Lee was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang though he maintained that he was innocent. However, on February 23 at Exeter prison, three attempts were made to carry out his execution, all ending in failure (because when the gallows had been reassembled in the new shed the draw bar was misaligned by one eighth of an inch. Thus one of the hinges of the trap caught on the bar and failed to drop - see Home Office documents on the affair). As a result, Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Lee continued to petition successive Home Secretaries and was finally released from gaol in 1907, having become notorious as the man they couldn't hang.
Juveniles under 16 could no longer be executed from 1908. In 1922 a new offence of Infanticide was introduced to replace the charge of murder for mothers killing their children in the first year of life. In 1930 a parliamentary Select Committee recommended that capital punishment be suspended for a trial period of five years, but no action was taken. From 1931 pregnant women could no longer be hanged (following the birth of their child), and in 1933 the minimum age for capital punishment was raised to 18 (the last known execution of a person under 18 years of age was that of Charles Dobel, 17, hanged at Maidstone together with his accomplice William Gower, 18, in January 1889).
In 1938 the issue of the abolition of capital punishment was brought before parliament. A clause within the 'Criminal Justice Bill' called for an experimental five-year suspension of the death penalty. When war broke out in 1939 the bill was postponed. It was revived after the war and to everyone's surprise was unexpectedly adopted by a majority in the House of Commons (245 to 222 against). In the House of Lords the abolition clause was defeated but the remainder of the bill was passed. Popular support for abolition was absent and the government decided that it would be inappropriate for it to assert its supremacy by invoking the Parliament Act over such an unpopular issue.
Instead, the Home Secretary set up a new royal commission (the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, 1949–1953) with instructions to determine "whether the liability to suffer capital punishment should be limited or modified". The Commission's report discussed a number of alternatives to execution by hanging but rejected them. It had more difficulty with the principle of capital punishment. Popular opinion believed that the death penalty acted as a deterrent to criminals, but the statistics within the report were inconclusive on this issue. Whilst the report recommended abolition from an ethical standpoint, it made no mention of possible miscarriages of justice. It concluded that unless there was overwhelming public support in favour of abolition, the death penalty should be retained.
Between 1900 and 1949, 621 men and 11 women were executed in England and Wales. Thirteen German agents were executed during the Second World War. The Treachery Act 1940 was the only law in the twentieth century to create a new capital offence in civilian law.
By 1957 a number of controversial cases had highlighted the issue of capital punishment once again. Campaigners for abolition were partially rewarded with the Homicide Act 1957. The Act brought in a distinction between capital and non-capital homicide. Only six categories of murder were now punishable by execution. They were:
- Murder in the course or furtherance of theft
- Murder by shooting or causing an explosion
- Murder while resisting arrest or during an escape
- Murder of a police officer
- Murder of a prison officer by a prisoner
- The second of two murders committed on different occasions (if both done in Great Britain).
The police and the government were of the opinion that death penalty deterred offenders from carrying firearms and it was for this reason that such offences remained punishable by death. However, it was hard for many to see the logic of making a burglar who murders with a gun face the death penalty and allowing a rapist who murders with a knife to avoid it.[citation needed]
Abolition
Murder
In 1965 the Labour MP Sydney Silverman, who had committed himself to the cause of abolition for more than 20 years, proposed a private member's bill on abolition which was passed on a free vote in the House of Commons by 200 votes to 98. (A free vote, traditional for issues of conscience such as abortion and capital punishment, is one in which the party whips do not issue directions to MPs.) The bill was subsequently passed by the House of Lords by 204 votes to 104.
The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 suspended the death penalty in England, Wales and Scotland for murder for a period of five years, and substituted a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. In 1969 the Act came up for renewal and the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, proposed a motion to make the Act permanent, which was carried by both houses on December 18, 1969. The death penalty for murder was abolished in Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973.
After abolition of the death penalty for murder, it became a tradition for Parliament to hold a free vote on a motion proposing the restoration of capital punishment in each session. This motion has always been defeated. However the death penalty still survived for other crimes, namely:
- treason (until 1998),
- piracy with violence (until 1998),
- causing a fire or explosion in a naval dockyard, ship, magazine or warehouse (until 1971),
- espionage[3] (until 1981), and
- certain crimes under the jurisdiction of the armed forces, such as mutiny (until 1998).[2]
However no more executions were carried out under UK law.
Last executions
The last woman to be executed in Britain was Ruth Ellis on July 13th 1955.
On 13 August 1964 at 8am Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, were each executed for the murder of John Alan West on 7 April that year.[4] These were the last executions in Britain.
Last death sentences
The last person sentenced to death in England was David Chapman, who was sentenced to hang in November 1965 for the capital murder of a swimming-pool night-watchman in Scarborough. He was released from prison in 1979 and later died in a car accident.
The last person to be sentenced to death in Scotland was Patrick McCarron in 1964 for fatally shooting his wife. He hanged himself in prison in 1970.
The last person to be sentenced to death in Wales was Edgar Black, who was reprieved on 6 November 1963. He had fatally shot his wife's lover in Cardiff.
The last person to be sentenced to death in Northern Ireland was William Holden in 1973 for the capital murder of a British soldier during the Troubles. Holden was removed from the death cell in May 1973.
Final abolition
The Criminal Damage Act 1971 abolished the offence of arson in royal dockyards.
The Naval Discipline Act 1957 reduced the scope of capital espionage from "all spies for the enemy" to spies on naval ships or bases.[5] Later the Armed Forces Act 1981 abolished the death penalty for espionage.[3] (In 1911 the Official Secrets Act had created another offence of espionage which carried a maximum sentence of fourteen years.)
Under a House of Lords amendment to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 the death penalty was abolished for treason and piracy with violence, replacing it with life imprisonment (not mandatory).
On May 20 1998, the House of Commons voted to ratify the 6th Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting capital punishment except "in time of war or imminent threat of war." The last remaining provisions for the death penalty under military jurisdiction (including in wartime) were removed when the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force on 9 November 1998. The UK later (10 October 2003) acceded to the 13th Protocol, which prohibits the death penalty under all circumstances.
As a legacy from colonial times, several islands in the West Indies still had the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the court of last appeal; although the death penalty has been retained in these islands, the Privy Council would sometimes delay or deny executions. Some of these islands severed links with the British court system in 2001 in order to speed up executions.[6]
Crown dependencies
Although not part of the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey are British Crown dependencies.
In the Channel Islands, the last death sentence was passed in 1984, however the last execution in the Channel Islands was in Jersey on 9 October 1959 when Francis Joseph Hutchet was hanged for murder.[7] The Human Rights (Amendment) (Jersey) Order 2006 [8] amends the Human Rights (Jersey) Law 2000 [9] to give effect to the 13th protocol of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms providing for the total abolition of the death penalty.
The last execution on the Isle of Man took place in 1872. Nevertheless, capital punishment was not formally abolished by Tynwald (the island's parliament) until 1993. Five persons were sentenced to death (for murder) on the Isle of Man between 1973 and 1992, although all sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The last person to be sentenced to death in the British Isles was Anthony Teare, who was convicted at the Manx Court of General Gaol Delivery in Douglas in 1992; he was subsequently retried and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1994.[10]
Notable executions
Note: This list does not include the beheadings of nobility.
- 1499: Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the throne, hanged at Tyburn
- 1606: On 31 January the gunpowder plotters of 1605 are hanged, drawn and quartered.
- 1612: The last person in England to be burnt at the stake for heresy was Edward Wightman at Lichfield.
- 1660: At the English Restoration nine regicides were hanged, drawn and quartered for their part in the death of King Charles I. Also John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Ireton were posthumously executed: disinterred from Westminster Abbey and hanged, drawn, and quartered.
- 1681: Saint Oliver Plunkett was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on July 1 1681, and became the last Catholic martyr to die in England.
- 1684: Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards become the last people to be hanged for witchcraft in Britain.
- 1724: Jack Sheppard, house-breaker, is hanged at Tyburn for burglary on 16 November after 4 successful escape attempts from jail. His partner-in-crime, highwayman Joseph "Blueskin" Blake, was similarly executed for the same burglary five days earlier.
- 1725: Jonathan Wild, criminal overlord and fraudulent "Thief Taker General", is hanged at Tyburn on May 24 (over six months after Jack Sheppard's and Blueskin's executions) for actually aiding criminals.
- 1739: Dick Turpin, Highwayman, hanged.
- 1746: The execution for treason of nine Catholic members of the Manchester Regiment, Jacobites, who were hanged, drawn and quartered on Wednesday July 30th 1746 at Kennington Common (now Kennington Park)
- 1760: Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers is executed at Tyburn on 5 May for the murder of a servant. He is the only peer to have been hanged for murder.
- 1789: Catherine Murphy is the last woman to be burned to death (legally) in England. The penalty is abolished the next year.
- 1820: Radicals Andrew Hardie and John Baird hanged and beheaded at Stirling after being illegally tried (under English judicial process) for their part in the 1820 Uprising in Scotland.
- 1828: William Corder is hanged at Bury St. Edmunds on August 11 for the murder of Maria Marten at the Red Barn a year ago.
- 1861: Martin Doyle is the last to be hanged for attempted murder, at Chester on the 27 August.
- 1868: On 2 April Frances Kidder becomes the last woman to be hanged in public.
- 1868: On 26 May the last public hanging in Britain takes place at Newgate Prison as Michael Barrett is executed for the Fenian bombing at Clerkenwell.
- 1910: On 23 November, Hawley Harvey Crippen is hanged in London's Pentonville Prison for the murder of his wife.
- 1914: On 8 September Private Thomas Highgate became the first British soldier to be convicted of desertion and executed (by firing squad) during the First World War.
- 1916: Roger Casement is hanged at Pentonville on 3 August for treason as one of the 7 leaders of the failed Irish Easter Rising.
- 1923: On 9 January, Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters are hanged simultaneously in London's Holloway and Pentonville Prisons respectively. The case was controversial for the fact that Thompson did not directly participate in the murder for which she was hanged.
- 1941: On 15 August the last execution in the Tower of London takes place; Josef Jakobs is shot by firing-squad for treachery.
- 1946: On 3 January William Joyce, better known as "Lord Haw-Haw", is hanged for treason in London's Wandsworth Prison. He was actually an American citizen, not British, and was convicted of treason as he nevertheless owed allegiance to the British sovereign. Theodore Schurch, hanged for treachery the next day, is the last person to be executed for an offence other than murder; he was executed at Pentonville. As a serviceman he was tried by court-martial.
- 1947: On 27 February, Walter Rowland is hanged at Manchester for the murder of Olive Balchin after consistently maintaining his innocence. While he had been awaiting execution, another man had confessed to the crime. A Home Office report dismissed the latter's confession as a fake, but in 1951 this man attacked another woman and was found guilty but insane.
- 1949: On 12 January, Margaret Allen, a 43 yr old who killed a 70 yr old woman in the course of a robbery, becomes the first woman to be hanged in Britain for 12 years.
- 1949: John George Haigh, the "acid-bath murderer", is executed at Wandsworth on 10 August.
- 1950: Timothy Evans is hanged on 9 March at Pentonville for the murder of his baby daughter at 10 Rillington Place, north-west London. He had also confessed to killing his wife. A fellow inhabitant at the same address, John Christie, later found to be a sexual serial killer, gave key evidence against Evans. Christie was executed in 1953 for the murder of his own wife. Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966. In 2004 the Court of Appeal refused to consider quashing the conviction due to the costs and resources that would be involved. See the article on 10 Rillington Place.
- 1950: George Kelly, who was hanged at Liverpool on 28 March of this year for murder, had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2003.
- 1952: Edward Devlin and Alfred Burns are executed on 25 April for killing a woman during a robbery. They claimed that they had been doing a different burglary in Manchester and others involved in the crime supported this. A Home Office report rejected this evidence. Huge crowds gathered outside Liverpool's Walton Prison as they were executed.
- 1952: Mahmood Hussein Mattan, a Somali seaman, is hanged on 3 September in Cardiff for murder. The Court of Appeal quashes his conviction in 1998 after hearing that crucial evidence implicating another Somali as the most likely culprit was withheld at his trial.
- 1953: On 28 January Derek Bentley is executed at Wandsworth prison as an accomplice to the murder of a police officer by his 16 year old friend Christopher Craig. Craig as a minor was not executed and instead served 10 years. Derek Bentley was granted a posthumous pardon on July 29 1993. This did not prevent the Court of Appeal from reconsidering his case, and his conviction was overturned on 30 July 1998.
- 1953: On 15 July John Reginald Halliday Christie is executed at Pentonville for the murder of his wife Ethel.
- 1955: On 13 July Ruth Ellis (28) becomes the 15th, youngest, and last woman to be hanged in Britain in the 20th century.
- 1960: On 10 November Francis Forsyth becomes the last 18-year old to be hanged in Britain (the last teenager to be executed was Anthony Joseph Miller, 19, in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison on 22 December 1960).
- 1961: On December 20, Robert McGladdery, 25, is hanged in Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, the last person to be executed in Northern Ireland, for the murder of Pearl Gamble in Newry.
- 1962: James Hanratty is executed at Bedford on 4 April after a controversial rape-murder trial. In 2002, following his family's efforts to have his conviction overturned, Hanratty's body is exhumed and his DNA compared with samples found at the crime scene. However, the Court of Appeal upholds his conviction after forensic scientists link Hanratty's DNA to the crime scene samples.
- 1963: On 15th of August the last hanging in Scotland was that of 21 year old Henry Burnett, who was executed at Craiginches Prison in Aberdeen for the murder of seaman Thomas Guyan.
- 1964: On 13 August at 8 a.m. Peter Anthony Allen, at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans, at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, are both executed for the murder of John Alan West becoming the last people executed in Britain [4].
See also
- Execution by firing squad in the United Kingdom
- Black Cap
- Courts of the United Kingdom
- Capital Punishment
- List of executioners
- Shot at Dawn Memorial
- UK topics
References
- ^ Punishments at the Old Bailey--Late 17th Century to Early 19th Century (2003). Retrieved on 2007-03-13.
- ^ Gatrell, V. A. C., The Hanging Tree, OUP, Oxford, 1994
- ^ Naval Discipline Act 1957, section 93; previously Naval Discipline Act (1866), section 6.
- ^ Last executions in the UK
- ^ Naval Discipline Act 1957, section 93.[1]
- ^ Bowcott, Owen (2001). Caribbean severs link to privy council. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2007-03-13.
- ^ http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/islands.html
- ^ Human Rights (Amendment) (Jersey) Order 2006
- ^ Human Rights (Jersey) Law 2000
- ^ http://firedrake.org/drpete/manx2.htm
External links
- Murderfile.net - details of all executions in the UK, 1900-1964 (Names of people executed, their victims (if executed for murder), the executioners (where known), date of crime, trial dates, and execution dates and locations).
- A comprehensive site about capital punishment in the UK
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1 Entirely in Southwest Asia; included here because of cultural, political and historical association with Europe. 2 Partially or entirely in Asia, depending on the definition of the border between Europe and Asia. 3 Mostly in Asia. 4 Entirely in the African Plate, included here because of cultural, political and historical association with Europe. 5 Only recognised by Turkey. |
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