This study investigates the cultural and emotional impact of public executions in England between 1770 and 1868, questioning how the populace perceived the state's use of the death penalty. V. A. C. Gatrell, a historian specializing in the social history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, utilizes a vast array of primary sources to reconstruct the experience of the scaffold. He argues that the transition from public spectacle to private punishment reflected a profound shift in the English national consciousness and moral framework.

Historians and scholars frequently cite this work as a definitive text for understanding the social psychology of the English penal system during the Industrial Revolution. Readers often note the academic density of the prose, which is balanced by the author's extensive use of poignant, previously neglected primary source materials.