
Hanging people for petty crimes as well as grave, the Bloody Penal Code was at its most active between 1770 and 1830. Some 7,000 men and women were executed on public scaffolds, watched by crowds of thousands.This acclaimed study is the first to explore what a wide range of people felt about these ceremonies. Gatrell draws on letters, diaries, ballads, broadsides, and images, as well as on poignant appeals for mercy which, until now, have been largely neglected by historians. Panoramic in range, scholarly in method, and compelling in style and in argument, this is one of those rare histories which both shift our sense of the past and speak powerfully to the present.
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.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
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.
Page Count:
656
Publication Date:
1996-11-28
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192853325
ISBN-13:
9780192853325
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