The Lesson of the Scaffold - The Public Execution Controversy in Victorian England

The movement to abolish public executions in Victorian England is still treated as part of the movement for the abolition of capital punishment. Yet the struggle to rid the nation of public display of the death penalty had an identity and history of its won. The condemnations of public execution were often eloquent literary expressions against cruel forms of punishment. Numerous members of parliament prodded their fellow members to legislate the public gallows out of existence. Newspapers and journals exposed the horrors of public executions and aroused public opinion against them. The study of this movement reveals insights about the condut, attitudes, prejudices and fears of people in 19th century England; it is social history in the raw. The upper classes shared as avidly the interests in executions as the mass of common people, for whom ostensibly the spectacle was provided. Large sums were spent for rooms and seats at windows overlooking the gallows. The penny press sold millions of broadsides purporting to give the lurid details of the crime, and the criminal's own didactic verse written in the condemned cell the night before his execution. Apprehension and indecision impeded reform. There was concern that the lower classes would consider private executions as class legislations, and might not accept the fact of the education of a person of wealth and education if it were done in private. The conflict between moderate reformers such as Charles Dickens, and radical reformers like John Bright, was bitter and uncompromising...