Ruthin Gaol North Wales

Capital Punishment Throughout History

In the Ancient laws of China there is mention of beheading as the method of capital punishment; in early Egypt and Assyria the axe was used and in some very early records offenders were ordered to take poison. The earliest record in England of capital punishment is in 450 B.C., when the custom was to throw the condemned into a quagmire - a boggy area of land that gives way underfoot.

Other recorded methods of execution include: stoning, hanging, crucifixion, burning alive, pouring of molten lead, starvation in dungeons, tearing to death by red-hot pincers, sawing apart, burial alive, and many more.

The following were also recognised as crimes by the Decemviri of the Twelve Tables (451 - 450 B.C) to be punished by death:

Publishing libels and insulting songs.

Furtively cutting or causing to be grazed crops raised by ploughing, by an adult.

Knowingly and maliciously burning a house or a stack of corn near a house.

Theft by a slave who is taken in the act.

Cheating, by a Patron, of his client.

Perjury.

Wilful murder of a freeman.

Wilful murder of a parent.

Making disturbances in the City at night.

The Romans punished parricides (killed a parent) by throwing them into water in a sack which contained also a dog, a cock, a viper and an ape. This custom persisted in some countries into the middle ages. The parricide has always been singled out for special punishment in all countries and ages.

The Romans also used drowning at sea, burial alive and beating to death. Nero inflicted impalement as a death sentence which was practised as late as 1876 in the Balkan peninsular, while under Charles V criminals were’ thrown into their open graves and impaled by pointed stakes’.

It was widely believed, in all countries, that in most cases capital punishment should be public, to act as a deterrent. However, it was not until the nineteenth century that it was finely acknowledged that it certainly wasn't a deterrent; indeed, the gallows became very much a scene of merry-making.

As the Middle Ages approached the number of capital crimes increased and the penalties became more cruel. The methods of killing escalated together with the added mode of torture inflicted as a necessary part of even the simplest executions. The death penalty was extended to heretics under the writ de heretico cumburendo which was lawfully issuable under statute in England from 1382 until 1677. For this purpose the legislature had adopted the civil law of the Roman Empire, which was not a part of the English common law. The law was the subject of the most abhorrent abuse, and there was a rapid increase of capital punishment in England. Most barons had a drowning pit as well as a gallows. The owner of Baynard's Castle, London, in the reign of King John, had the right to drown traitors in the River Thames.

From the time of the death of William the Conqueror human life was of less value than that of many animals, for the latter could be made to work for less cost. In 1279, for instance, two hundred and eighty Jews were hanged for clipping coin, which was regarded as a serious offence in many countries; the mayor of Exeter and the porter of the south gate of the town during the reign of Edward 1st, were both executed because the gate of the city had not been closed in time to prevent the escape of a murderer.

Until the reign of Edward 111, hanging tended to be for the common herd, and beheading by the axe (‘an honourable mode of death' ) for the higher classes; then 'hanging, drawing and quartering' became legal. This form of punishment was invented for the express benefit of a William Maurice, the son of a nobleman, who was convicted of piracy, in 1241.

The last native Prince of Wales, David, was sentenced at Shrewsbury in 1283 and ordered to be, 'drawn to the gallows as a traitor to the king who made him a knight, to be hanged as the murderer of the gentleman taken in the Castle of Hawarden, to have his limbs burnt because he had profaned by assassination the solemnity of Christ's Passion, and to have his quarters dispersed through the country because he had in different places compassed the death of his lord the king'.

At this time burning was the punishment for women in England for the conviction of high treason, although for men it was hung, drawn and quartered.

In Blackstone’s apology for burning women it states, ‘for as decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence, is, to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burnt alive’.

                                                           Burning a Woman for Treason

When a woman was burnt for petty treason – the murder of her husband – it was usual to tie a rope round her neck when she was fastened to the stake, and strangle her before the flames reached her. However, Catherine Hayes, in 1726, ‘was literally burnt alive; for the executioner, letting go the rope sooner than usual in consequence of the flames reaching his hands, the fire burnt fiercely round her, and the spectators beheld her pushing the faggots from her, while she rent the air with her cries and lamentations. Other faggots were instantly thrown on her, but she survived amidst the flames for a considerable time, and her body was not perfectly reduced to ashes in less then three hours’.

                                                          Burning of Catherine Hayes

As late as 1783 a woman was burned at Ipswich for murdering her husband.

The last instance of a woman being burnt for high treason was when Elizabeth Gaunt, in 1685, was found guilty of assisting one Burton, who was involved in the Rye House Plot, to escape. Burton was the chief witness at her trial.

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