Some of the Horrors of Capitol Punishment

Execution of Mary Blandy

Mary Blandy is famous in criminal literature for her remarkable letters and defence strategy from the condemned cell. She was the victim of an unhappy love affair.

                                                                  Death by Pressing

The punishment of pressing to death was inflicted on those who refused to plead to an indictment. By such refusal the accused were able to save their property from being confiscated, and so leave it to their dependents. The punishment was finally abolished in 1828.

In Britain Peel revised the penal code, and death for minor offences was abolished. However, it was not until 1832 that the punishment of death for forgery was abolished.

From May, 1827, to May, 1830,  four hundred and fifty-one persons were condemned to death, but only fifty-five were executed.

From 1832 to 1837 a large number of capital offences were abolished and in 1840, for the first time in the history of Parliament, a resolution for the abolition of capitol punishment was brought in, and over ninety members voted in favour.

In Europe during this period common punishments were quartering alive, tearing to pieces by horses, and disemboweling.

In Germany military included hunting and spearing to death of the condemned by his fellow soldiers; making him run the gauntlet of rods until dead, flogging to death with the knout (whip), etc. The last two forms of execution were practiced in Russia until late into the nineteenth century.

In Britain there are cases on record of children as young as ten or even eight years old having been hanged. As late as 1831 a boy of nine years was publicly hanged at Chelmsford for having set fire to a house at Witham.

In the days of George 11 it was not uncommon for children under the age of ten to be hanged, and on one occasion ten of them were strung up together, as a warning to men, and a ‘spectacle for the angels’.

In 1808 Michael Hamond and his sister aged seven and eleven respectively, were hanged at Lynn for felony.

When it was seen that public executions did not act as a deterrent, it was ordained that criminals sentenced death should be hanged inside the prisons.

The execution shed at Maidstone, for instance, was a wooden shed at one end of the exercise yard, near which was the condemned cell. The platform, about eight feet by four feet, consisted of two trap doors, hinged, and allowed to fall by means of a lever. The doors fell against the sides of a brick-lined pit. The platform was level with the ground outside the shed doors, and when the condemned man fell, nothing could be seen but the taught rope.

The usual time of execution was in the morning between eight o’clock and noon. Where the authorities feared a riot or where there were other special circumstances the hour was made earlier.


Insidious Bane by Polly Mullaney
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Three Kids Gripped By Evil By Polly Mullaney     

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