The triviality of offences
carrying the death sentence was remarkable; as late as 1450, by the old
Admiralty law relative to the Humber, there was an order that ‘any
man who stole ropes, nets, cords etc., amounting to the value of ninepence,
should at low watermark have his hands and feet bound, his throat cut, his
tongue pulled out, and his body thrown into the sea’.
Any man, who removed the anchor
from any ship, or cut the cable of a ship while she was riding at anchor, was
liable to be hanged at low water mark.
Prisoners who refused to plead
guilty were starved to death, or starved until they changed their minds. In
1426 this type of penalty could be that the prisoner was placed on his back in
a low, dark room, with only a cloth round his loins, then as many weights as he
could bear without crushing his ribs would be put on him. The first day he
would be given a portion of mouldy bread, the next day a few drops of foul
water and so on; ‘so shall he continue till he die’.
In the reign of Henry V111 it was
made legal (the Act passed in 1531) to punish by boiling to death.
Richard Roose, or Coke, a cook, was accused of trying to poison,
with a brew of hemlock and other fatal herbs, the Bishop of Rochester’s
household, and the poor of the local parish. Two people died and several were
seriously ill.
The cook was publicly boiled to
death at Smithfield
In King’s Lynne, in the same
year, a servant of Margaret Davy was
found guilty of poisoning her mistress so was boiled to death in the
marketplace, and similarly another servant received the same death penalty in Smithfield , in 1542.
In 1547 the law was repealed by
Edward V1 and the Act was substituted by hanging, except in the case of women
who poisoned their husband or child, when the penalty was burning.
In Brittany , in 1580, coining was punished by
first boiling and then hanging the offender.
Ducking and drowning, in
addition to burning were punishments inflicted for witchcraft in England and Scotland . In 1623 eleven Gypsy
women were condemned to be drowned at Edinburgh, and on May 11th,
1685, Margaret M’Lachlan, aged sixty
three, and Margaret Wilson, aged
eighteen, were drowned in the Blednoch, for denying that James V11 of Scotland
was entitled to rule the church according to his wishes.
The last undisputed case of legal
drowning happened when a woman was convicted of theft and sentenced to be
drowned in the Loch of Spyne, Scotland .
It is believed that when the lake was drained in the nineteenth century, an
identifiable ring was found on her remains lying on the bed of the lake.
Drowning continued in France until
1793.
In the reign of Elizabeth , when rebellious priests were
hanged, drawn and quartered, the queen occasionally gave orders that the victim
should be quite conscious when disembowelling began. The punishment was finally
settled by the Statute of Treason of 25 Edward 111, 1351.
The sentence was, ‘that
the traitor is to be taken from prison and laid on a hurdle (in earlier days he was dragged along the
ground, tied to the tail of a horse),
and drawn to the gallows, then hanged by the neck until he was nearly dead,
then cut down; then his entrails were to be cut out of his body and burnt by
the executioner; then his head to be cut off , his body divided into four
quarters, and afterwards set up in some open place as directed.’
This brutality was justified by Lord Coke through a collection of Bible
texts, and hence called ‘godly butchery’.
Mr Justice Blackstone (Commen.
Vol.1V,), ‘ there are but few instances, and those accidental or by negligence,
of persons being disembowelled till previously deprived of sensation by
strangling’.
There are, however, several
instances on record in which the sentence has been executed ‘in all its literal
rigour’. The conspirators in Babington’s plot in1586 were all disembowelled
alive; some of them looking on while the details of the execution took place
upon their companions (Howell, State
Trials ).
The punishment for high treason differed
from that inflicted for murder in several important details. The criminal had
to be drawn to the gallows, not allowed to walk; he was to be cut down alive;
his entrails taken out and burnt in front of his face; he was then ‘headed’ –
head cut off – and the body quartered. The quarters were parboiled to preserve
them and the various parts were distributed in different places and hung for
public viewing.
In History, by Meiklejohn,
he states that after the Monmouth
Rebellion, ‘the pitch cauldron was constantly boiling in the assize towns and the
heads and limbs preserved in it were distributed over the lovely western
country, where, for years after, in spite of storms and crows and foxes, they
frightened the village labourer as he passed to his cottage in the evening
gloom’.
‘The peasant who had consented to
perform this hideous office returned to his plough. But a mark like that of
Cain was upon him. He was known throughout the village by the horrible name of
William Boilman’.
Among the notable early victims
of the sentence were:
1326 – the elder and the younger
Despencers
1395 – Wallace
1403 – Hotspur
The Chancellor’s Roll states that the cost of Wallace’s execution
and transmitting the quarters to Scotland was 61s. 10d.
A similar punishment, although
partially special to parricide, was carried out in England , as one of others adopted
as a warning.
Philip Standsfield in 1688, found guilty of treason for insulting his
father and being implicated in his murder, was sentenced to be hanged at the Mercat
Cross till he was dead, his tongue to be cut out and burnt upon a scaffold, his
right hand to be cut off and attached on the East Port of Haddington, and his
body to be carried, not drawn, to the ‘Gallowee between Leith and Edinburgh,
and there to be hanged in chains, and his name, fame, memory and honours to be
extinct, and his arms be riven forth and delete out of the book of arms’.
Among offences involving the
sentence of death were:
Act of 1698 – stealing privately
from a shop goods to the value of five shillings
Act of 1713 – stealing in a
dwelling house to the amount of 40 shillings
The Black Act 1723 – cutting down
a tree
Counterfeiting the stamp used for
the sale of perfumery and for hair powder
Robbing a rabbit warren
Personating a Greenwich
Harbouring an offender against
the Revenue Acts
An Execution in Ratisbon in 1782
At the beginning of the
nineteenth century there were more than 200 offences in the State book for
which capital punishment might be inflicted. However, during the preceding
three-quarters of a century only twenty-five offences actually condemned anyone
to a sentence of death. In 1823 five statutes, exempting from the death penalty
about a hundred felonies, were passed into law.
George Cruikshank states, ‘ About the year 1818, I was returning home
between 8 and 9 a.m. down Ludgate Hill, and saw several human beings hanging
opposite Newgate, and to my horror two of them were women. On inquiring, I was
informed that it was for passing forged one pound notes! It had a great effect
on me, and I was determined, if possible, to put a stop to this shocking
destruction of life for merely obtaining a few shillings by fraud. I felt sure
that in many cases the rascals who had forged the notes induced these poor,
ignorant women to go into the gin shops and get ’some thing to drink’ and then
pass the notes and hand them the change.’
Three Kids Gripped By Evil By Polly Mullaney
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