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    Punishments of Former Days
    Punishments of Former Days
    Punishments of Former Days
    Ebook307 pages2 hours

    Punishments of Former Days

    By Ernest W. Pettifer

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    First published in 1913, this fascinating volume presents a detailed history and analysis of punishment throughout history, exploring in detailed historical enforcement and the various methods used to punish people. “Punishments of Former Days” is highly reconnected for those with an interest in the history and development of punishment, and it is not to be missed by the discerning collector. Contents include: “Crime and Punishment in the 18th Century”, “Prisons in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries”, “Children and Punishment”, “Outlawry”, “The Ordeal”, “Benefit of Clergy”, “Sanctuary”, “A Yorkshire Sanctuary”, “Deodands”, “The Gallows and the Gibbet”, “Hanging at Tyburn”, “The Pillory”, “The Stocks”, “The Ducking Stool”, “Whipping”, “Mutilation”, “Burning to Death”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateJan 31, 2018
    ISBN9781528783552
    Punishments of Former Days
    Author

    Ernest W. Pettifer

    Ernest W. Pettifer was 33 and well established as a Magistrates Clerk, when he volunteered to serve in the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in November1915. After training at Jordans in Buckinghamshire, he served first on an Ambulance Train in France and then at King George Hospital in London. The diary begins when Ernest moves to the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Dunkirk, where he becomes the civilian administrator of the hospital.

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      Book preview

      Punishments of Former Days - Ernest W. Pettifer

      CHAPTER I.

      CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

      The penal code of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was an almost unbelievably savage one.

      The forest laws of the Normans are frequently quoted as the most brutal laws ever enforced against the English people, yet, in 1819, seven hundred years later, a Committee of the House of Lords was assured by a witness that, at that date, there were two hundred and twenty offences on the statute-book, punishable by death. The misery caused by the penal system, a system directed against members of a free country and not against a captive race such as the English were under the Normans, was aggravated by a multitude of other cruelties,—dreadful prison conditions, savage whippings, the stocks and pillory, the outlawing of thousands of men and women by transportation, the merciless infliction of degradation and pain upon all who were held to have offended against the law.

      Death had become the cure for all but the most trivial crimes, the remedy for nearly all felonies. Offences which, to-day, would be dealt with by admonition and a small fine, or a helpful period of probation, such as damaging shrubs in public gardens; larceny of property over the value of a shilling; breaking down the head of a fishpond so that the fish might escape; cutting a hop-bind in a hop plantation; and a hundred others, were all punishable by death by hanging.

      The commission of any one of these two hundred and twenty crimes placed a man or woman outside the reach of pity or of hope. Men were afraid of the criminal, so they disposed of him savagely and summarily. Yet, throughout the centuries, there had always been men who were disquieted by this attitude towards the offender. Just four hundred years ago, in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More laid down principles which are accepted without question to-day. He pleaded for proportion between the punishment and the crime. He pointed out the folly of the cruel penalties of the day in which he lived. Simple theft is not so great an offence as to be punished with death, he said. If a thief and a murderer were sure of the same penalty, he urged, the law was simply tempting the thief to murder his victim so that he should tell no tales. The end of all punishment he declared to be reformation. Above all, he urged that, to be remedial, punishment must be wrought out by labour and hope, so that none is hopeless or in despair to recover again his former state of freedom . . . so that he will ever after that live a true and honest man. Sound and unanswerable principles, accepted and applied to-day in dealing with our offenders, yet, in the reign in which they were laid down 72,000 persons lost their lives on the scaffold, and Sir Thomas More himself, Speaker of the House of Commons, and later, Chancellor of England, lost his own head by the executioner’s axe.

      In the reign of Elizabeth the yearly number of executions was at least 800 and may have been considerably more; and so the slaughter went on, in reign after reign, century by century, until, coming to a time little over a hundred and fifty years ago, the records shew that, at the Lent Assizes in 1785, 242 persons were sentenced to death, 103 actually being hanged.

      The files of the old newspapers afford significant and tragic evidence of the severity of punishments in the eighteenth century. The man who stole was lucky if he escaped with his life. The community could not be burdened with the criminal so it killed him, thereby keeping down the prison population, and, in theory, at any rate, intimidating other wrong-doers.

      The following is an extract from the Morning Post of January 17th, 1788:—

      "Old Bailey.

      A few other trials of little consequence having been finished, the Recorder, in his usual feeling manner, proceeded to pass sentence upon the different prisoners, when the following received sentence of death:—

      A PUBLIC EXECUTION OUTSIDE NEWGATE GAOL

      NEWGATE CHAPEL IN 1809

      (Condemned criminals and coffin in the centre)

      James Selbin and Robert Fossett, for burglaries. Both recommended to the jury on account of their youth.

      George Green and James Francis (soldiers) for robbing Mr. Evans in Hyde Park.

      Thomas Collings, for highway robbery.

      Robert Watson and Thomas Tuck, for horse-stealing. The former recommended to mercy by the jury.

      Daniel Cunter, for returning from transportation before the term of his sentence was expired.

      The five pirates under sentence of death in Newgate, will be executed this morning on a platform at Execution Dock at Wapping."

      The story of the river pirates of this period is so interesting, and throws such a light upon the state of crime in London, that a brief explanation is necessary as to what was behind the execution of the five pirates mentioned above. The story shews how, in one part of London alone, a vicious penal system, and an inefficient police force, had, between them, led to an astounding state of lawlessness.

      The pirates who met their fate at Execution Dock were probably unlucky members of that vast fraternity who, in the eighteenth century terrorised and plundered the shipping on the Thames. Sir Walter Besant has left a remarkable description of their activities in his As we are, and as we may be.

      "The people of the riverside were all, to a man, river pirates; by day and by night they stole from the ships. There were often as many as a thousand vessels lying in the river: There were many hundreds of boats, barges and lighters engaged upon their cargoes. They practised their robberies in a thousand ingenious ways; they weighed the anchors and stole them; they cut adrift lighters when they were loaded; and when they had floated down the river they pillaged what they could carry and left the rest to sink or swim; they waited till night and then rowed off to half-laden lighters and helped themselves.

      Sometimes they went on board the ships as stevedores and tossed bales overboard to a confederate in the boat below; or they were coopers who carried under their aprons bags which they filled with sugar from the casks; or they took with them bladders for stealing the rum.

      Some waded about in the mud at low tide to catch anything that was thrown to them from the ships. Some obtained admission to the ships as rat-catchers, and in that capacity were able to steal plunder previously concealed by their friends. Some called scuffle-hunters stood on the quays as porters, carrying bags under their long white aprons in which to hide whatever they could

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