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Britain: Sacking the Hangman

4 minute read
TIME

“Great Britain is that peculiar country in Europe,” Arthur Koestler once wrote, “where people drive on the left side of the road, measure in inches and yards, and hang people by the neck until dead.” Hanging has indeed been a peculiarly British institution. During the 18th century, while capital punishment was being restricted elsewhere, the number of capital offenses under England’s criminal law, which was commonly known as the “bloody code,” increased fivefold, to more than 220. They included everything from associating with gypsies to stealing turnips.

The gallows and the gibbet were almost as commonplace as the village church, and “hanging days” were occasions for revelry. In London at the “Tyburn tree” (the present location of Marble Arch), crowds of 100,000 or more assembled to watch the festivities. Distinguished visitors to the ceremonies at Newgate prison were often invited to remain for breakfast. “And if there were no more than six or seven hanged,” according to one chronicler, the guests “would return grumbling and disappointed … After breakfast was over, the whole party adjourned to see the ‘cutting down.’ ” In 1800, a boy of ten was sentenced to death for “secreting notes” at the Chelmsford post office because, the judge noted, his act suggested “art and contrivance.” The following year, a youth of 13 was hanged for stealing a spoon. The hangmen were as popular as movie stars are today.

Reform came surprisingly late. Not until 1908 was the death penalty abolished for children under 16, and not until 1931 for expectant mothers. In 1957, a new homicide act sought to limit the use of capital punishment in murder cases to hardened criminals. Harold Wilson’s newly elected Labor government in 1965 pushed through Parliament a law abolishing capital punishment in murder cases on an experimental basis for five years.

Final Debate. As the trial period nears its end, a nationwide debate has gone on over whether or not to make the abolition permanent. Police and prison officers lobbied for a return to hanging. Most Britons seemed to side with them; polls showed that as many as 84% of the public were in favor of bringing back the hangman. One dissenter was Albert Pierrepoint, the retired public executioner, who had hanged some 450 persons in his day. “I have very strong personal feelings about this,” he told the tabloid Sun. “I hope Jim Callaghan gets his way.”

It was Home Secretary Callaghan who led the fight against hanging in the House of Commons last week. “There are times when Parliament has to act in advance of public opinion and give a lead,” he said. He pointed out that before 1965, the actual number of executions in Britain had averaged only two a year—hardly enough to affect “the credibility of law and order.” Most Laborites favored abolition of the death penalty, and many Tories opposed it. But in the balloting, numerous Tories, including Opposition Leader Ted Heath, voted with the majority. By 343 to 185, the Commons voted to end capital punishment, except for a few rare state offenses: arson in Her Majesty’s dockyards, piracy on the high seas, and treason.

The bill then went to the House of Lords, which in the past has been a stronghold of pro-hanging sentiment. This time, however, the mood had changed markedly. Declared Lord Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor: “I think that human beings who are not infallible ought not to choose a form of punishment which is irreparable.” On that reasonable note, the Lords voted down 220-174 a three-year delaying amendment, and joined Commons in outlawing capital punishment in the British Isles as the penalty for murder.

Another old British custom died last week. It was the Royal Navy’s tot of rum. For the past 238 years, a good part of the yo-ho-ho in any British sailor’s day came precisely at seven bells (11:30 a.m.), when the bosun of a Royal Navy ship anywhere in the world piped “up spirits” to signal the daily ration of spirits. The traditional reward for any man who had spliced the main-brace or pulled another tough deck duty was an extra tot, and for many tars one of the attractions of helping Britannia rule the waves was to collect their cup of “Nelson’s blood.”

The ration had been cut already from its original half-pint of 95.5 proof spirits to a less sinkable eighth-pint measure of watered-down rum. Even so, the British Admiralty announced last week, grog must go. Said Admiral Sir Michael le Fanu, the First Sea Lord: “Rum is not appropriate to a modern, instant-response navy.” In the future, officers will be able to buy any amount of other spirits aboard ship, but ordinary seamen will have to make do with three cans of 6% beer per day.

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