Capital punishment in the United Kingdom

Hanging by the neck as form of capital punishment was introduced to Britain by the Anglo-Saxon invaders of the 5th Century AD. By the 10th century it had become a common method of execution. William the Conqueror decreed that hanging should only be used for conspirators or in times of war and ordered that criminals should instead be castrated and have their eyes put out. William Rufus re-introduced hanging but only for those found guilty of poaching royal deer. Henry I, brought hanging back as the main means of execution for a whole host of crimes. The first recorded execution at the notorious Tyburn hanging tree (now Speakers corner in Hyde Park) was in 1196. Under the reign of Henry VIII some 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed by various methods including boiling, burning at the stake, beheading and of course hanging with perhaps the added punishment of drawing and quartering.

In 1810, Sir Samuel Romilly spoke to the House of Commons on capital punishment and stated that "..[there is] no country on the face of the earth in which there [have] been so many different offences according to law to be punished with death as in England". Known as the "Bloody Code", in all some 220 different crimes were punishable by death . These crimes included such offences as "being in the company of gypsies for one month", "strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7-14 years of age" and "blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime". Many of these offences had been introduced to protect the property of the increasingly wealthy classes that emerged during the first half of the 18th century; a notable example being the Waltham Black Acts of 1723 which created 50 capital offenses for various acts of theft and poaching. A sentence of death placed on an offender found guilty of a minor crime would often be commuted at the whim of the judge, thus making a mockery of the system.

Romilly started a process of reform that continued over next 50 years. The Reform Act of 1832 reduced the number of capital crimes by two-thirds. Gibbeting (the public display of executed corpses) was abolished in 1843 and in 1861 the Criminal Law Consolidation Act limited the number of capital crimes to just four; murder, treason arson in royal dockyards and piracy with violence.

The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1864-1866) concluded (with one dissenter) that there was not a case for abolition but did recommended an end to public executions and this proposal was included in the Capital Punishment Act of 1868. Since then all executions have been carried out within prison walls. The practice beheading and quartering executed traitors was officially curtailed in 1870.

Juveniles under 16 could no longer be executed from 1908. In 1922 a new offence of Infanticide was introduced replacing the charge of murder for mothers killing their children in the first year of life. In 1930 a parliamentary Select Committee recommended that capital punishment be suspended for a trial period of five years but no further action was taken. But from 1931 pregnant women could no longer be hanged from and the minimum age for capital punishment was raised to 18 in 1933.

In 1938 the issue of the abolition of capital punishment was brought before parliament. A clause within the 'Criminal Justice bill' called for an experimental five-year suspension of the death penalty. When war broke out in 1939 the bill was postponed. It was revived after the war and to everyone's surprise was unexpectedly adopted by a majority in the House of Commons (245 to 222 against). In the House of Lords the abolition clause was defeated but the remainder of the bill was passed. Popular support for abolition was absent and the government decided that it would be inappropriate for it to assert its supremacy by invoking the Parliament Act over such an unpopular issue. The Home Secretary set up a new royal commission (the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949-1954)) instead with instructions to determine "whether the liability to suffer capital punishment should be limited or modified". The commison's report discussed a number of alternatives to execution by hanging but was unclear on whether capital punishment itself should or should not be abolished. Popular opinion believed that the death penalty acted as a deterrent to criminals, but the statistics within the report were inconclusive on this issue. Whilst the report recommended abolition from an ethical standpoint, it made no mention of possible miscarriages of justice. It concluded that unless there was overwhelming public support in favour of abolition, the death penalty should be retained.

Between 1900 and 1949, 621 men and 11 women were executed in England and Wales. Thirteen German agents were executed during the Second World War.

By 1957 a number of controversial cases had highlighted the issue of capital punishment once again. Campaigners for abolition were partially rewarded with the Homicide Act of 1957. The act brought in a distinction between capital and non-capital homicide. Only five categories of murder were now punishable by exection. The were:

Murder in the course or furtherance of theft
Murder by shooting or causing an explosion
Murder while resisting arrest or during an escape
Murder of a police officer or prison officer
Two murders committed on different occasions.

The police and the government were of the opinion that death penalty deterred offenders from carrying firearms and it was for this reason that such offences remained punishable by death. However, was hard for many to see the logic of making a burglar who murders face the death penalty and allowing a rapist who murders to avoid it.

In 1965 the Labour MP Sydney Silverman who had committed himself to the cause of abolition for more than 20 years proposed a private members bill on abolition which was passed in the House of Commons by 200 votes to 98. I was subsequently adopted by the House of Lords by 204 to 104 against. The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act suspended the death penalty in England, Wales and Scotland for all crimes, except treason, piracy with violence, and certain crimes under the jurisdiction of the armed forces for a period of five years. In 1969 the act was came up for renewal and the then Home Secretary, James Callaghan proposed a motion to remove the five year limit which was carried by both houses on December 18, 1969.

In 1973 the death penalty was abolished in Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Powers) Act.

Under a House of Lords amendment to the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act the death penalty was abolished for crimes of treason and piracy with violence. On May 20 1998, the House of Commons voted to implement the 6th Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights outlawing capital punishment for murder except "in times of war or imminent threat of war". The last remaining provisions for the death penalty under military jurisdiction (except in times of war) were removed when the Human Rights Act came into force in November 1998. When the European Convention on Human Rights was ratified on the 20 May 1999 all provisions for the death penalty was finally abolished in the United Kingdom.

Notable executions

Note: This does not include the the beheadings of nobility

1499: Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the throne, hanged at Tyburn

1606: On 31 January the gunpowder plotters of 1605 are hung drawn and quartered.

1686: Alice Molland becomes the last person to be hanged for witchcraft in Britain.

1760: Lawrence Shirly, Fourth Earl of Ferrers is executed at Tyburn on 5 May for the murder of a servant. He is the only peer to have been hanged for murder.

1868: On 2 April Francis Kidder becomes the last woman to be hanged in public.

1868: On 26 May the last public hanging in Britain takes place at Newgate as Michael Barrett is executed for the Fenian bombing at Clerkenwell.

1946: On 3 January William Joyce, better known as "Lord Haw Haw" is the last person to be hanged for for treason.

1946: Mahmood Hussein Mattan, a Somali seaman, was hanged for murder. The Court of Appeal decided his conviction was unsafe and quashed it in 1998. A posthumous pardon is being sought.

1950: Timothy Evans is executed for the murder of his young daughter (after admitting killing his wife and daughter) on 9 March at Pentonville Prison. It is subsequently discovered that the real murderer was his landlord John Cristie (a sexual serial killer) who was later executed for the murder of his wife. Evans received a posthumous pardon in 1966.

1950 George Kelly, who was hanged for murder, had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in June 2003.

1953: On 28 January Derek Bentley is executed as an accomplice to a murder of a police officer by his 16 year old friend Christopher Craig. Craig as a minor was not executed and served 10 years. Derek Bentley was granted a posthumous pardon on 30 July 1998.

1953: On 15 July John Cristie is executed for the murder of his wife.

1955: On 13 July Ruth Ellis becomes the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

1964: On 13 August Peter Anthony Allen at Walton Prison in Liverpool and Gwynne Owen Evans at Strangeways Prison in Manchester were both executed at 8am becomming the last persons executed in Britain[1].