Phelps, Richard. Albany, NY: J. Munsell, Phelps, Noah A. Steenburg, Nancy Hathaway. New York, NY: Routledge, Boynton, Cynthia Wolf. Connecticut Archives Series 1. Connecticut State Library, and Connecticut.
General Assembly. Crimes and Misdemeanors. Connecticut Archives Series 2. Domonell, William. Goodheart, Lawrence B. Whipping posts were located next to the courthouse so punishment could be carried out quickly following the trial. The goal was repentance of the convicted along with swift lessons for the whole audience. Besides whipping, branding, cutting off ears, and placing people in the pillory were common publicly administered punishments that set examples for others. As described in noted author Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter , men and women convicted of certain crimes had to wear letters such as a capital A on their clothing in clear view for conviction of adultery a married person having sexual relations with someone other than his or her spouse or a B branded on their forehead for burglary.
Banishment was a more extreme punishment. Though less prevalent than the other forms of punishment, hangings also occurred in public places. It is important to remember that the actual punishments convicts received often differed from their original sentences. While punishment sentences are provided in the Old Bailey Proceedings , for the actual punishments a convict received it is necessary to consult their "Life Archive".
Felonies defined by common law were originally punishable by hanging , but increasingly from the middle of the eighteenth century, statute law curtailed the use of the death penalty. Misdemeanours were punishable by a range of non-capital punishments. Normally, offences defined by statute could only be punished as prescribed by the relevant legislation.
The punishments available in any particular case were thus circumscribed by the legal status of the offence with which the defendant was charged which in some cases was influenced in turn by the choices made by the victim or the grand jury. Juries frequently manipulated the punishment through the use of partial verdicts.
Many defendants were sentenced to more than one punishment. This is particularly common for those sentenced to the pillory, imprisonment , whipping, fines and providing sureties for good behaviour. A gradually-growing reluctance to use the death penalty in the eighteenth century except for the most serious cases encouraged the development of alternative forms of punishment.
The criminal law reforms of the nineteenth century, which abolished the death penalty for many crimes, led in the same direction. As a result, new types of punishments for felons, notably transportation and imprisonment , were created and eventually came to take on an ever-growing role in the sentencing of criminals.
These new punishments reflect two trends in the evolution of strategies for punishment. First, there was a shift from physical punishments such as whipping, branding and hanging to attempts to reform the defendant through transportation and imprisonment. And second, punishments became less public, as the spectacle of public hangings at Tyburn, the pillory and public whipping through the streets was replaced by hanging outside and then inside Newgate, private whipping, transportation to foreign lands and imprisonment.
A large number of eighteenth-century statutes specified death as the penalty for minor property offences the "bloody code" , meaning that the vast majority of the people tried at the Old Bailey could be sentenced to hang one could be executed for stealing a handkerchief or a sheep.
Nevertheless, judicial procedures prevented a blood bath by ensuring that sentences could be mitigated, or the charge redefined as a less serious offence. Through partial verdicts, juries reduced the charges against many convicted defendants to a non-capital offence. Through the mechanism of pardons many more defendants found guilty of a capital offence were spared the death penalty and subjected instead to punishments such as branding up to , transportation or imprisonment.
Many received no punishment at all. The standard method of capital punishment was by hanging. Execution was a public spectacle, meant to act as a deterrent to crime. Until , most defendants were hanged at Tyburn where Marble Arch stands today. Convicts were drawn in a cart through the streets from Newgate, and, after they were given a chance to speak to the crowd and, it was hoped, confess their sins , they were hanged.
In , the procession to Tyburn was abolished and for the next eighty-five years hangings were staged outside Newgate Prison. Although these executions were expedited by the use of the sharp drop, they were still very public occasions. In , concern about public disorder led to the abolition of public executions altogether, and subsequent hangings were transferred inside the prison.
Women who claimed they were pregnant at the time they were sentenced to death could "plead their belly". Such women were then examined by a jury of matrons chosen from women present in the courtroom , and, if found to be "quick with child" if movement could be detected, signalling the beginning of life , their punishment was respited until after the baby was born. In principle, the punishment could then be carried out, but in practice sympathy for the newborn child or concern for the cost of caring for it meant that the mother was often pardoned.
Successful pregnancy pleas are found infrequently in the Old Bailey Proceedings after After , there are few recorded cases of women even making this plea, and in those cases medical authorities were often summoned to advise the matrons.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, use of the death penalty was increasingly restricted to the most serious offences. It was removed from pickpocketing in , and from many more offences in the s and s. By the s, only those found guilty of the most serious offences murder, wounding, violent theft, arson, sodomy were sentenced to death though only murderers were actually executed , and the Offences Against the Persons Act abolished the death penalty for all offences except for murder and High Treason.
Women found guilty of either treason or petty treason were sentenced to be "burned alive at the stake", though executioners usually strangled women with a cord before lighting the fire. Burning at the stake was abolished in and replaced by drawing and hanging.
Men found guilty of treason were sentenced to be drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, "hanged, cut down while still alive, and then disembowelled, castrated, beheaded and quartered". This punishment was rare during our period, but occasionally those convicted of coining and petty treason were sentenced to be drawn on a hurdle only, but not quartered.
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