Key Reading

• Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, chapter 10

Further Reading

• Zoe Dyndor, 'Death recorded: Capital Punishment and the Press in Northampton', Midland History, 2008
• Stephen Gambrel, "If He Was to be Heard, He Had to be Killed" : Language from the Old Bailey to the Gallows', in Mark Allen and Daniel Messara, The Captivity Narrative
• D. Garland, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies
• V A C Gatrell, The Hanging Tree
• R. McGowen, ‘ A Powerful Sympathy: Terror, the Prison and Humanitarian Reform in Nineteenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), pp. 312-34
  R. McGowen, ‘Civilising Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), pp. 257-82
• G. Rose, The Struggle for Penal Reform: the Howard League and its Predecessors

• J Rowbotham, ‘Execution as Punishment in England: 1750-2000’ in A Kilday and D Nash (eds.) Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000

• Lizzie Seal, 'Violet Van Der Elst’s Use of Spectacle and Militancy in her Campaign Against the Death Penalty in England', Law, Crime and History, 2013
• Pieter Spierenburg, Violence and punishment : civilizing the body through time (Chapter on capital punishment)
• E Tuttle, Crusade Against Capital Punishment in Britain
• John Walliss, 'Representations of Justice Executed at Norwich Castle: A Comparative Analysis of Execution Reports in The Norfolk Chronicle and Bury and Norwich Post, 1805-1867', Law, Crime and History, 2013

Questions

• What were the main changes in capital punishment in the long nineteenth century? What motivated the reforms?
• Why did public executions end?
• Who campaigned against the dealth penalty and why?
• How was capital punishment reported and represented?