Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
In 1765 the judge could hand out the death penalty for the following offences:
Murder; treason; coining money; arson; rape; sodomy; piracy; forgery; destroying ships; bankrupts concealing their possessions; highway robbery; house breaking; pick pocketing or stealing over one shilling; shoplifting over five shillings; stealing bonds or bills; stealing above 40 shillings in any house; stealing linen; maiming cattle; shooting at a revenue officer; pulling down houses or churches; destroying a fishpond, causing the loss of fish; cutting down trees in an avenue or garden; cutting down river banks; cutting hop binds; setting fire to corn or coal mines; concealing stolen goods; returning from transportation; stabbing an unarmed person; concealing the death of a bastard child; maiming a person; sending threatening letters; riots by 12 or more persons; stealing from a ship in distress; stealing horses, cattle or sheep; servants stealing more than 40 shillings from their master; breaking bail or escaping from prison; attempting to kill privy councillors; sacrilege; armed smuggling; robbery of the mail; destruction of turnpikes or bridges (Steve Jones, Capital Punishment, 1992).
As you can see the list is very long and some of the offences listed do not appear to have justified such a severe punishment, but judges were not obliged to pass the death penalty automatically for these offences and juries were often unwilling to convict young children in case they might hang for trivial offences.
However, at this time it was rare for any criminal to be held in prison for a long time; the longest servers were the debtors who were held until they could pay their fines. Between 1700 and 1800 there were over 200 crimes which warranted the death penalty.
The only alternative form of capital punishment to the death penalty was transportation. This was often used to punish those guilty of the lesser capital offences such as stealing sheep and petty theft. This was also the most popular punishment for children who had been convicted as their lives could be spared. However, it has been said that transportation often led to death because of the hard work and risk of illness involved.
Transportation was when convicts were sent out to the British colonies in the Americas and Australia, and either sold into slavery (America) or forced to fend for themselves and live in penal colonies (Australia). By 1772, three-fifths of all male convicts in England were being transported and by 1775 only one-tenth of convicts received prison sentences. After America won independence from Britain in 1785 these numbers began to reverse and by the 1790s imprisonment accounted for two-thirds of criminal sentences.
In all some 50,000 British convicts were transported to the Americas between 1718 (when the Transportation Act was passed making it a primary penalty, like hanging) and 1776 (that is the equivalent of two people every day for 58 years).
More than half of those transported were in their twenties, and four-fifths were male. The most popular places for them to be sent were Maryland and Virginia, where they could be sold to private employers, mostly middle-sized plantation owners. The price of a British convict was only one-third that of African slaves, probably because British slaves were idle and complained more.
After America gained independence, Britain began to send her convicts to penal colonies in Australia. On 13th May 1787, the First Fleet set sail for that country. It consisted of six ships carrying 717 convicts, 48 of whom died on the way. They disembarked at Port Jackson in January 1788, after deciding that their first choice of Botany Bay was unsuitable.
Between 1787 and 1868, 158,702 convicts were sent from England and Ireland and 1,321 from the rest of the British Empire.
Other punishments used in the 18th and 19th century included:
This was where the offender was scarred with a hot iron on the fleshy part of the hand or on the cheek. A murderer would be branded with the letter "M", vagrants with the letter "V" and beggars with the letter "S" for slave. A brawler may have had his ears amputated and been branded with the letter "F" for fighter.
Branding and the amputation of ears were very early forms of punishment, which had seemingly been approved by the Church, who even had their own mark "SL" ("seditious libeller"). Branding was abolished in 1799.
These were mainly used for petty offenders, such as drunks who could not pay their fines. Sometimes a piece of paper stating the nature of the offence would be pinned to the prisoner for the public to see. The stocks were abolished in 1821.
This was one of the most popular punishments of the later 17th century. The offences that might be punished with the pillory were numerous and included: blasphemy; cheating at cards; fortune telling; blackmail; bestiality; homosexual offences; and sexual offences against children. The pillory was much like the stocks but the public was able to throw things at the person being held. Many offenders sent to the pillory were lucky to escape with their lives and some did not, especially when the crowd turned to throwing stones. The pillory was eventually abolished in 1837.
Corporal punishment was retained as a punishment for a lot longer than either the stocks or the pillory. The most common form of corporal punishment was whipping, which was the punishment for various offences including: petty theft; bigamy (being married to two people at the same time); assault; vagrancy; having a baby out of wedlock; or manslaughter.
Offenders would be tied to a "whipping post" and thrashed with a "cat-o-nine-tails", which was a short handled whip with nine leather straps. In the beginning whipping had been a public punishment but by the middle of the 19th century it was mainly performed in the confines of the jail, and only on men.
Under 16s could receive up to 25 strokes and those above that age, up to 50. Whipping as a form of punishment was not abandoned until after World War I.
In 1906 Charles Hall (aged 12) and John Morris (aged 10) were charged with "stealing a hen's egg, value 1d" from the refreshment room at Hereford Railway Station. The contractor for the refreshments had had a lot of things stolen recently and asked that the Bench make an example of them as a deterrent to other thieves. The magistrates ordered that both boys should be thrashed by their parents in the presence of a police constable (Betty Grist and Derek Foxton, Edwardian Hereford, 1993, p. 38).
Other forms of corporal punishment included having heavy weights placed on the body, and the rack, which stretched the body until it was past the point of pain. Public humiliation was also used to punish. Brothel keepers and prostitutes might have been driven around their local area in a horse and cart to embarrass them and to inform the public of their wrongdoings.
For women who had been accused of scandalous language, gossip or nagging there was a contraption, known as the "scold's bridle" or "brank", which fitted as a cage around their heads with a metal gag in the mouth that prevented them from speaking.
One of the most vicious forms of corporal punishment was the "Scavenger's Daughter". This was a technique favoured by gaolers as it could be taken into the cells and used there. It involved constricting the prisoner into a ball with iron clamps so that their body was almost broken with the compression.
At the beginning of the 19th century there was a growing disinclination in England for imposing any public punishment, such as whipping and the gallows. This led to a growing use of confinement as punishment.
In 1808 Samuel Romily led a campaign to restructure the criminal law system by radically decreasing the use of the death penalty. He was met with strong opposition by those who believed that the death penalty provided the strongest deterrent to crime, and he made slow progress.
Capital punishment was not the only primary penalty that could be handed out. The Transportation Act of 1718 made this a primary penalty rather than a means of escaping the death penalty. Transportation was also used in many cases to keep the numbers of confined prisoners down and to rid England of the problem of crime.
The abrupt end of transportation to the Americas brought about something of a crisis in the British prison system. It was now flooded with convicts that would originally have been sent away, but were now needed confinement and punishment. One solution the government settled on was the use of old sea vessels to house prisoners. These were called "hulks" and were only ever meant as temporary places of confinement. They were stationed near to the major docks and ports of the country. By day the prisoners would be escorted off the ships to undertake hard labour on the docks, and by night they would return to be locked up. The conditions within the hulks were often unhealthy and immoral.
[Original author: Miranda Greene, 2003]