Did you know that the last execution in the UK took place in the 1960s? Capital punishment was used in the UK for centuries. The last execution in the UK was on 13 August 1964. Capital punishment for murder was suspended in 1965 and eventually abolished for murder in 1969. Then in 1998, capital punishment for treason and piracy with violence was abolished, making Britain fully abolitionist both in practice and in law.
History of capital punishment in the UK
Although the death penalty is mentioned in the fifth century BC in the code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, it was not applied in Great Britain until the fifth century AD.
Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the execution of an offender (criminal) sentenced to death after being convicted of a crime by a court of law.
A brief timeline of the death penalty in Great Britain:
| Date | Event |
| 5th Century | Hanging was first introduced as the main form of execution in Anglo-Saxon Britain. |
| 10th Century | Hanging became the general method of execution in Britain. |
| 11th Century | William the Conqueror abolished capital punishment for all crimes except crimes committed in times of war. However, his son William Rufus reintroduced capital punishment. |
| 16th Century | Under the reign of Henry VIII, many people were executed. Rumours talk about 72,000, although this seems excessive. |
| The 1700s | The number of crimes that were considered capital crimes, rose to no less than 222. This legal system was called the 'Bloody Code'. |
| 1823-1837 | The Bloody Code led to death penalty reform, and within this period, the number of crimes considered to be a capital crime, declined from 222 to 100. |
British forms of punishment throughout history
As mentioned above, the main form of punishment was hanging. However, over the centuries, other methods have been used.
| Date | Punishment |
| 11th Century | Burning at the stake was used as punishment for heresy. |
| 13th Century | There were two main punishments for treason:- Burning at the stake
- Being drawn, hanged, and quartered.
|
| 1727 | The last burning of a 'witch' in Scotland. |
| 1790 | Hanging replaced burning at the stake for treason. |
| 1793 | The 'new drop' gallows were first used where someone sentenced to hang fell through a trap door. |
| 19th Century | The 'long drop' was introduced, which was a hanging method in which the fall, if done correctly, resulted in a broken neck rather than the convict dying by suffocation. |
Some convicts were somewhat ‘luckier’ and were executed by decapitation. This method was considered the least brutal and was used until the 18th Century. Nobles and kings were often executed by using this method.
If you were in the military, the main form of execution was death by firing squad.
Reform of capital punishment
Death penalty reform began in the 19th Century, but it would take until the end of the 20th Century for capital punishment to be abolished entirely.
19th Century
Sir Samuel Romilly (Figure 1), a British lawyer, politician, and legal reformer, initiated the reform of capital punishment that eventually led to its complete abolition. In 1808, Romilly succeeded in abolishing the death penalty for lesser offences. This began a reform that would continue for the next 50 years. In 1810, Romilly addressed the House of Commons on the death penalty and said:
“[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”1
Fig. 1 - Portrait of Sir Samuel Romilly.
Several laws were enacted in the 19th century:
| Date | Act |
| 1823 | Death Sentence Act gave judges the power to impose a lighter sentence for the first time. This did not apply to treason or murder. It also did not apply in Scotland. |
| 1841 | Substitution of Punishment of Death Act abolished the death penalty for rape, sexual knowledge of (intercourse with) girls under the age of 10, and some other minor offences. |
| 1868 | Capital Punishment Amendment Act put an end to public executions in Britain. The end of public executions was mentioned in the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, a commission that dealt with capital punishment from 1864 to 1866. |
While these laws ensured that many crimes were no longer punishable by death, the death penalty remained mandatory for treason and murder unless there was a royal pardon.
20th Century
The 20th Century saw an even greater reform of the death penalty when the following laws were enacted.
| Date | Event |
| 1908 | Children Act prohibited the execution of children under the age of 16. |
| 1922 | The infanticide Act replaced the death penalty for a woman who deliberately killed her newborn child because it was believed that a woman’s mind could be disturbed by childbirth. |
| 1933 | The death penalty for pregnant women was abolished. |
| 1933 | Children and Young Persons Act: at this time, the minimum age for capital punishment was raised to 18. No one under this age has been executed in Britain since 1887. |
| 1937 | The infanticide Act is an extension of the same 1922 Act. The Act states:at the time of the act or omission the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child or by reason of the effect of lactation consequent upon the birth of the child.2 |
| 1939 | Infanticide Act (Northern Ireland) contains similar provisions for Northern Ireland. |
There are two other notable wartime events in Britain involving the death penalty:
At this point, there was no real support for the complete abolition of the death penalty, but activists were gaining momentum.
Campaigns for the abolition of capital punishment
In the 19th Century, prominent figures in Britain began to speak out against the death penalty, such as Sir Samuel Romilly, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Campaigns against capital punishment usually focused on specific cases that aroused public sympathy. Examples include:
| Date | Event |
| 1989 | Florence Maybrick was spared from the gallows because there was not enough evidence that she had poisoned her husband. |
| 1899 | Mary Ann Ansell was accused of murdering her sister, but there was doubt about her mental state. She was hanged later that same year. |
| 1923 | Edith Thompson and her lover Freddie Bywaters were hanged for the murder of Edith’s husband. However, there were doubts about their actual involvement. |
One of the most prominent and well-known campaigners for abolition in the 20th Century was the wealthy businesswoman Violet van der Elst (Figure 2).Although the first full parliamentary debate of the 20th Century on capital punishment took place in 1929, the reports were largely ignored. The issue was considered a low priority on the political agenda.
Reasons for the abolition of capital punishment
Campaigns against capital punishment were based on moral and humanitarian grounds. Many activists believed that the infliction of pain was considered corrupting and uncivilised and that the death penalty did not provide redemption for the criminal.Violet van der Elst argued that capital punishment was uncivilised and harmful to society. She also argued that it is disproportionately applied to poor people.
Post-war
Capital punishment became an increasingly important political and social issue. In 1948, the Criminal Justice Act was passed. This act abolished penal servitude, prison divisions, and flogging.
Penal servitude was the punishment of being sent to prison and forced to do hard physical labour.
The public increasingly drew their attention to capital punishment in the postwar period. The following three cases were crucial in influencing views on the death penalty:
| Date | Event |
| 1950 | Timothy Evans was convicted of the murder of his wife and infant daughter and hanged for the crime. However, it was not until 1953 that the remains of seven other women were found in the house Evans and his family shared with John Christie, and it turned out that Christie, not Evans, was responsible for the crime against Evans’ family. Evans was innocent. |
| 1953 | Derek Bentley, a 19-year-old, was hanged for the murder of a police officer. However, it was his friend Christopher Craig who shot the officer during a burglary while another officer held Bentley. Craig, at 16, was not old enough to receive the death penalty, so it was Bentley who was eventually hanged. Bentley was posthumously pardoned in 1998. |
| 1955 | Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of her boyfriend, David Blakely. This case was met with great public sympathy because it was revealed that Blakely had been violent toward Ellis and had abused her. The murder was considered a ‘crime of passion’. Ellis was the last woman to be executed in Britain. |
| 1957 | The Homicide Act was introduced. This act introduced the distinction between capital and non-capital murder. Only the former was automatically subject to the death penalty. There were now only six categories of murder punishable by execution:- In the course or furtherance of theft.
- By shooting or causing an explosion.
- For resisting arrest or during an escape.
- Of a police officer.
- Of a prison officer by a prisoner.
- The second of two murders committed on different occasions.
|
Abolition of capital punishment
Sydney Silverman was a British Labour politician, elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1933, and for over 20 years, he committed himself to the abolition of capital punishment. In 1965 he introduced the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act. This act suspended the death penalty for 5 years, and it was replaced with a mandatory life sentence.
Abolition is the action of officially ending or stopping something
On 16 December 1969, the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act was made permanent, and with it, capital punishment for murder was abolished.
It was, however, not until 25 July 1973, with the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act, that capital punishment was abolished in Northern Ireland.
The last execution in the UK took place on 13 August 1964, with the hanging of Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans. Even though the Homicide Act was already in place, considering they murdered a taxi driver and doing so ‘in the furtherance of theft’, it made it a capital crime.
Final abolition
While the abolition of capital punishment for murder had been in place since 1969, and no capital punishment in any sense had been carried out in the UK, there was no full abolition yet. The following events led to full abolition of capital punishment:
| Date | Act |
| 1971 | The criminal Damage Act abolished the offence of arson in royal dockyards. |
| 1973 | Beheading was abolished as a method of execution for treason, although hanging was still a method in place until 30 September 1998. |
| 1981 | The armed Forces Act abolished capital punishment for espionage. |
| 1998 | The crime and Disorder Act is an act to make provisions for preventing crime and disorder. It formally abolished the death penalty for treason and piracy, the last offences which still carried capital punishment. |
| 1998 | Human Rights Act. This act was to incorporate into UK law the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. |
In 1998, with the Human Rights Act and the Crime and Disorder Act, the death penalty was now fully abolished.
End of capital punishment in Europe
Capital punishment has been completely abolished in all European countries, with the exception of Belarus and Russia.
The complete ban on capital punishment is enacted in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU), as well as in the adopted protocols of the European Convention of Human Rights of the Council of Europe.
Some facts about the abolition of capital punishment in Europe:
San Marino, Portugal, and the Netherlands were the first countries to abolish capital punishment.
Belarus, not a party of the European Convention on Human Rights, still practises capital punishment carried out by shooting, with the most recent two executions carried out in 2019
Russia has suspended capital punishment indefinitely since 1996. It is, however, still incorporated in its law
In 2012, Latvia became the last EU member to abolish capital punishment in wartime.
Capital punishment has been constitutionally abolished in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995, but it was not until 4 October 2019 that capital punishment was erased entirely from the Constitution of Republika Srpska, 1 entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Fig. 2 - Map of Europe showing the state of capital punishment.
Capital Punishment in UK - Key takeaways
- Capital punishment in the UK dates back to at least the 5th Century.
- Sir Samuel Romilly started capital punishment reform in the early 19th Century.
- The following acts made many crimes no longer punishable by death:
- Judgement of Death Act 1823.
- Substitution of Punishment of Death Act 1841.
- Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868.
- While the three acts ensured many crimes were no longer punishable by death, capital punishment remained mandatory for treason and murder unless there was a royal pardon.
- In 1957, the Homicide Act was established. This act brought in the distinction between capital and non-capital murder. Only the former carried an automatic death sentence.
- On 16 December 1969, the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act was made permanent, and with it, capital punishment for murder was abolished.
- In 1998, with the Human Rights Act and the Crime and Disorder Act, the death penalty was fully abolished.
References
- Inside Time Reports. Death penalty abolished. Insidetime. 27 November 2020
- Infanticide Act 1938. Legislation.gov.uk.
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