It’s my understanding that, until forced by Europe in the lat 1990’s, British judges were still able to sentence someone to death for treason. Is this correct?
If it is, how practical would this have been? On the off chance that someone was sentenced to death, where would the execution have taken place? Would they have been hanged? Did Britain even have a hangman in the 90’s, or would we have had to have imported one from overseas?
Here’s an excellent Timeline of capital punishment in Britain, which doesn’t quite answer your question, but it looks like they would have been hanged in a suitably-equipped prison; I’m not sure if any prisons remained suitably equipped and for how long, but a gallows isn’t the hardest thing to build…
…and I daresay we’d be able to find someone willing to pull the lever, even today.
The last working gallows in the UK was in Wandsworth Prison - it was dismantled in 1998.
Any executions before 1995 would presumably have been carried out by Syd Dernley, despite his advanced age. Of course, a new executioner could have been appointed, but I don’t think that one ever was.
While the death penalty was theoretically still on the books until recently, any passing of the sentence would undoubtedly have been overturned by the European Court of Human Rights. The commonly-given date of full abolition was because of the European Convention on Human Rights being absorbed into British law.
Hm. I thought the British abolished CP in the '70s. That’s what I get for basing my understanding on a Monty Python sketch where judges were bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t sentence people to death anymore, and so they wanted to relocate to South Africa.
Treason, espionage, and piracy remained punishable by death until 1998 (when the Human Rights Act was passed). Treason in the UK doesn’t just include things like giving aid and comfort to enemies of the state or murdering the sovereign. Raping a Queen-consort or the Princess of Wales is also treason, as is adultery by either woman. So technically Diana could have been prosecuted for treason and hanged. Of course it’s extremely unlikely that such a thing would even be considred let alone carried out.
From Mangetout’s link:
It depends what you really mean by ‘abolition’ - for all everyday purposes, it had been outlawed at the time you thought. The more recent changes were pretty much just legislative tidying-up.
And as a member of the Royal Family, wouldn’t she have had the right to choose to have her head cut off, rather than being hanged by the common hangman?
Jolly old England, has a not so jolly history with capital punishment. In the days of the chopping block, condemned persons who could not afford to pay tribute for a merciful execution, would typically have to endure multiple ill aimed chops with a less than razor sharp axe. Often, people were given a capital punishment sentence for what we today consider minor offences. Property and animal life was often held in greater value than human life. I believe it was the Blacks act of the 18th century that made poaching animals on royal grounds a capital offence. Children were executed for petty misdeeds. One strange account that I recall reading about involved the sentencing of someone who shot and killed a gentleman. He was found guilty and given the death sentence for the crime. However, he was not sentenced to death for murder (murder was not a capitol offence at that time). Intentionally destroying another person’s property was a capital offence. He was sentenced to death for intentionally putting a bullet hole through the victim’s shirt – killing the man wearing the shirt was merely incidental. Interestingly, a high percentage of executioners themselves ended up on the chopping block or hangman’s scaffold for committing capital offences. One may construe this as being a good example illustrating the failure of capital punishment to be an effective deterrent. I’ll give the French credit for one thing, their guillotine (the national razor), was a breakthrough in merciful execution.