The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

by Vic Gatrell

Some thirty-five thousand people were condemned to death in England and Wales between 1770 and 1830, and seven thousand were ultimately executed, the majority convicted of crimes such as burglary, horse theft, or forgery. Mostly poor trades people--weavers, clerks, whipmakers--these terrified
men and women would suffer excruciating death before large and excited crowds. Indeed, crowds of three to seven thousand were normal, and for famous cases, the mob could swell to fifty thousand or more (a hundred thousand were said to have watched the hanging of murderers Holloway and Haggarty--so
great a throng that thirty spectators were crushed to death). What brought people out for such a gruesome spectacle? How did they feel about the deadly justice meted out in their midst? These are some of the questions examined in The Hanging Tree , a fascinating history of public executions in their
awful heyday in England.
Drawing on letters, diaries, ballads, and poignant appeals for mercy, V.A.C. Gatrell vividly recreates the social atmosphere and heated debate swirling about these cruel spectacles. He gives readers an unflinching look at what these executions were really like, paints a colorful portrait of the
large crowds who gathered to watch, and describes the part the gallows played in the popular imagination (as reflected in flash ballads, Punch and Judy shows, and broadsides). Gatrell illuminates the debate over public execution that raged in polite society, discussing the commentary of writers such
as Boswell, Byron, Thackeray, and Dickens, most of whom deplored the behavior of the crowd more than the inhumanity of the sentence (Macaulay denounced abolitionists as effeminate). And Gatrell also examines the attitudes of the judges, politicians, and monarch who decided who should be reprieved
and who should hang (a mortal decision often delivered with the one-sentence "Let the law run its course"). Throughout the book, Gatrell traces how attitudes to death and suffering changed as the century progressed (after 1837, for instance, only murderers were hung, and after 1868, public
exeuctions were abolished). Perhaps most surprising, Gatrell reveals that the demise of public hanging owed little to humanitarianism. In part, polite society simply preferred not to look at the ugly machine of justice that subtly served their interests. But ultimately, Gatrell contends, it was the
unleashed passions of the scaffold crowd the unsettled the middle the crowd mirrored the state's violence too candidly and gave the lie to middle-class pretensions of civility and humanity.
Panoramic in scope, authoritatively researched, and gripping from beginning to end, The Hanging Tree radically alters our sense of the past. It is not only a history of emotions, but also an emotional story, invested with the author's own incredulity and anger over the merciless events he
chronicles. Taking up the plight of those who felt the hand of justice at its heaviest, he recaptures the lived experience of people poorly served by their own criminal law.

Genres: History, True Crime, Crime, Nonfiction, British Literature, Politics, Law

654 pages, Hardcover

First published December 8, 1994

About the author

Vic Gatrell is a social historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

a.k.a. V.A.C. Gatrell

Reviews

[Jane Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comprehensive and interesting, displaying copious research and scholarship. But the writing is dreadfully overblown throughout. It's not even an academic style, just over the top; and it spoilt what was otherwise a fascinating account.

[Shake n' Vac]

I would still recommend that this book be read, for all its faults, as Gatrell has researched well and makes good points (many I have sympathy with) albeit, in my opinion, more from the heart than the mind. Sadly, we all have to seem to justify ourselves today, so let me start by saying I am old school left - which is something that should endear me to Gatrell, but it does not. Gatrell is, in a postmoderny way, obsessed by power structures and this book is primarily a rant - not a balanced attempt at discussion - against anything he deems to be oppressive (which, is pretty much everything - I am amazed he did not raise the oppression of hungry birds, denied a peck at gibbeted corpses after the abolition of the practice). That the book is overly long is due to its heavy reliance on 'emotion' - although we must be thankful he did not, in Homeric style, use the epithet of 'the arbitrary murderer of cursed name' each time Peel was mentioned. Ultimately, the good in the book gets a little choked by his need to continually preach. Postmodernists and activists will love it, but it is definitely worth reading for those more open to debate.

[Mervyn Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read two other books while reading this, so it took much longer than I expected to finish. But not as long as it would take to fully ingest and analyse the myriad of details and arguments set out in the book. Often it veers from history into psychology, and there's definitely a political bias. Anti-authority, anti-church, anti-government, anti-capital punishment, anti-monarchy; it's one that I share. Others, I suspect, will be less accepting and will accuse Gatrell of partiality. I agree with another reviewer who pointed out the overly-complicated language. Sometimes you have to reread a sentence two or three times before understanding fully what the writer means. And when you do finally grasp it, it is usually something very simple which could have been expressed in far fewer - and less polysyllabic - words. Definitely worth the effort though. Like all of Gatrell's work, it is suffused with learning and humanity.

[Leilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the exception of the section on the elite, Gatrell does an excellent job depicting public hangings, the changing opinions about them, and providing an explanation on why they stopped.