Punishing the Criminal Corpse, 1700-1840: Aggravated Forms of the Death Penalty in England

by P. King

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book analyses the different types of post-execution punishments and other aggravated execution practices, the reasons why they were advocated, and the decision, enshrined in the Murder Act of 1752, to make two post-execution punishments, dissection and gibbeting, an integral part of sentences for murder. It traces the origins of the Act, and then explores the ways in which Act was actually put into practice. After identifying the dominance of penal dissection throughout the period, it looks at the abandonment of burning at the stake in the 1790s, the rapid decline of hanging in chains just after 1800, and the final abandonment of both dissection and gibbeting in 1832 and 1834. It concludes that the Act, by creating differentiation in levels of penalty, played an important role within the broader capital punishment system well into the nineteenth century. While eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century historians have extensively studied the ‘Bloody Code’ and the resulting interactions around the ‘Hanging Tree’, they have largely ignored an important dimension of the capital punishment system – the courts extensive use of aggravated and post-execution punishments. With this book, Peter King aims to rectify this neglected historical phenomenon.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 6, 2017

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good scholarly look at the use of the death penalty. Good historical information.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top notch research

It's often difficult to find the details of legal debates and social perspectives and outcomes. But, Professor Peter King has done just that. Sit back and read about the often overlooked legal and social influences that effected and, eventually evolved, the Murder Act of 1752.

[Richard Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book

A very detailed study of the criminal systems in place in Great Britain between 1700-1840 and their impact on the population. This is a heavily footnoted book and it shows how much sociological study went in to it. A fascinating book for people to read.

[Cidney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh grief I don't know why I picked this to read on my kindle, must have been because I was looking into psychology and this sort of fitted in. It was a difficult and at times, distressing read.

The book had tightly packed facts and I got a bit lost amongst them, it also had photographs of people hanging but luckily this is the one time I didn't regret that my kindle doesn't do slides or photographs so I was spared the site of humans dangling on the end of ropes or being bound alive in chains and left hanging in iron cages from trees to take 8 days to die of hunger, thirst and pain, standing amongst their own diarrhoea.

I did plough on a bit more but have to say that I really couldn't take any more of the descriptions so I dived out and deleted it. I think if you have a stronger stomach than mine and are interested in this subject then you would probably gain more from it than I did.

[Madelon · Rating 4 out of 5]

PUNISHING THE CRIMINAL CORPSE: 1700 - 1830 is a dissertation looking at a specific time period where, as the author points out, little has been studied historically on the gruesome practice of defiling the body after execution.

Once you get beyond the citations, this is a dissertation for the horror writer, or crime writer to peruse. It looks at the Murder Act of 1752 which enshrined the post-execution punishments, dissection and gibbeting, as part of the sentences for murder. Dissection was probably the more often used extra punishment because building a gibbet was found to be prohibitively expensive.

You may find PUNISHING THE CRIMINAL CORPSE to be disturbing, but it is a part of history that should not be ignored.