1750. December 31. Fifteen executed at Tyburn.
1751. February 11. Three boy-burglars executed at Tyburn.
1752. In this year the State made a determined effort to “put down” murder. It was a question that had long exercised the academic mind. So far back as 1701 a writer, known only as “J. R., M.A.,” had published a tract, “Hanging not Punishment enough for Murtherers, High-way Men and House-Breakers.” J. R. inquired why, since at the last Great Day there will be degrees of torment, we should not imitate the Divine Justice? He invoked, not only the Divine example, but the practice of our own laws. “If Death then be due to a Man, who surreptitiously steals to the Value of Five Shillings (as it is made by a late Statute) surely he who puts me in fear of my Life, and breaks the King’s Peace, and it may be murthers me at last, and burns my House, deserves another sort of Censure: and if the one must die, the other should be made to feel himself die.”
J. R. therefore proposed hanging alive in chains, the victim being left to starve, or he might be broken on the wheel, or whipped to death.
THE BODY OF A MURDERER DISSECTED ACCORDING TO THE ACT OF 1752.
About 1730 J. R., M.A., was followed by a writer who had no scruple in revealing his name. George Ollyffe, M.A., published “An Essay humbly offer’d for an Act of Parliament to prevent Capital Crimes, and the Loss of many Lives, and to promote a desirable Improvement and Blessing in the Nation.” Ollyffe argued that a swift death has no terrors. “An execution that is attended with more lasting Torment, may strike a far greater Awe, much to lessen, if not to put a stop to, their shameless Crimes.” He, like J. R., speaks with approval (somewhat modified, indeed) of the ancient practice of hanging men alive on gibbets. This plan has, however, its disadvantages; it is “tedious and disturbing,” more than “the tender and innocent part of mankind” can bear—as spectators. He recommends breaking on the wheel, “by which the Criminals run through ten thousand thousand of the most exquisite Agonies, as there are Moments in the several Hours and Days during the inconceivable Torture of their bruised, broken, and disjointed Limbs to the last Period.” Or the twisting of a little cord hard about the arms or legs “would particularly affect the Nerves, Sinews, and the more sensible Parts to produce the keenest Anguish.”
Ollyffe recommended that these things should be done on gibbets about twenty poles from the usual places of execution, so that “their cries may not much disturb the common Passengers.”
The State followed J. R. and Ollyffe—at a distance—in the Act 25 George II. (1752), c. 37, An Act for better preventing the horrid Crime of Murder. The preamble runs: “Whereas the horrid Crime of Murder has of late been more frequently perpetrated than formerly, and particularly in and near the Metropolis of this Kingdom, contrary to the known Humanity and natural Genius of the British Nation; and whereas it is thereby become necessary, that some further Terror and peculiar Mark of Infamy be added to the Punishment of Death now by Law inflicted on such as shall be guilty of the said heinous Offence.…”