It is said that George III. kept a register of all the cases of capital punishment, that he entered in it all names of felons sentenced to death, with dates and particulars of convictions, together with remarks upon the reasons which induced him to sign the warrants. It is also said that he frequently rose from his couch at night to peruse this fatal list, and that he shut himself up closely in his private apartments during the hours appointed for the execution of criminals condemned to death.
Tyburn ceased to be the place of execution for London in 1783; from that year Newgate witnessed most of these horrors.
Philanthropists of every class were, at the period of Mrs. Fry's career now under review, considering this matter of capital punishment, and taking steps to restrain the infliction of the death penalty. The Gurney family among Quakers, William Wilberforce, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Samuel Romilly, and others, were all working hard to this end. In 1819 William Wilberforce presented a petition from the Society of Friends to Parliament against death punishment for crimes other than murder. Writing at later dates upon this subject, Joseph John Gurney says: "I cannot say that my spirit greatly revolts against life for life, though capital punishment for anything short of this appears to me to be execrable." And, again, "I cannot in conscience take any step towards destroying the life of a fellow-creature whose crime against society affects my property only. I am in possession, like other men, of the feelings of common humanity, and to aid and abet in procuring the destruction of any man living would be to me extremely distressing and horrible." As a banker, Mr. Gurney felt that the punishment for forgery should be heavy and sharp, but less than death. In the Houses of Parliament various efforts were made to obtain the commutation of the death penalty, and when in 1810 the Peers rejected Sir Samuel Romilly's bill to remove the penalty for shop-lifting, the Dukes of Sussex and Gloucester joined some of the Peers in signing a protest against the law. The time appeared to be ripe for agitation; all classes of society reverenced human life more than of old, and desired to see it held less cheap by the ministers of justice.
According to Mrs. Fry's experience, the punishment of death tended neither to the security of the people, the reformation of any prisoner, nor the diminution of crime. Felons who suffered death for light offenses looked upon themselves as martyrs—martyrs to a cruel law—and believed that they had but to meet death with fortitude to secure a blissful hereafter. This fearful opiate carried many through the terrible ordeal outwardly calm and resigned.
Among the condemned ones was Harriet Skelton, a woman who had been detected passing forged Bank of England notes. She was described as prepossessing, "open, confiding, expressing strong feelings on her countenance, but neither hardened in depravity nor capable of cunning." Her behavior in prison was exceptionally good; so good, indeed, that some of the depraved inmates of Newgate supposed her to have been condemned to death because of her fitness for death. She had evidently been more sinned against than sinning; the man whom she lived with, and who was ardently loved by her, had used her as his instrument for passing these false notes. Thus she had been lured to destruction.
After the decision had been received from the Lords of the Council, Skelton was taken into the condemned cell to await her doom. To this cell came numerous visitors, attracted by compassion for the poor unfortunate who tenanted it, and each one eager to obtain the commutation of the cruel sentence. It was one thing to read of one or another being sentenced to death, but quite another to behold a woman, strong in possession of, and desire for life, fated to be swung into eternity before many days because of circulating a false note at the behest of a paramour. Mrs. Fry needed not the many persuasions she received to induce her to put forth the most unremitting exertions on behalf of Skelton. She obtained an audience of the Duke of Gloucester, and urged every circumstance which could be urged in extenuation of the crime, entreating for the woman's life. The royal duke remembered the old days at Norwich, when Elizabeth had been know in fashionable society and had figured somewhat as a belle, and he bent a willing ear to her request. He visited Newgate, escorted by Mrs. Fry, and saw for himself the agony in that condemned cell. Then he accompanied her to the bank directors, and applied to Lord Sidmouth personally, but all in vain. It was not blood for blood, nor life for life, but blood for "filthy lucre;" so the poor woman was hung in obedience to the inexorable ferocity of the law and its administrators.
On this occasion Mrs. Fry was seriously distressed in mind. She had vehemently entreated for the poor creature's life, stating that she had had the offer of pleading guilty only to the minor count, but had foolishly rejected it in hope of obtaining a pardon. The question at issue on this occasion was the power of the bank directors to virtually decide as to the doom of the accused ones. Mrs. Fry made assertions and gave instances which Lord Sidmouth assumed to doubt. Further than this, he was seriously annoyed at the noise this question of capital punishment was making in the land, and though not necessarily a cruel or blood-thirsty man, the Home Secretary shrank from meddling too much with the criminal code of England. This misunderstanding was a source of deep pain to the philanthropist, and, accompanied by Lady Harcourt, she endeavored to remove Lord Sidmouth's false impressions, but in vain. While smarting under this wound, received in the interests of humanity, she had to go to the Mansion House by command of Her Majesty Queen Charlotte, to be presented. Thus, very strangely, and against her will, she was thrust forward into the very foremost places of public observation and repute. She recorded the matter in her journal, in her own characteristic way:—
"Yesterday I had a day of ups and downs, as far as the opinions of man are concerned, in a remarkable degree. I found that there was a grievous misunderstanding between Lord Sidmouth and myself, and that some things I had done had tried him exceedingly; indeed, I see that I have mistaken my conduct in some particulars respecting the case of poor Skelton, and in the efforts made to save her life, I too incautiously spoke of some in power. When under great humiliation in consequence of this, Lady Harcourt, who most kindly interested herself in the subject, took me with her to the Mansion House, rather against my will, to meet many of the royal family at the examination of some large schools. Among the rest, the Queen was there. There was quite a buzz when I went into the Egyptian Hall, where one or two thousand people were collected; and when the Queen came to speak to me, which she did very kindly, I am told that there was a general clapp. I think I may say this hardly raised me at all; I was so very low from what had occurred before.... My mind has not recovered this affair of Lord Sidmouth, and finding that the bank directors are also affronted with me added to my trouble, more particularly as there was an appearance of evil in my conduct; but, I trust, no greater fault in reality than a want of prudence in that which I expressed."
The Society of Friends had always been opposed to capital punishment. Ten years previously, Sir Samuel Romilly had determined to attack these sanguinary enactments, one by one, in order to ensure success. He began, therefore, with the Act of Queen Elizabeth, "which made it a capital offense to steal privately from the person of another." William Alien records in the same year, 1808, the formation of a "Society for Diffusing Information on the Subject of Punishment by Death." This little band worked with Sir Samuel until his painful death in 1818; while Dr. Parr, Jeremy Bentham, and Dugald Stewart aided the enterprise by words of encouragement, both in public and in private. In Joseph John Gurney's Memoirs, it is stated that Dr. Lushington declared his opinion that the poor criminal was thus hurried out of life and into eternity by means of the perpetration of another crime far greater, for the most part, than any which the sufferer had committed.
The feeling grew, and in place of the indifference and scorn of human life which had formerly characterized society, there sprang up an eager desire to save life, except for the crime of murder. In May, 1821, Sir James Mackintosh introduced a bill for "Mitigating the Severity of Punishment in Certain Cases of Forgery, and Crimes connected therewith." Buxton, in advocating this measure, says truly: