This is flatly contradicted in the Quarterly Review, No. 57, as follows:—Lord Sackville never could have told him any such thing—the King never signs any death-warrant—his pleasure on the Recorder’s report is in ordinary cases verbally, and in fatal cases silently, signified—and it is always guided by the opinion of the legal members of the Privy Council.
This popular error of the Death-warrant is fully explained, from an accredited legal source, in Things not generally known, First Series, p. 172.
It is erroneously supposed that the Sovereign can save a life that has been declared forfeit by the law; but the Sovereign’s sign-manual to a pardon is of no effect unless it be countersigned (that is, sanctioned) by a responsible minister.—J. Doran, F.S.A.; Last Journals of Horace Walpole, vol. i.
Origin of the Judge’s Black Cap.
The practice of our Judges in putting on a Black Cap when they condemn a criminal to death will be found, on consideration, to have a deep and sad significance. Covering the head was in ancient days a sign of mourning. “Haman hastened to his house, mourning and having his head covered.” (Esther vi. 12). In like manner Demosthenes, when insulted by the populace, went home with his head covered. “And David ... wept as he went up, and had his head covered; ... and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.” (2 Samuel xv. 20.) Darius, too, covered his head on learning the death of his Queen. But among ourselves we find traces of a similar mode of expressing grief at funerals. The mourners had the hood “drawn forward over the head.” (Fosbroke, Encyc. of Antiq., p. 951). Indeed, the hood drawn forward thus over the head is still part of the mourning habiliment of women when they follow the corpse. And with this it should be borne in mind that, as far back as the time of Chaucer, the most usual colour of mourning was black. Atropos also, who held the fatal scissors which cut short the life of man, was clothed in black. When, therefore, the Judge puts on the black cap, it is a very significant as well as solemn procedure. He puts on mourning, for he is about to pronounce the forfeit of a life. And, accordingly, the act itself, the putting on of the black cap, is generally understood to be significant. It intimates that the Judge is about to pronounce no merely registered or suppositious sentence; in the very formula of condemnation he has put himself in mourning for the convicted culprit, as for a dead man. The criminal is then left for execution, and, unless mercy exerts its sovereign prerogative, suffers the sentence of the law. The mourning cap expressly indicates his doom.—Notes and Queries.
The last English Gibbet.
In March, 1856, the last Gibbet erected in England was demolished by the workmen employed by the contractors making docks for the North-Eastern Railway Company upon the Tyne. The person who was gibbeted at that place was a pitman, convicted at the Durham Midsummer Assizes of 1832. So great was the horror and disgust of all parties with the sight of the body of the poor wretch dangling in chains by the side of a public road, that great gratitude was expressed when the pitmen took it down one dark night. It is a gratifying fact, showing the progress of civilization among the mining population, that, though there have been several strikes among them since 1832, none of those strikes have been marked by a repetition of the fearful acts of violence of that year. At one of the great meetings of pitmen held in the spring of 1832 the Marquis of Londonderry attended on horseback to remonstrate with them. But he had a company of soldiers with him, which were hiding in the valley. This was known to the pitmen, and the pitman that held his horse’s head as he spoke had a loaded pistol up his sleeve, in case the Marquis should wave the soldiers to come up, to blow the Marquis’s brains out. Fortunately, the good feeling and kind heart of the nobleman prevailed, and that emergency did not arise.
Public Executions.
It is the grossest and most illogical of assumptions to conclude, without a particle of attempted proof, that Public Executions produce only brutalizing effects upon the spectators. It is just as fair to assume that their results even on the spectators are edifying. But these results are only remote and indirect, and comparatively unimportant. Public executions are to be justified on other grounds than their effects on bystanders. They are designed not only to prevent possible murder but to avenge actual murder. They are great retributive acts; they represent and embody the last and most solemn and weightiest impersonation of Eternal Justice. An execution is retaliatory, and is to be defended as such. As we no longer hang men for other crimes than that of murder, life for life becomes a social necessity. Any other punishment than that of death is incommensurate with the crime; and we cannot afford to place the sanctity of human life and the safety of our spoons under the same sanctions.—Saturday Review.
On the other hand, it is maintained that executions ought never to be made a spectacle for the multitude, who, if they can bear the sight, always regard it as a pastime; nor for the curiosity of those who shudder while they gratify it.