Two thirds, probably, of all those capitally condemned, are afterwards pardoned. Few, comparatively, of the executed have committed murder, not one in twenty; most of the rest are for robberies of various kinds. Many more are reported as murdered in the bills of mortality: but these are not cases of premeditated and malicious homicide, and are softened into manslaughter on trial. Nineteen out of twenty of the executed are males; and by far the greatest proportion between eighteen and forty years of age. What is the proportion of London executions to the whole nation, is a problem which perhaps our judges cannot unravel. They possibly, like the generality of physicians, drive and strut away, “secundum artem,” in the beaten rotine of their profession, without ever attending to a plain political and mercantile axiom, to state their transactions and accounts in numbers and figures. Vice and executions are universally more prevalent in every metropolis: but there is reason to believe, that at present the executions throughout Britain and Ireland, are double or treble to those of London. The comparative population is as nine million to six hundred and fifty thousand. If they are treble, then 4000 are executed every fifteen years in the two islands; and 26,000 in a century: and both the disease and panacea are rapidly increasing. Five or six times this number are, in the same period, transported to distant regions, and partly also lost to the community, together with their blighted procreation.
We are struck with horror even on reading the history of savage jurisprudence, customs, and butchery of mankind in ancient times; such as the sanguinary codes of Draco and other regal monsters; the sacrifices to idols; the martyrs to gloomy fanaticism; the brutal spectacles of the Romans, wherein gladiators, lions and tygers, were exposed to tear each other to pieces. But I doubt whether, in the most flagitious and facinorous ages of Rome, the Tarpeian rock was besmeared with the blood of such a multitude of human victims; or that in any part of the globe, from London to the Antipodes, out of an equal proportion of mankind, there are so many sacrifices annually made to violated jurisprudence; and to the modern idol, property and money! I meant to have contrasted the executed with those destroyed in wars, by the sword of the enemy (exclusive of diseases) during the present century; but the introduction would be here premature; nor could I launch out in sufficient illustration.
Besides the political patients doomed to the radical cure, or extermination, by the executioner, if we may credit one of our best writers, they are a mere handful compared to those who are consigned to a slow and lingering death. Dr. Johnson, in one of his excellent essays in the Rambler, against perpetual imprisonment for debt, calculates, that half a million of mankind are destroyed in a century in the prisons of Great Britain, by the complicated horror of confinement, sorrow, famine, filth, and disease; and to these I would add suicide. I am inclined, however, to believe, that Dr. Johnson’s computation is exaggerated, by at least four hundred thousand. By far the largest proportion of these are unfortunate sacrifices to poverty and misfortunes, and to the callous vindictiveness of avarice. In the juridical pharmacopœia, this may be compared to the hot iron and cautery of the coarse empiricks of antiquity; with which they outrageously and indiscriminately tortured their patients. It would not disgrace the christianity or humanity of our legislature and lawyers, were they to revise their catechism and breviary of jurisprudence, both as affecting life and liberty: or, throwing religion and humanity to one side, let the question be tried by commercial scales; and, like the Venetian Jew, human flesh estimated in ounces and pounds with brutes, metals, and chattels!
[Of the Institution of the London Bills of Births, Mortality, and Diseases; their Defects, besides those already pointed out; important and easy Improvements recommended.]
We shall now, with all possible brevity, enquire into the degrees of credibility and stability of the mathematical and medical data, furnished from the bills of mortality. The births, genealogies, procreation, multiplication, and deaths, of those few miracles of longevity, from Adam to Noah; from Noah’s descendants down to Abraham, Moses, and Christ, are recorded in scripture: some chapters of Genesis are plain registers of births and mortality. The male Israelites, above twenty years of age, were, at distant intervals, mustered and numbered by Moses and his successors; and in a few uncommon pestilences, the devastation is ascertained in the Jewish history. The descent and pedigree of kings, and other great men, have also been kept in most nations, who had made any progress in civilization: but general annual registers of births, diseases, and deaths, are modern establishments, and were unknown to the ancients.
On the continent of Europe, registers were instituted fifty or a hundred years before their introduction into England. In 1538, exact records of weddings, christenings, and burials, were first ordered by the King and council, to be kept in every parish church of England, by either the vicar or curate. But this order was very negligently obeyed in many parishes, until 1559, when, to prevent registers from rotting in damp churches, they were directed to be written on parchment. At first, they seem, both in Germany and England, to have been designed to prove the birth, death, and descent of individuals, and the right of inheritance in property or lands. In 1592, a year of pestilence, bills of mortality for London were instituted; but were discontinued until 1603, another year of pestilential desolation; which was the only distemper then taken notice of in the printed reports. In 1626, the different diseases and casualties of those who died in London, together with the distinction of the sexes, were added and published; and in 1728, the different ages of the dead were ordered to be specified in the London bills. Upon first establishing the distinction of diseases and casualties in the bills of the British metropolis, the primary intention seems to have been, to distinguish the numbers destroyed by the plague, and to detect concealed murders.
Public records of births and mortality are now partly become the rules of political arithmetic: but unfortunately for politicians, calculators of annuities, and medical men, they are yet every where far too incorrect and incomplete. Registers of diseases and deaths in London are entrusted to old women, two of whom are nominated in each parish, and called Parish Searchers, and who consider, the ultimatum of their commission is merely to prevent private funerals and concealed murder. The whole business in London is conducted in the following manner: Upon either being sent for to inspect a corpse, or on hearing the bell toll, and inspecting the books kept in the different churches, the searchers are apprised from whence notice has been sent of a death, in order that a grave may be opened. The two parochial matrons then, whose industry is stimulated by a small fee on each corpse, and whose report is necessary previous to interment, set out to examine that no violence is committed upon the dead, of which they have taken an official oath to make true declaration, and afterwards negligently enquire from the relations the name of the disease, adding the age and sex: or sometimes they are stopped in the hall, and dismissed without any scrutiny. These records, together with the christenings, in the latter of which the searchers have no concern, are deposited with the respective clerks of each parish church, and by the clerks the christenings of the established church, and the burials in their respective parochial church-yards alone, are carried once every week to a general hall in the city: on the following day the weekly bill, comprehending these partial returns, is printed and published; and at the end of the year a general bill, in which all the weekly returns are consolidated.
The law ordains, that every person who dies in the registered parishes of London, Westminster, and Southwark, is to be inspected by two parish searchers, and reported to the parish clerk, who then grants his certificate for the interment: or, if the corpse is carried away to a different parish of the metropolis for interment, the searchers report, and the clerk’s certificate, are equally necessary; otherwise that parish where the corpse is buried is liable to a fine. This process was originally intended to detect the plague, and concealed murders; in both which respects, during the present century, the parish clerks and the searchers have been almost useless. There is now no plague to detect; there are very few murders, and they are always proclaimed by some other means. Even in the preceding century, when the plague raged in London, the searchers report was rarely trusted without a physician or surgeon attending, to prevent mistakes.