Simon Devereaux – författare

The English were punished in many different ways in the five centuries after 1500. This collection stretches from whipping to the gallows, and from the first houses of correction to penitentiaries. Punishment provides a striking way to examine the development of culture and society through time. These studies of penal practice explore violence, cruelty and shame, while offering challenging new perspectives on the timing of the decline of public punishment, the rise of imprisonment and reforms of the capital code.

The English were punished in many different ways in the five centuries after 1500. This collection stretches from whipping to the gallows, and from the first houses of correction to penitentiaries. Punishment provides a striking way to examine the development of culture and society through time. These studies of penal practice explore violence, cruelty and shame, while offering challenging new perspectives on the timing of the decline of public punishment, the rise of imprisonment and reforms of the capital code.

This surviving writings of the chaplain of Newgate Prison, 1823-1838, focusing on the emotions of those waiting to be hanged - early nineteenth-century Londoners whose lives are otherwise largely lost to us.Horace Salusbury Cotton was the Ordinary (chaplain) of Newgate Prison 1814-1838, a quarter-century in which both the prison itself and English criminal law were fundamentally transformed. This volume presents the text of Cotton's entries in the Prison Visitors Books. His remarks focus especially upon the spiritual and emotional state of those who were hanged - and sometimes pardoned - during the waning years of England's infamous "Bloody Code," opening a window into the lives of early nineteenth-century Londoners which are otherwise largely lost to us. Cotton's stern vision of his spiritual mission contrasts, not only with the more humane sentiments of many officials, but his own private life. Remarkable details about this ambitious but flawed clergyman are revealed here: his neglect and abuse of the wife whom he married only after two premarital pregnancies; his efforts to abandon his surviving daughters; and the whiff of scandal attached to his dealings with female prisoners.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of execution practices in England and their extraordinary transformation from 1660 to 1900. Agonizing execution rituals were once common. Male traitors were hanged, disembowelled while still alive, then decapitated and quartered. Female traitors were burned alive. And common criminals slowly choked to death beneath wooden crossbeams erected at the margins of towns. Some of their bodies were either left to rot on roadside gibbets or dissected by anatomy instructors. Two centuries later, only murderers and traitors were executed - both by hanging - and they died alone, usually quickly, and behind prison walls. In this major contribution to the history of crime and punishment in England, Simon Devereaux reveals how urban growth, and the unique public culture it produced, challenged and largely displaced those traditional elites who valued the old 'Bloody Code' as an instrument of their rule.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of execution practices in England and their extraordinary transformation from 1660 to 1900. Agonizing execution rituals were once common. Male traitors were hanged, disembowelled while still alive, then decapitated and quartered. Female traitors were burned alive. And common criminals slowly choked to death beneath wooden crossbeams erected at the margins of towns. Some of their bodies were either left to rot on roadside gibbets or dissected by anatomy instructors. Two centuries later, only murderers and traitors were executed - both by hanging - and they died alone, usually quickly, and behind prison walls. In this major contribution to the history of crime and punishment in England, Simon Devereaux reveals how urban growth, and the unique public culture it produced, challenged and largely displaced those traditional elites who valued the old 'Bloody Code' as an instrument of their rule.