Police News Botched execution 1883 Durham

Illustrated Police News Botched execution 1883 Durham

So, last week we covered the build up to the 1868 Capital Punishment Act and covered a brief history of changes in the application and administration of execution nationally and in the North East. This week we will turn to the experience of execution behind the prison walls (post 1868) in the North East of England. Just before we do though, here’s something a bit more cheery. I often forget with my study just how depressing and shocking the subject can be to an outsider. I am not claiming to have become desensitised to it, but when I give a talk I realise after about ten minutes that some people in the room are going green. Luckily, I have passed that stage. So, by way of light relief here’s a brilliant sketch that relates loosely to the subject. In between the last blog and this one my comedy group performed at the Glasgow Comedy Festival’s fringe (Chunkstival) and so I’ve been in a comic frame of mind this week and I suddenly remembered this fantastic by a group called Cowards, I think long since disbanded, comprised of, amongst others, the excellent Tim Key and Tom Basden. Firstly, in order to assess the impact of the Capital Punishment Amendment Act, we must look at the figures and breakdown of those executed. In the ten years sampled, between 1868 and 78, 17 people were executed, of whom 2 (c11%) were female. Whilst the gender split here is largely inline with the rest of my period (1752-1878), there is a marked increase in the number of executions. Tracking back from 1868, one would have to return 45 years to encompass a similar amount. The decade, therefore, bucks the trend of a steadily declining execution rate since the widely acknowledged national peak decades of 1780/90. Not only this, but the figures for the North East even exceed London and Middlesex, where in the same decade only 13 people were executed. This compares to Ward and King’s recent findings that “The rate of executions per 100,000 population per year in London, the area with the highest rate, was over fifty times higher (at 3.85) than the average (0.07) for the ten counties with the lowest rates [amongst them] Northumberland and Durham.”[2] Deeper analysis of the figures shows an even more remarkable resurgence, that of the double or triple execution. Indeed, 10 of the 17 people executed in the decade were executed in double or triple executions. In short, the Act had an immediate and dramatic effect on the application and incidence of capital punishment. But what of it’s application in practice? In the North East, the first test of the 1868 Act came in March 1869 in what was to be a double execution at Durham Jail. The press were granted admission with the seemingly innocuous caveat that they “were not allowed to see the convicts pinioned”[3] (straps placed around their arms) – a restriction that the Newcastle Courant said was “very quietly submitted to.”[4] This ostensibly pragmatic restriction on the press (the procedure often taking place in a small side room) was to become a feature of all but one execution in the region. One report on executions sheds light on an alternative reason for why this decision may have been taken. Reporting on the 1873 execution of Mary Ann Cotton, the Northern Echo stated of the pinioning room that, It should not be forgotten that this is the very time when a resolute culprit, faced by the immediate preliminaries of death, will almost involuntarily yield to the dreadful feelings of the moment, and being at last convinced of the certain approach of death, will make a confession. Now, should this ever occur, how can the public, deprived of their representation by the exclusion of the press, be assured of the accuracy of any report? the administering officials, the Courant avowing that they could not “withhold our censure…for the misunderstanding which has prolonged the agony of the former two to another week.” The paper further reporting that this “disgraceful” prolongment had turned the “meager (sic) support in this district” for the pair into a widespread public sympathy.

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