Hanging people for small crimes as well as grave, the Bloody Penal Code was at its most active between 1770 and 1830. In those years some 7,000 men and women were executed on public scaffolds, watched by thousands. Hanging was confined to murderers thereafter, but these were still killed in public until 1868. Clearly the gallows loomed over much of social life in this period. But how did those who watched, read about, or ordered these strangulations feel about the terror and suffering inflicted in the law's name? What kind ...
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Hanging people for small crimes as well as grave, the Bloody Penal Code was at its most active between 1770 and 1830. In those years some 7,000 men and women were executed on public scaffolds, watched by thousands. Hanging was confined to murderers thereafter, but these were still killed in public until 1868. Clearly the gallows loomed over much of social life in this period. But how did those who watched, read about, or ordered these strangulations feel about the terror and suffering inflicted in the law's name? What kind of justice was delivered, and how did it change? This book is the first to explore what a wide range of people felt about these ceremonies (rather than what a few famous men thought and wrote about them). A history of mentalities, emotions, and attitudes rather than of policies and ideas, it analyses responses to the scaffold at all social levels: among the crowds which gathered to watch executions; among `polite' commentators from Boswell and Byron on to Fry, Thackeray, and Dickens; and among the judges, home secretary, and monarch who decided who should hang and who should be reprieved. Drawing on letters, diaries, ballads, broadsides, and images, as well as on poignant appeals for mercy which historians until now have barely explored, the book surveys changing attitudes to death and suffering, `sensibility' and `sympathy', and demonstrates that the long retreat from public hanging owed less to the growth of a humane sensibility than it did to the development of new methods of punishment and law enforcement, and to polite classes' deepening squeamishness and fear of the scaffold crowd. This gripping study is essential reading for anyone interested in the processes which have 'civilized' our social life. Challenging many conventional understandings of the period, V. A. C. Gatrell sets new agendas for all students of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture and society, while reflecting uncompromisingly on the origins and limits of our modern attitudes to other people's misfortunes. Panoramic in range, scholarly in method, and compelling in argument, this is one of those rare histories which both shift our sense of the past and speak powerfully to the present.
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Add this copy of Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770 to cart. $10.99, good condition, Sold by Book Bear rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from West Brookfield, MA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Oxford University Press.
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Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. pp. 634. 634 pp. Tightly bound. Spine not compromised. Text is free of markings. No ownership markings. Light bump to lower right corner front cover and pages.
Add this copy of The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, to cart. $23.41, poor condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1996 by Oxford University Press, U.S. A.
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This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has soft covers. Book contains pencil markings. In poor condition, suitable as a reading copy. Water damage. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 1000grams, ISBN: 9780192853325.
Add this copy of The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770 to cart. $40.53, poor condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1994 by Oxford University Press.
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This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has soft covers. In poor condition, suitable as a reading copy. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 1100grams, ISBN: 9780192853325.
Add this copy of The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770 to cart. $52.92, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Oxford University Press.
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Add this copy of The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770 to cart. $88.14, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Oxford University Press.
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New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 656 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Add this copy of The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770 to cart. $97.82, like new condition, Sold by GreatBookPrices rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by OUP Oxford.
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Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 656 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
I started reading this as a library book and I found it so well written by a really interesting author that I felt I had to have it to read the whole book not just the chapter my course referred me to. Now I have it for my own and I love it; the empathy with which the topics are covered and the research and how he has got enticed more deeply into his subject makes it an invaluable source on crime and punishment 18th to 19th centuries
