The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868
"The law to take its course...launched into eternity." Dry words to describe the anguish of public death by hanging, the preferred punishment in England from 1770 to 1868. One could hang for forgery, rape, murder, or lesser crimes; bodies might be gibbeted, quartered, or mauled by crowds believing in the healing qualities of freshly executed corpses. Grisly as this sounds, Gatrell (history, Cambridge Univ.), prompted by the chance discovery of hundreds of mercy petitions (still bound in their original ribbons and untouched for centuries), deals in a matter-of-fact, sometimes plodding way with the darker forces behind the spectacle. Crowds, barristers, judges, king, counselors, literary lights, and felons are all examined against a backdrop of a very bloody England (public executions, banned by an Act of Parliament in 1868, simply moved indoors). An excellent secondary source; recommended for academic and larger public library history collections.Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.