Public Hangings In The 18th Century
A plethora of acts throughout the time period also showed a development in the attitudes of society and the government. The Capital Punishment Amendment Act (CPAA) of 1868 focused on the ending of public hangings and aimed for a more humane approach to hangings with professional hangmen and the process of moving hangings inside the prison walls to make them less of a fun event, and more to actually represent why they were being hanged because society had lost what the fundamental meaning of the hangings actually were. Clark comments on the end of public executions and stated that “there can be no doubt that the police and authorities were… pleased to see the end of public executions… required considerable crowd control and seemed to encourage crime and bad behaviour”.
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Therefore, when ‘enlightened’ people such as Dickens commented on the lack of ‘abhorrence’, ‘sorrow’ and ‘seriousness’ he, in effect, foretold the concept that society was slowly developing, but it would just take 24 years to come about and for people to recognise that public hangings were of no benefit to anyone. This can be paralleled with the case of Bentley and the changing attitudes that ensued, but instead of moving hangings inside prisons, Bentley’s case called for a complete abolition of the death penalty, thus conveying how the events are on this sort of parity with one another in terms of the magnitude of the event paralleled with the maturity of society at that moment in
Therefore, when ‘enlightened’ people such as Dickens commented on the lack of ‘abhorrence’, ‘sorrow’ and ‘seriousness’ he, in effect, foretold the concept that society was slowly developing, but it would just take 24 years to come about and for people to recognise that public hangings were of no benefit to anyone. This can be paralleled with the case of Bentley and the changing attitudes that ensued, but instead of moving hangings inside prisons, Bentley’s case called for a complete abolition of the death penalty, thus conveying how the events are on this sort of parity with one another in terms of the magnitude of the event paralleled with the maturity of society at that moment in