The Hanging Tree

In the years between 1770 and 1830 when the Bloody Penal Code was at its most active, some 7,000 men and women were executed on public scaffolds, for small crimes as well as grave. Hanging was confined to murderers thereafter, but these were still killed in public until 1868, watched by crowds of many thousands. Clearly the gallows loomed large over much of 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 address the heyday of capital punishment through the exploration of mentalities and emotions rather than of policies and ideas. It investigates the feelings of English people at all social levels about the public gallows between 1770 and the end of public execution in 1868. 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.