Punishment Flashcards
Norman England: changes to wergild
‘wergild’ = ended
fines to king’s officials not victim/family
‘Murdrum Fine’
Norman England: increased use of harsh punishments
increase in crimes punishable by death/mutilation
Forest Laws poaching = death
castration/branding
Harrying of the North (1069) - 10,000 killed
Hereward the Wake (1071) - mutilation
Later medieval: Assizes of Northampton
Henry II 1176
increased use of corp. punishments -> robbery/arson/theft = one foot & one hand cut off
Later medieval: High Treason
1351
‘hanged, drawn & quartered’
Early Modern: early prisons
early 16th cent. prisons = petty criminals, vagrants, drunk & disorderly offenders
pay for food & bedding
1556 ‘House of Correction’ in disused Bridewell Palace in London
also house homeless/orphaned children
‘hard labour’
17th cent. similar prisons opened
Early Modern: Bloody Code
1688 crimes punishable by death increased to 50
poaching, stealing loaf of bread,, cutting down tree
Early Modern: transportation
James I
new English colonies in North America
14 or 7 years
Early Modern: Gunpowder Plot
1605
tortured then hanged, drawn & quartered
Early Modern continuity: fines
fraud, selling goods for wrong prices, assault & breaking legal agreements
from 16th cent. not going to church
Early Modern continuity: pillory/stocks
begging, drunkenness, cheating at cards, persistent swearing & selling underweight bread
Early Modern continuity: corp.
whipping, maiming & branding
theft
now also vagrancy & begging
Early Modern continuity: hanging
repeated begging, theft, highway robbery, poaching, smuggling & witchcraft
Industrial: the end of public executions
1868
Industrial: the declining use of the death pen. & end of the Bloody Code
by 1810 222 crimes carried death pen.
Bloody Code = abolished by Sir Robert Peel (Home Secretary 1820s)
<10% convicted actually sentenced to death by 1800s
1840 only treason & murder
Industrial: the introduction of transportation to Australia
transportation began ~1610 to America
after 1783 as result of American War of Independence
Australia claimed as part of British Empire 1770
18 months travel
serve 7 years
~160,000 transported to Australia