At the beginning of the 19th century, there were no fewer than 222 capital crimes, including such terrible offences as impersonating a Chelsea pensioner and damaging London Bridge! One reason why the number of capital crimes was so high was due to the way that particular offences were broken down into specific crimes. For instance stealing in a shop, a dwelling house, a warehouse and a brothel were each a separate offence. Similarly with arson, burning down a house was distinguished from burning a hayrick. It should be noted that in practice, there were only about seventeen offences for which a death sentence was generally carried out in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These included murder, attempted murder, arson, rape, sodomy, forgery, uttering (passing forged or counterfeit monies or bills) coining, robbery, highway robbery (in many cases, this was the offence of street robbery, that we would now call mugging), housebreaking, robbery in a dwelling house, returning from transportation, cutting and maiming (grievous bodily harm) and horse, cattle or sheep stealing. For all the other capital offences, transportation to America or Australia was generally substituted for execution.
From the 1820’s, the number of capital crimes began to be rapidly reduced and were down to sixteen by 1837. After 1840 only two people were to hang for a crime other than murder, both of whom had been convicted of attempted murder.
The Criminal Law Consolidation Act of 1861 reduced the number of capital crimes to four, viz, Murder, High Treason, Arson in a Royal Dockyard, and Piracy. In reality all executions from September 1861 were for murder, except in time of war. This situation continued until 1957 when the Homicide Act of that year classified murder into capital and non-capital.
World History
