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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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capital punishment
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Like much else in Britain, execution has had class distinctions. Aristocrats were beheaded, usually with an axe but for women sometimes with a sword; the last to be so executed was Lord Lovat in 1747. The rest were hanged, which until the early 19C meant strangling to death on the end of a rope (a drop from the scaffold was later introduced, causing the neck to break).
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Traitors suffered the further horror of being hanged, drawn and quartered; they were taken down from the gallows while still alive, and were castrated and disembowelled (tradition maintains that at this point Thomas Harrison, one of the regicides of *Charles I, rose and assaulted the executioner) before being beheaded and having the torso divided into four quarters, each attached to one limb. Scotland differed from the rest of the country in using, in the 16–17C, an early form of *guillotine known as the Maiden.
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Hangings took place in public until 1868 and thereafter within prison walls, until the abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1965 (a temporary measure, not confirmed as permanent until 1969). The last woman to be hanged was Ruth *Ellis, and the last deaths by hanging were of two men on 13 August 1964. Capital punishment remains on the statute book for certain crimes (in particular treason and piracy with violence) and there have been regular attempts in the House of Commons to reintroduce it for acts of terrorism and murder of the police. Proposals to restore it frequently come before parliament and are voted down by a large majority of MPs.
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Capital punishment was not abolished in the *Isle of Man until 1993, but the only three recent death sentences (for murders in 1972, 1982 and 1991) were all commuted to life imprisonment by the use of the *royal prerogative.
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