Capital Punishment Page #3

"Capital Punishment" is not a direct title by Charles Dickens; however, themes surrounding capital punishment can be found in his works, particularly in "Oliver Twist" and "A Tale of Two Cities." In these novels, Dickens explores the moral implications of the death penalty, societal injustices, and the impact of crime and punishment on individuals and society. Through his vivid characters and compelling narratives, Dickens critiques the legal system of his time and advocates for social reform, emphasizing compassion and redemption over harsh retribution.

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other than that he was like this malefactor, brimful of conceit, and a
desire to become, even at the cost of the gallows (the only cost within
his reach) the talk of the town.  He had less invention than Hocker, and
perhaps was not so deliberately bad; but his attempt was a branch of the
same tree, and it has its root in the ground where the scaffold is
erected.

Oxford had his imitators.  Let it never be forgotten in the consideration
of this part of the subject, how they were stopped.  So long as attempts
invested them with the distinction of being in danger of death at the
hangman’s hands, so long did they spring up.  When the penalty of death
was removed, and a mean and humiliating punishment substituted in its
place, the race was at an end, and ceased to be.

II

We come, now, to consider the effect of Capital Punishment in the
prevention of crime.

Does it prevent crime in those who attend executions?

There never is (and there never was) an execution at the Old Bailey in
London, but the spectators include two large classes of thieves—one class
who go there as they would go to a dog-fight, or any other brutal sport,
for the attraction and excitement of the spectacle; the other who make it
a dry matter of business, and mix with the crowd solely to pick pockets.
Add to these, the dissolute, the drunken, the most idle, profligate, and
abandoned of both sexes—some moody ill-conditioned minds, drawn thither
by a fearful interest—and some impelled by curiosity; of whom the greater
part are of an age and temperament rendering the gratification of that
curiosity highly dangerous to themselves and to society—and the great
elements of the concourse are stated.

Nor is this assemblage peculiar to London.  It is the same in country
towns, allowing for the different statistics of the population.  It is
the same in America.  I was present at an execution in Rome, for a most
treacherous and wicked murder, and not only saw the same kind of
assemblage there, but, wearing what is called a shooting-coat, with a
great many pockets in it, felt innumerable hands busy in every one of
them, close to the scaffold.

I have already mentioned that out of one hundred and sixty-seven convicts
under sentence of death, questioned at different times in the performance
of his duty by an English clergyman, there were only three who had not
been spectators of executions.  Mr. Wakefield, in his Facts relating to
the Punishment of Death, goes into the working, as it were, of this sum.
His testimony is extremely valuable, because it is the evidence of an
educated and observing man, who, before having personal knowledge of the
subject and of Newgate, was quite satisfied that the Punishment of Death
should continue, but who, when he gained that experience, exerted himself
to the utmost for its abolition, even at the pain of constant public
reference in his own person to his own imprisonment.  “It cannot be
egotism”, he reasonably observes, “that prompts a man to speak of himself
in connection with Newgate.”

“Whoever will undergo the pain,” says Mr. Wakefield, “of witnessing the
public destruction of a fellow-creature’s life, in London, must be
perfectly satisfied that in the great mass of spectators, the effect of
the punishment is to excite sympathy for the criminal and hatred of the
law. . . .  I am inclined to believe that the criminals of London, spoken
of as a class and allowing for exceptions, take the same sort of delight
in witnessing executions, as the sportsman and soldier find in the
dangers of hunting and war. . . I am confident that few Old Bailey
Sessions pass without the trial of a boy, whose first thought of crime
occurred whilst he was witnessing an execution. . . .  And one grown man,
of great mental powers and superior education, who was acquitted of a
charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery
occurred to him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the
execution of Fauntleroy.  To which it may be added, that Fauntleroy is
said to have made precisely the same declaration in reference to the
origin of his own criminality.”

But one convict “who was within an ace of being hanged”, among the many
with whom Mr. Wakefield conversed, seems to me to have unconsciously put
a question which the advocates of Capital Punishment would find it very
difficult indeed to answer.  “Have you often seen an execution?” asked
Mr. Wakefield.  “Yes, often.”  “Did it not frighten you?”  “No.  Why
should it?”

It is very easy and very natural to turn from this ruffian, shocked by
the hardened retort; but answer his question, why should it?  Should he
be frightened by the sight of a dead man?  We are born to die, he says,
with a careless triumph.  We are not born to the treadmill, or to
servitude and slavery, or to banishment; but the executioner has done no
more for that criminal than nature may do tomorrow for the judge, and
will certainly do, in her own good time, for judge and jury, counsel and
witnesses, turnkeys, hangman, and all.  Should he be frightened by the
manner of the death?  It is horrible, truly, so horrible, that the law,
afraid or ashamed of its own deed, hides the face of the struggling
wretch it slays; but does this fact naturally awaken in such a man,
terror—or defiance?  Let the same man speak.  “What did you think then?”
asked Mr. Wakefield.  “Think?  Why, I thought it was a—shame.”

Disgust and indignation, or recklessness and indifference, or a morbid
tendency to brood over the sight until temptation is engendered by it,
are the inevitable consequences of the spectacle, according to the
difference of habit and disposition in those who behold it.  Why should
it frighten or deter?  We know it does not.  We know it from the police
reports, and from the testimony of those who have experience of prisons
and prisoners, and we may know it, on the occasion of an execution, by
the evidence of our own senses; if we will be at the misery of using them
for such a purpose.  But why should it?  Who would send his child or his
apprentice, or what tutor would send his scholars, or what master would
send his servants, to be deterred from vice by the spectacle of an
execution?  If it be an example to criminals, and to criminals only, why
are not the prisoners in Newgate brought out to see the show before the
debtors’ door?  Why, while they are made parties to the condemned sermon,
are they rigidly excluded from the improving postscript of the gallows?
Because an execution is well known to be an utterly useless, barbarous,
and brutalising sight, and because the sympathy of all beholders, who
have any sympathy at all, is certain to be always with the criminal, and
never with the law.

I learn from the newspaper accounts of every execution, how Mr.
So-and-so, and Mr. Somebody else, and Mr. So-forth shook hands with the
culprit, but I never find them shaking hands with the hangman.  All kinds
of attention and consideration are lavished on the one; but the other is
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