By Brian Bailey

FROM THE COVER: From the appointment of the infamous Jack Ketch in 1663 to the abolition of the death penalty in 1969, England saw three-hundred years of hanging for a multitude of crimes from stealing a loaf of bread to murder. Public hangings drew vast crowds and the hangman himself became an almost mythical figure of fascinated revulsion. Certainly the men who undertook this gruesome duty were an unusual breed. At first they were often recruited from the same prisons as their victims, and perhaps unsurprisingly they ended up, like John Price, 'dancing the Tyburn jig' at the end of the same rope.

Barnes and Noble. NY. 1989. 230p.

By Willam Clarke

From The Preface: The life and character of Savonarola Haw have been rightly supposed to present great difficulties in the historian.. From the day of his death – nay, morefrom the day of his power in Florence— up to our own times, opinions of the most diverse kind have been entertained…. The supporters of despotism, ecclesiastical and civil, have cherished a feeling of bitter enmity against the man who had such an ardent love of liberty; and they have joined the prophets of scepticism, who have had nothing but contempt and hatred for one who was so powerful a witness for religion and God. ..According to the sceptic style, he was a ridiculous and base imposter, who richly deserved the fate that befell him …

Chicago. A. C. MCCLURG & Co. I900. 342p.

By Jan Gorecki

From the Preface: Capital punishment is today among the most controversial prob­lems in America. On the one hand, the heat of the controversy exceeds the weight of the problem; as is pointed out in this book, it is not the presence or absence of capital punishment but other legal reforms that are essential for effective functioning of the criminal justice system in this country. On the other hand, how­ever, whether we send criminals to the gallows presents a moral dilemma of utmost importance. Owing to the heat of the controversy, recommendations abound both for and against retaining the death penalty. This book does not explicitly support either of these stands; the pur­pose here is to understand rather than to recommend. More specifically, the purpose is to analyze and explain what has oc­curred to the death penalty in the United States and to anticipate cautiously what may occur in the future. This does not, how­ever, mean that the book is void of practical implications. If a reader accepts the analysis and explanation to be offered, he may, and probably will, be aided in accepting a stand on what the legal system should do—abolish the death penalty or retain it.

The book starts with a brief analysis of the law of capital pun­ishment. It is a vacillating and confused law, recently shifting from near-abolition to retention. Its development is influenced by a clash of two conflicting forces—the general tendency of social evolution toward milder criminal sanctions and the in­creasingly punitive attitudes in America today. These two forces are scrutinized and accounted for in the second and third parts of the book. The scrutiny not only explains the development of the law but also throws some light on the future of the death penalty in America.

NY. Columbia University Press. 1983. 163p.

By Charles Gordon

“This gate hath of long time been a gaol, or prison, for felons and trespassers, as appareth by records in the reign of King John, and of other kings; amongst the which I find one testifying that, in the year 1218, the third year of King Henry III, the king written to the sheriffs of London, commanding them to repair the old gate of Newgate for the safe keeping of his prisoners,….”

London. Fisher Unwin.1902. 186 pages.

By Charles Gordon

“This gate hath of long time been a gaol, or prison, for felons and trespassers, as appareth by records in the reign of King John, and of other kings; amongst the which I find one testifying that, in the year 1218, the third year of King Henry III, the king written to the sheriffs of London, commanding them to repair the old gate of Newgate for the safe keeping of his prisoners,….”

London. Fisher Unwin.1902. 186 pages.

By Rachel E. Bennett.

Capital punishment has a long and storied global history. Within the annals of this penal narrative, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have offered a sustained attraction to historians of Western Europe. However, studies of the Scottish capital punishment experience have remained limited by comparison. This book seeks to redress this scholarly lacuna. Based upon an extensive gathering and analysis of previously untapped resources, it takes the reader on a journey from the courtrooms of Scotland to the theatre of the gallows. It introduces them to several of the malefactors who faced the hangman’s noose and explores the traditional hallmarks of the spectacle of the scaffold. The study demonstrates that the period between 1740 and 1834 was one of discussion, debate and fundamental change in the use of the death sentence and how it was staged in practice. In addition, it contextualises the use of capital punishment against the backdrop of key events in Scottish history in this period including Anglo-Scottish relations in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union, the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation witnessed by the country. In doing so, the current study goes beyond redressing a scholarly gap and instead demonstrates that an exploration of Scotland’s unique capital punishment history enhances the current feld in some areas but provides a crucial caveat to the broader narrative in others. Finally, this study writes the post-mortem punishment of the criminal corpse into Scotland’s capital punishment history. In demonstrating that the journey of several capitally convicted offenders, predominantly murderers, did not end upon the scaffolds of Scotland, it takes the reader from the theatre of the gallows to the dissection tables of Scotland’s main universities and to the foot of the gibbets from which criminal bodies were displayed. In doing so it identifes an intermediate stage in the long-term disappearance of public bodily punishment.

Basingstoke, UK: Springer Nature, 2018. 243p.

By Dario Melossi.

An examination and interpretation of the development of modern prisons in England and Europe from 1550 to 1850, a study of Italian prison development, and of American prisons from colonial times to 1930. 

New York: Macmillan, 1981. 243p.

By Michael Ignatieff.

"A Just Measure of Pain" describes the moment in 18th century England when the modern penitentiary and its ambiguous legacy were born. In depicting how the whip, the brand and the gallows - public punishments once meant to cow the unruly poor into passivity - came to be replaced by the "moral management" of the prison and the notion that the criminal poor should be involved in their own rehabilitation. Michael Ignatieff documents the rise of a new conception of class relations and with it a new philosophy of punishment, one directed not at the body but at the mind. "A Just Measure of Pain" is a highly atmospheric and compellingly written work of social history, which has already become a classic study of its subject.

New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 257p.

By Sarah Tarlow and Emma Battell.

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

Lowman. Palgrave (2018) 277 pages.

By Charles H. Reeve.

A theoretical and philosophical review of some matters relating to crime, punishment, prisons, and reformation of convicts. With a glance at mental, social and political conditions; and some suggestions about and the prevention of crime and the production of causes, and the prevention of crime and the production of criminals.

Knight and Leonard (1890) 206 pages.

A Symposium by Julia Kippen Jaffray and George Gordon Battle.

Contents: I. The prisoner and the courts / by William H. Wadhams -- II. The prisoner himself. Part I. / by Bernard H. Glueck. Part II / by Thomas W. Salmon -- III. The prisoner--ward or slave? / by Karl W. Kirchwey -- IV. The control over the prisoner. Part I. Federal / by George Gordon Battle. Part II. State / by E. Stagg Whitin -- V. Self-government by the prisoner. Part I. Self-government in a state prison / by Thomas Mott Osborne. Part II. Self-government in a reformatory / by E. Kent Hubbard -- VI. The prison officer / by Frederick A. Dorner -- VII. Industrial training for the prisoner / by Arthur D. Dean -- VIII. The prisoner in the road camp / by Charles Henry Davis -- IX. The union man and the prisoner / by Collis Lovely -- X. The man who comes out of prison / by R.J. Caldwell -- XI. The community center and the delinquent / by John Collier. Boston:

Little, Brown, 1917. 250p.