Capital Punishment in Twentieth Century Britain: Audience, Justice, Memory

Abstract

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITAIN: AUDIENCE, JUSTICE, MEMORY Lizzie Seal (2014) Abingdon: Routledge pp 188 Hbk 85.00 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0978-0-415-62244-8 In 'Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain' Lizzie Seal has produced a fascinating, well researched and wide ranging book which examines the complexity of public perceptions of and responses to the perpetrators of crimes which did or once would have attracted the death penalty. This is a book about the everyday meanings and cultural life of capital punishment in twentieth-century Britain. The disappearance of the gallows from public view is the start point for this book. The end of execution as public spectacle in 1868 meant that the event itself whilst directly experienced behind prison walls by very few continued to be experienced by the wider population largely through imagination and representation. Lizzie Seal is interested in how people's experiences of execution by the state have been transformed over the decades since its withdrawal from public view. In chapters one and two, having offered an overview of capital punishment since 1868 and an examination of how in the twentieth century, executions were accessed primarily through the reading of newspapers, the author addresses the continuing role of capital punishment as entertainment and the anxieties this raised primarily around 'taste'. Chapters four and five explore protest against the death penalty and public responses to capital punishment as expressed in letters to the Home Office about specific cases. In particular she focuses on the symbol of justice as crucial for articulating anxieties about capital punishment in mid-twentieth century Britain. In Chapter six Lizzie Seal examines the political, legal and cultural significance of the Timothy Evans and Edith Thompson cases. Seal contends that in the years following their executions the cases of Evans and Thompson became 'emblematic of the failures and horrors of the death penalty' (p.122), Here Seal draws on Avery Gordon's concept of haunting to analyse how the 'seething presence' of Evans and Thompson returned following their deaths and continues to cast a ghostly shadow. Seal acknowledges that Evans and Thompson were not the only examples of 'haunting'. Other high profile cases such as those of Ruth Ellis, Derek Bentley and James Hanratty could be viewed through the same lens but as she contends, focussing on Evans and Thompson allows her to analyse themes of gender, horror, justice and error. In chapter seven the author explores capital punishment's continuing place in British culture, examining competing perceptions and understandings and addresses the continuing support for capital punishment particularly in relation to terrorism. …