EXECUTION OF CRIMINALS. See CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. Executions took place publicly in the United Kingdom till 1860, when it was by an act of parliament made law that all executions should take place within the precincts of a prison, in the sight of certain officials, newspaper reporters, and others invited to be present. The United States, Bavaria, and the colony of Victoria had previously adopted this method. The lack of that terror with which public executions were supposed to strike the multi tude is, by this private mode of procedure, held to be more than compensated by the prevention of what was a brutalizing public spectacle. In London, executions took place for the most part at Tyburn until 1783, when a scaffold erected in front of New gate prison became the common place of execution. " The gallows was built with three cross-beams for as many rows of sufferers; and between Feb. and Dec., 1785, ninety-six persons suffered by the ' new drop,' substituted for the cart. About 1786, here was the last execution, followed by burning the body; when a woman was hung on a low gibbet, and life being extinct, fagots were piled around her and over ler head, fire was set to the pile, and the corpse burned to ashes. On one occasion the old mode of execution was renewed: a triangular gallows was set up in the road opposite Green Arbor court, and the cart was drawn from under the criminal's feet."—Timb's Curiosi ties of London. To render executions more impressive, they were in some cases ordered to take place near the scene of guilt. About forty years ago, two men were hanged at Bishopbriggs, near Glasgow, in sight of the scene of a murder they had committed. The ordinary place of execution in most towns in Great Britain and Ireland is outside the prison. At Edinburgh, executions took place chiefly in the Grassmarket, until 1784, when they were transferred to a platform at the w. end of the Tolbooth, a build ing removed in 1817. The interval between sentence and execution is about three weeks, the nature of the crime not making any difference in this respect. In all parts
of the British empire, the convict under sentence of death is allowed to make choice of the spiritual adviser who shall attend on him; and generally, everything that humanity can suggest is done to assuage the bitterness of his fate. At one time, the bodies of murderers after execution were, in terms of their sentence, delivered to professors of anatomy for dissection; and it would appear that in some instances the mangled corpse was made a kind of public show. Such took place on the execution of earl Ferrers, 1760. The body having been conveyed from Tyburn in his lordship's landau-and-six to Surgeon's hall, was, after being disemboweled and laid open in the neck and breast, exposed to public view in a first-floor room. A print of the time depicts this odious exhibition. The ordering of the bodies to be dissected, having led to great abuse, was abolished in 1832; since this period, the bodies of executed murderers are buried within the precincts of the prison, and the bodies of other malefactors are given to their friends. See ANATOMY (in law). It was also at one time customary to hang the bodies of certain malefactors in chains after execution—as, for example, the bodies of pirates were so hung on the banks of the Thames—but this usage, revolting to public feeling, is likewise abandoned. From the improved state of the criminal law, death-sentences are now of comparatively rare occurrence, and still more rarely are such sentences exe cuted, for, except in cases of deliberate and aggravated murder, the extreme sentence of the law is now usually commuted by the crown into penal servitude for life. The secretary of state for the home department, however, exercises his power in this respect with much care and discretion; and the element of arbitrariness, which might be sup posed to spring from differences of temper in different home secretaries, is very seldom obvious.