Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/332

 000 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT in England. Statistics. of the city, and the condemned men were hanged on the spot pointed out by the witnesses as the scene of their outrages. During the year in which Phillip sailed with the First Executions Fleet, the number of persons executed in England was one hundred and one; crime at that time having apparently risen to its highest level. In the twelve years between 1771 and 1783, no less than four hundred and sixty-seven persons were hanged in London and Middlesex — an average of rather less than forty per annum. During the twenty-three years from 1749 to 1772, the number of persons con- demned to death at the Old Bailey was one thousand one hundred and twenty-one, of whom six hundred and seventy- eight suffered death — ^a yearly average of less than thirty.* These figures relate to London only; they do not include the cases in the country towns to which the Judges went on circuit at the Assizes. Executions were, comparatively, almost as common in the country as they were in the metropolis. The Lent Assizes of 1785 were followed by nine at Elingston, nine at Lincoln, and nine at Gloucester, seven at Warwick, six at Exeter, six at Winchester, and six at Salisbury, five at Shrewsbury, and so on all over the country. The total number of capital sentences in England for that year was two hundred and forty-two, out of which there were one hundred and three executions.f Executions Loudou itsclf stood without a rival among all the capital in London, ^j^j^g q£ jjupope in its display of public executions, just as it did in the abominations of prison life. The contrast • Howard, Stote of the PrisonB, 4th ed., 1792, pp. 482-4. t Griffiths, YoL ii, p. 3. The number of executions in England during the present century decreased from year to year, notwithstanding the rapid mcrease of pojpulation. Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics gives the numc>er executed in England and Wales from 1801 to 1820 at one thousand six hundred and ninety-seven, or eighty-five per annum ; between 1821 and 1830, the number was six hundred and seventy-two, or sixty-seven per annum ; and between 1831 and 1850, the number was three hundred and sixty-five, or eighteen per annum ; the total number for the half-century beinff two thousand seven hundred and thirty-four. The population of England had increased from 8,800,000 in 1801 to 18,000,000 in 1851. The population in 1780 was 8,000,000. Digitized by Google