It is a sobering thought that until the closing years of the twentieth
century, Britain's courts were technically able to impose the death
penalty for a number of offenses; both civil and military. Although the
last judicial hangings took place in 1964, the death penalty, in theory
at least, remained for a number of offenses. During the twentieth
century, 865 people were executed in Britain, and of those only 3 were
ever posthumously pardoned. This book details each and every one of
those executions, and in many cases highlights the crimes that brought
these men and women to the gallows.
The book also details the various forms of capital punishment used
throughout British history. During past centuries people were burned at
the stake, had the skin flayed from their bodies, been beheaded,
garrotted, hung, drawn and quartered, stoned, disemboweled, buried alive
and all under the guidance of a vengeful law, or at least what passed
for law at any given period. This book spares no detail in chronicling
these events and the author has painstakingly collected together every
available piece of evidence to provide as clear a picture as possible of
a time when the law operated on the principle of an eye for an eye.
The author, Gary M. Dobbs, is a true-crime historian and has spent many
hours researching the cases featured within these pages to bring the
reader a definitive history of judicial punishment during the twentieth
century, and this carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling
text will appeal to anyone interested in the darker side of history.
