Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies

Vol. 21, n°1 | 2017 Varia

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chs/1707 DOI : 10.4000/chs.1707 ISSN : 1663-4837

Éditeur Librairie Droz

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 janvier 2017 ISSN : 1422-0857

Référence électronique Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 21, n°1 | 2017 [En ligne], mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2019, consulté le 23 septembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chs/1707 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/chs.1707

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 23 septembre 2020.

© Droz 1

SOMMAIRE

The Death Penalty in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Introduction Vivien Miller

Perceptions of safety, fear and social change in the public’s pro-death penalty discourse in mid twentieth-century Britain Lizzie Seal

“It doesn’t take much evidence to convict a Negro”: Capital punishment, race, and rape in mid-twentieth-century Florida Vivien Miller

Death Row Resistance, Politics and Capital Punishment in 1970s Jamaica James Campbell

Articles

Le vagabondage, ou la police des existences irrégulières et incertaines : sens et usages d’un délit (France, 1815-1850) Pierre Gaume

An Awful and Impressive Spectacle : Crime Scene Executions in Scotland, 1801-1841 Rachel Bennett

Comptes rendus

Interactions et relations d’interdépendance dans la formation de l’État moderne Quentin Verreycken

Claude Gauvard, Andrea Zorzi (Eds), La vengeance en Europe XIIIe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015, 384 pp. , ISBN : 978-2-85944-891-2 James Sharpe

Aline Helg, Plus jamais esclaves ! de l’insoumission à la révolte, le grand récit d’une émancipation (1492-1838), Paris, La Découverte, 2016, 422 pp. , ISBN : 9782707188656 Emmanuel Blanchard

Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde ; de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris, PUPS, 2016, 414 p., ISBN : 979-10-231-0520-9 Clive Emsley

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Livres reçus

Livres reçus

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The Death Penalty in the Mid- Twentieth Century

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Introduction

Vivien Miller

1 The death penalty continues to generate numerous studies by sociologists, criminologists, historians, journalists, and lawyers, and remains a subject of popular fascination. Many studies of the United States, for example, endeavour to explain why most individual states and the federal government retain capital punishment, when nearly all other industrialised and post-industrial nations have abolished it completely. 1 Indeed, in the decades after the end of World War II, the United States seemed to be traveling a similar road to abolition as European nations, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In 1965, legal scholar and criminologist, Norval Morris, reported to the United Nations on the status of capital punishment among world nations, at which time there were twenty-five abolitionist countries. Morris reported also that capital punishment had been abolished in nine individual US states.2 Nevertheless, executions were still permissible in forty-one US states, the District of Columbia, and under federal statutes at that time.

2 Three articles in this themed issue focus on different aspects of capital punishment in different parts of the Anglophone world in the period from World War II to the 1980s, and are all from larger national, regional or state studies in progress. They were presented originally at the European Social Science History Conference at the University of Valencia in March 2016, in a session on Abolition and Change to the Death Penalty in Europe and North America, which explored transformations and continuities from the 1940s to the 1970s. In many jurisdictions, abolitionist politicians, civil servants, and bureaucrats achieved reform, but even as opposition to capital punishment in the West became more extensive, sophisticated and influential than ever before, in the years after World War II, the death penalty retained strong public support in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. Together, the articles illustrate that the history of capital punishment during these critical decades was complex, multifaceted and entangled with diverse political, social and cultural developments. They also complicate the post-World War II national histories of Britain, Jamaica, and the US Sunbelt state of Florida, and thus offer new research questions and explorations for regional, comparative and transnational projects. The articles further underline the resilience of conservatism in an age of

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abolition, particularly in relation to popular and political discourses on law and order, protection and security, as well as race, class, immigration and mobility. Large sections of the populations in Britain, Jamaica, and Florida continued to equate capital punishment with enhanced individual and community safety. 3 Even so, the late-1940s was a pivotal moment in the history of capital punishment in the industrialised western world. In December 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognised rights that are central to the ongoing campaign for the global abolition of the death penalty, including the right to life and protection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The embrace of international human rights principles by nations and domestic constitutional regimes in post-World War II Europe resulted in, for example, the abolition of capital punishment in the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany (FDR) in 1949. This, however, brought the country’s new government into conflict with Allied military authorities presiding over Nazi war crimes trials and executions, as executing major Nazi war criminals was a key part of the Allies’ denazification programme. There were ideological, political, and popular divisions between those who felt execution was the only suitable punishment for Nazi perpetrators of terror and genocide and those who argued that the abolition of the death penalty altogether was a necessary precondition for overcoming the injustices and inhumanity of the past, as well as differentiating the new Germany from its murderous Third Reich past.3 The tensions between human rights and due processes discourses and continued advocacy of rough justice, just desserts, and exemplary execution are addressed in all three articles here. 4 In the United Kingdom, a Royal Commission on Capital Punishment was set up in 1949 by the post-war Labour government, and began an investigation that would conclude four years later that the law and enforcement of capital punishment for murder in the United Kingdom was riven by irresolvable contradictions. Historian Victor Bailey suggests Commission members equivocated over abolition, but they did set in motion events that led to the suspension and abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom by the end of the 1960s.4 Lizzie Seal’s article draws on research into around 5,000 letters concerning capital cases, that were received by successive Home Secretaries in mid-twentieth-century Britain. She examines examples of pro-death penalty discourse in the letters as it was framed in relation to fears about safety and order in society. Although this was related to a belief that the death penalty could serve as a deterrent, the letters’ main arguments centred on the pace of social change, often linked to the authors’ views on post-war rising crime rates, population growth, immigration and the appearance of black and brown “others” in communities that were perceived to have been all-white and homogenous previously, declining morality and sexual permissiveness, and youth behaviour. Such transformations were often construed as making society more dangerous and insecure. The article also highlights which aspects of social change that the authors perceived as especially troubling, such as the behaviour of young auto bandits or Teddy Boys. 5 Seal argues that the public responses articulated in the letters help to shed light on continuities in punitive discourse and anxieties about social change, which endured throughout the same period in which there was growing public and official debate over abolition and retention, and certainly well-publicised anxieties over the Ruth Ellis, Derek Bentley, and Timothy Evans executions for example.5 Although criminological

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literature has frequently placed such sentiments within the context of social and cultural shifts in late-modern societies since the 1960s or 1970s, attitudes expressed in the letters demonstrate that crime had a similar role as a condensing symbol for fears about the pace and contours of social change in the 1940s and 1950s. Fear of violent crime on the street and in the home continued to drive criticisms of lacklustre government responses to public concerns about safety and social, class, and racial security. 6 In the United States, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) presented evidence for the first time before the US Supreme Court in 1949, that the death penalty in rape cases was discriminatory on grounds of race. Ninety percent of men executed for rape were African American, and most had been convicted of interracial sexual violence against a white girl or woman.6 This, and other Civil Rights challenges, launched a new era of death penalty activism and jurisprudence that continues to shape debate on the issue into the twenty-first century.7 By the early 1960s, the death penalty was retained for rape in the District of Columbia and seventeen US states, specifically all former Confederate and southern border states, as well as Nevada, and the United States was one of only five nations which continued to executed men convicted of rape ; the other four were Nationalist China, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and South Africa.8 7 Nevertheless, popular and official attitudes toward rape were changing in the southern states during the 1940s and 1950s, as many state governors became increasingly vexed by the disproportionate numbers of black men receiving death sentences for rape. Such sentiments had been rarely expressed in the earlier part of the century, particularly by defenders of lynching as a necessary means to protect white women from seemingly black males. Further, jurist Arthur Goldberg’s view in 1962 that “the imposition of the death penalty was arbitrary, haphazard, capricious and discriminatory”, and its impact was “demonstrably greatest among disadvantaged minorities”, became part of Goldberg, Douglas, and Brennan’s dissent from the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Rudolph v. Alabama (1963), an appeal from a death sentence imposed for rape – argued on grounds of proportionality of punishment, rather than race.9 Later in 1966, as Arkansas was preparing to execute William Maxwell, a black man convicted of raping a white woman, Maxwell’s appeal became the first showpiece of the NAACP-Legal Defense Fund’s litigation campaign that utilised statistical and other social science data to prove racial patterns of executions for rape could only be due to one factor : racial discrimination.10 8 Even in countries which retained capital punishment, the 1950s and 1960s generally saw significant decreases in the numbers of capital statutes, the declining frequency with which death sentences were imposed, and lower numbers of executions being carried out. Nonetheless, local conditions and local factors continued to shape regional and national trends in important ways. As the age of death penalty abolition slowly dawned in the United States, widespread reluctance to abandon the death penalty and executions was evident in many states, including Florida. Executive and legislative unease over selective execution by race, particularly in capital rape cases, was not shared by many local constituents or law enforcement agents, particularly if an African American serial rapist was believed to be at large or a gang rape had been reported. 9 Vivien Miller argues that the combination of black male offender and white female victim remained a powerful predictor of execution for rape in 1940s and 1950s Florida,

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and executions functioned symbolically and practically to police interracial social and sexual behaviour, and to reinforce gender, race, and class boundaries, but in an increasingly limited number of cases and in select counties. She notes that specific aggravating factors, such as an attack involving multiple offenders and one victim, and the invasion of the white family home by a burglar-turned-rapist, increased the likelihood of a death sentence being carried out. Thus, both prosecutors and jurors were becoming increasingly selective as to which cases and which offenders warranted a death sentence. Florida courtrooms were important sites of Civil Rights protest, as black defendants and their lawyers sought to challenge racial inequities in the prosecution of interracial sexual violence and the lack of due process afforded non- white offenders. Yet, success was limited due to the dynamics of gang, serial, and white-home-invasion rape cases, as well as race- and class-based cultural expectations regarding black masculine behaviour and the performance of that behaviour. When executions for rape did cease after 1960, it was only because of decisive gubernatorial action, and this action was out of step with popular opinion generally. 10 Even active execution states such as Florida and Georgia in the US South conducted no executions at all after 1964, but did resume in the late 1970s.11 Consequently, not only was there a patchwork of often conflicting practices in different countries, particularly those with federal structures, but oppositional customs were found in different jurisdictions within the same national borders. The last executions in Canada took place in 1962 ; but had ceased in the province of Quebec in 1960. Britain’s efforts to engage with issues of death penalty reform and abolition on the international stage in the second half of the twentieth century were also fraught with local-colonial/post- colonial-metropole tensions. Government ministers in the United Kingdom sought to balance diplomatic pressures, human rights commitments, constitutional law, and the demands of local independence movements, in its response to clemency appeals from condemned prisoners in territories including the Bahamas, Belize, Cyprus, Hong Kong and St Vincent for example. The result was a patchwork of often contradictory decisions across different territories that reveals the limits of British opposition to the death penalty, and illustrates both the diversity of death penalty decision-making across common law jurisdictions, and Britain’s limited capacity to promote a uniform approach to the death penalty in its remaining overseas territories at the end of Empire.12 11 James Campbell’s article on the evolution of modern Jamaican capital punishment, and the critical period of the 1970s and 1980s, highlights the differing attitudes toward abolition and retention within Jamaica itself, and between the Commonwealth nation and the United Kingdom. Beginning with the February 1972 convictions of Mario Hector and Winston Williams for the murder of a bank security guard, Campbell examines death row conditions at the St Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town, and the acts of resistance by condemned prisoners to protest the beatings, denial of basic human rights, and the oppressive conditions of solitary confinement that were routinely experienced by capital offenders awaiting execution. While there was a concerted national and international campaign against executions in Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, that involved lawyers, activists, government ministers and members of the public, Campbell demonstrates that wide-ranging acts of resistance by death row prisoners were just as crucial in forcing capital punishment onto the political agenda.

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The Hector-Williams case further provided an important platform for critical legal challenges to Jamaica’s juvenile death penalty laws. 12 Abolition of capital punishment in major western nations was a defining feature of the late 1960s and 1970s. It was eventually abolished in law in most industrialised nations, with the notable exceptions of the United States and Japan, by the 1980s. Amid significant doubts about the justice and efficacy of the death penalty, there was an unofficial moratorium on executions in Jamaica in the late-1970s during which numerous death sentences were commuted, although executions were resume in the 1980s. Both Hector and Williams’ sentences were commuted as public criticism and political debates about the future of capital punishment in Jamaica gained traction, just as Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan, also convicted of murder, were entering death row in 1979. Their appeals were eventually successful when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London ruled in 1992 that ruled that delayed executions were inhuman and degrading punishment.13

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

References

Allen, H.W. & Clubb, J., Race, Class, and the Death Penalty : Capital Punishment in American History, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2009.

Bailey, V. “The Shadow of the Gallows : The Death Penalty and the British Labour Government, 1945-51”, Law and History Review, 2000, 18, 2, pp. 305-350.

Bakken, G.M., Invitation to an Execution : A History of the Death Penalty in the United States. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2010.

Banner, S., The death penalty : An American history, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002.

Bass, G. J., Stay the Hand of Vengeance : The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2014.

Bessler, J.D., Cruel & Unusual : The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment, Lebanon, NH, University Press of New England, 2012.

Faulkner, C. & Parker, A., Interconnections : Gender and Race in American History, Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2014.

Garland, D., Peculiar institution : America’s death penalty in an age of abolition, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Gartner, R. & McCarthy, B., The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Goldberg, A.J., “The Death Penalty and the Supreme Court”, Arizona Law Review, 1973, 15, pp. 355-368.

Goldberg, A.J., “Memorandum to the Conference Re : Capital Punishment, October Term, 1963”, South Texas Law Review, 1986, 27, pp. 493-506.

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Gottschalk, M., The Prison and the Gallows : The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Hood, R. & Hoyle, C., The Death Penalty : A Worldwide Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Jonas, G., Freedom’s Sword : The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America, 1909-1969, Abingdon : Routledge, 2005.

Kochavi, A.J., Prelude to Nuremberg : Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Morris, N., Marson, C.C. & Fuson, D.F., “Capital Punishment : Developments, 1961-1965”, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1967.

Novak, A., The Global Decline of the Mandatory Death Penalty : Constitutional Jurisprudence and Legislative Reform in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, Abingdon : Routledge, 2016.

Rise, E.W., The Martinsville Seven : Race, Rape, and Capital Punishment, Richmond, University of Virginia Press, 1998.

Sarat, A., When the State kills : Capital punishment and the American condition, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2001.

Schabas, W., War Crimes and Human Rights : Essays on the Death Penalty, Justice, and Accountability, London, Cameron, 2008.

Schabas, W., The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Seal, L., Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain : Audience, Justice, Memory. Abingdon : Routledge, 2014.

Von Kellenbach, K., The Mark of Cain : Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi Perpetrators, Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Ward, R. ed., A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse. London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Yorke, J., Against the Death Penalty : International Initiatives and Implications (entry on Jamaica), Abingdon, Routledge, 2016.

Zarnow, L., ‘Braving Jim Crow to Save Willie McGee : Bella Azbug, the Legal Left, and Civil Rights Innovation, 1948-1951’. Law & Social inquiry, 2008, 33, 4, pp. 1003-1041.

Zimring, F.E., The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York, Oxford University Press, 2004.

NOTES

1. See for example, Bessler (2012) ; Bakken (2010) ; Garland (2010) ; Gottschalk (2006) ; Zimring (2004) ; Sarat (2001). 2. Hood & Hoyle (2008). 3. See for example, Kochavi (2000) ; Schabas (2008) ; von Kellenbach (2013) ; Bass (2014, especially chapter 5) ; Ward (2015). 4. Bailey (2000, pp. 305-350). 5. Seal (2014).

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6. Rise (1998) ; Jonas (2005) ; Allen & Clubb (2009). 7. For example, Zarnow (2008, pp. 1003-1041) ; State v. Speller, 230 N.C. 345 (North Carolina, 1949) ; State v. Speller, 231 N.C. 549 (North Carolina, 1950) ; State v. Speller, 57 S.E.2d 759 (1950) ; Shepherd v. State, 46 so.2d 880 (1950). 8. Washington Post, 22 October 1963, A1 ; New York Times, 10 July 1966, 147. 9. Goldberg (1973) ; Goldberg (1986). 10. Banner (2002) ; Garland (2010). 11. There were no executions in the United States between 1967 and 1977. When the US Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia (1972) that the death penalty was administered in a capricious and discriminatory manner, and thus existing state laws and practices were unconstitutional, states quickly rewrote their capital punishment laws to include bifurcated trials and automatic appellate review of death sentences. The death penalty was reinstated when the court voted 7-2 in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). 12. Novak (2016, especially Chapter 4) ; Yorke (2016). 13. The Independent (UK), 2 November, 1993.

AUTEUR

VIVIEN MILLER

University of Nottingham

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Perceptions of safety, fear and social change in the public’s pro-death penalty discourse in mid twentieth- century Britain

Lizzie Seal

1 In June 1956, a man from Boston, Lincolnshire wrote to the Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, expressing his frustration about the upcoming free vote in the House of Commons on Labour MP Sydney Silverman’s private member’s bill to abolish the death penalty. In the writer’s view, abolition should not be countenanced. He could not “understand a Conservative Government giving so little consideration to the safety, feelings of [the] ordinary decent law abiding citizen”.1 The vote was passed by an overwhelming majority. A woman from Sudbury, Suffolk was dismayed. She argued in her letter to Maxwell Fyfe that “For the safety and preservation of the human race ‘a life for a life’ has got to be the law”.2

2 These letter writers expressed pro-death penalty discourse because for them the retention of capital punishment was essential for safety, security and stability. They wrote at a time when the death penalty in Britain had become an increasingly contested penal practice.3 Although Silverman’s Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill was defeated in the House of Lords, politically and culturally the tide seemed to be turning towards abolition. The Labour Party had failed to end capital punishment while in Government but the majority of its MPs supported abolition.4 Crucially, opinion had also shifted in this direction amongst Conservative MPs.5 3 The troubling, high profile cases of Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis had revealed significant flaws in the death penalty – it could be overly harsh, it could be unfair and it could be applied to the wrong person.6 By the mid-1950s, capital punishment was a salient issue. Not only was it debated in Parliament, it was a hot topic in the popular press. The Daily Mirror, the Daily Herald and the Picture Post favoured abolition. The Daily Mail and Daily Express urged retention. 7 This increased salience of the death penalty had been growing since the end of the Second World War.

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4 I have argued previously that although it would be an overstatement to say that public opinion had shifted sufficiently to support abolition, the British death penalty was the focus of cultural anxiety and ambivalence by the mid-50s.8 Taking the temperature of historical public opinion presents methodological challenges, even for the recent past. There are opinion polls on the issue of capital punishment in Britain from the 1930s onwards.9 These are a useful resource in terms of gaining a broad brush picture of people’s opinion in the abstract and show fluctuations in approval at certain points.10 More recent work on attitudes to the death penalty in retentionist countries highlights the limitations of such polls. Surveys that contain vignettes of cases, rather than only questions about approval or opposition in the abstract, reveal views shift according to the details of the crime, mitigating factors and the nature of the victim.11 5 In order to gain a richer understanding of public attitudes to capital punishment in mid-twentieth-century Britain, this article draws on letters that individuals sent to successive Home Secretaries about this issue. These can be found in capital case files held in The National Archives and were responses both to particular cases and to mooted legislative changes. In order to establish manageable limits on the study from which this article draws, twenty five cases were selected and a further eight Home Office files containing letters from the public on capital punishment. Cases were selected in relation to volume of correspondence after reviewing all relevant open files 1930-65. 6 In the 1930s and early 40s, letters in case files were mainly from individuals from the same locale as the condemned and with direct connections to them, whereas by the late 1940s high profile cases attracted a greater number of letters, which were mainly sent by people with no connection to the condemned and who were geographically dispersed. A large number of letters in a case file from the 1930s was around thirty; by the 1950s high profile cases could attract hundreds.12 Selection of cases was adjusted to ensure representation across the time period. Altogether, around 3,000 letters were included in the study and were analysed thematically to identify the symbolic meanings their authors attached to the death penalty. Most of the letters were signed and bear the author’s address; frequent use of first initials rather than names limits how far the gender breakdown can be determined.13 Length varies but two or three sides of A5 sized paper is fairly typical. 7 Mass Observation’s Capital Punishment Surveys from 1948 and 1955-56 are also employed as sources of qualitative public opinion.14 These were commissioned by the Daily Telegraph and contained open ended questions on how respondents felt about capital punishment and, in the later survey, on whether anything the respondent “had seen, heard or read” had influenced their views on the death penalty.15 Mass Observation is a research organisation committed to understanding everyday life. In its original incarnation from 1937 to the mid-1950s, it employed a range of methods to study a wide array of topics. Among its interests was the formation of opinion, especially the relationship between “feeling, thought and action”.16 The open ended questions are a valuable source of people’s emotions about the death penalty, as well as the particular cases or issues that influenced their views. 8 These sources are not demographically “representative” of public opinion at the time. The letter writers in particular were unusual in their motivation to write to the Home Secretary. As might be expected, where people wrote in relation to individual cases, their responses were skewed towards asking for a reprieve and highlighting flaws in

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the death penalty. However, as Natalie Zemon Davis argues, such letters have the advantage of containing relatively uninterrupted narratives, which express contemporary cultural and social norms.17 As a source of public response, they provide access to the kinds of symbolic meanings that individuals attached to capital punishment. Kerstin Bruckweh’s study of letters sent about German child murderer Jürgen Bartsch in the 1960s and 70s found that they articulated “desires for punishment and explanations for the cruel murderer, but also unveil[ed] perceptions of democracy”.18 Therefore, they were sources of opinion about democracy, the state and the rule of law. 9 Here, the focus is on the numerically less well represented responses that were pro- death penalty and emphasised the theme of safety, pulling in related issues of fear and anxieties about social change.19 They are drawn from the post-war section of the sample and were in response to proposed changes of legislation, or to cases where the author was not connected to the condemned.20 There are important continuities between the kinds of punitive discourse expressed by these mid-twentieth-century letter writers and survey respondents, and contemporary findings about approval for harsh punishment. Criminological literature has frequently placed such sentiments within the context of social and cultural shifts in late modern societies since the 1970s, particularly the erosion of the welfare state and the rise of neoliberalism.21 However, capital crimes were also condensing symbols for anxieties about fast paced social change, declining morality and criminal “others” from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

Crime, fear and social change

10 Views on punishment relate to wider issues of collective morality, emotion and responsibility.22 In this sense, reactions to crime and punishment are also expressive of other values. Capital punishment is especially symbolic as it “relates to questions of political and cultural sovereignty”.23 After the Second World War, the death penalty in Britain became representative of the imagined national community. This refers to the national identity shared by members of the nation, which relies on “imagined” rather than face-to-face relationships. It can be understood by its members as contiguous with the moral community.24 Crime and punishment are entwined with perceptions of morality and easily become symbolic of the state of national and local communities. Capital crimes are particularly expressive as they implicate issues of life and death.

11 Fear of crime, and associated beliefs in the need for strong punishment, “represent things above and beyond the (actuarially considered) possibility of victimization”.25 Rather, fear expresses cultural anxieties that share meanings with crime, such as worsening social relations and unwelcome social change. Crime is a metaphor for other social problems.26 Feelings of insecurity induced by the rapidity of social change and anxieties about modernity are channelled through responses to crime.27 These anxieties are “exemplified by concerns about social decline, community fragmentation, and moral authority”.28 Such concerns are frequently projected onto particular social groups, which are perceived as different from the moral community and/or troublesome to it.29 Research into attitudes towards punishment in a contemporary context has demonstrated that individuals who are the most concerned about social change and uncertain about the future are also the most likely to hold punitive views.30

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12 Criminological explanations for the link between fear of crime, anxieties about social change and punitive emotions have drawn on Anthony Giddens’ concept of ontological insecurity. This refers to threats to self-identity that endanger “aspects of the ‘reality’ of the world”.31 Giddens argues that ontological insecurity is prevalent in modern societies due to the pace and scope of change entailed by modernity. This experience of ontological insecurity leads some individuals to attempt to shore up stability by reasserting their “values as absolutes”.32 They are intolerant of deviance and create scapegoats for the “troubles of the wider society”.33 They favour expressive punishments such as long prison sentences and the death penalty.34 13 David Garland argues that the precariousness of late modern societies – in which the welfare state has declined and neoliberal economics flourish – means that insecurity is widely experienced.35 He contrasts the economic prosperity, lower inequality and expanded social rights of the post-war years up until the 1960s with the “crisis decades” of the 1970s and 80s, during which recession led to the restructuring of the labour market. Significant transformations in family life, the consumption of culture and the growth of mass media accelerated the pace of social change in late modernity.36 Rising rates of recorded crime and media reporting of serious, high profile crimes made crime and violence “channels for the expression of more inchoate fears”.37 Jock Young describes the changes wrought by late modernity as inducing “feelings of social vertigo and insecurity” in citizens.38 To counter this, they reach for “strong lines of identity and grasp[…] out at difference”.39 He differentiates the stasis and security of post-war “high modernity” from the disembeddedness and precariousness of the late modern world.40 14 Letter writers and survey respondents who articulated pro-death penalty views frequently emphasised the need to retain capital punishment as a deterrent in order to promote safety. They linked fears of rising crime to harmful social change. These responses provide examples of feelings of ontological insecurity before the “crisis decades” of the 1970s and 80s. The rest of the article analyses pro-death penalty discourse in letters sent to Home Secretaries and responses to the Mass Observation Capital Punishment Surveys 1948 and 1955-6. It explores four interrelated themes – safety and security; rising crime and violence; contesting penal welfarism; and crime as a condensing symbol. Of these, “safety and security” is the overarching, dominant theme, which the others are nested within. Concern about rising crime was the most frequently expressed of the sub-themes, to which the other two were also interconnected. The themes were developed inductively from thematic analysis of the sources and informed by existing historical and criminological literature on cultural understandings of punishment.

Safety and security

15 In emphasising the need to retain capital punishment to ensure feelings of safety, individuals assumed that it acted as a deterrent against fatal violence. A female correspondent explained “None of us will feel safe if there is no deterrent to the violence already practiced”.41 Joint letter writers who signed themselves “Ex-marine and Mrs Anxious”, argued hanging was “one of the last safeguards against the brutal onslaught of man”,42 and three separate female respondents to the Mass Observation survey simply stated that abolition would mean “Nobody will be safe”.43 Deterrence can

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be understood as an instrumental, rather than expressive, justification for punishment. 44 However, there is a porous boundary between instrumental and expressive views and both are “imbued with emotional content”.45 This is well illustrated by the poetic sounding reference to the “brutal onslaught of man”.

16 Closely related to safety was a concern about security. A man from Bristol warned that “Our security of property has long been parlous! We don’t want to add to that security of the individual which has for so long been our boast!”.46 Fear of violent crime needed to be taken seriously. Letter writers saw this is a problem both on the streets and within the home. A correspondent from Manchester referred to the “millions of people who are afraid to leave their homes for fear of these bad people who they might meet both inside and outside”.47 The abolition of the death penalty would mean “we shall not be safe anywhere in bed or walking about”.48 A woman cautioned that “many thousands live in constant fear”.49 There was also the notion that “innocent people must be protected”50 and “innocent people are living in fear”.51 17 The perception that certain social groups had particular vulnerabilities was an important aspect of concerns about safety. Specifically, these were women, children and the elderly. In April 1948, an abolitionist amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to suspend the death penalty was passed in the House of Commons. A woman from Bridport exhorted the Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede, “we, the women of England look to you to protect us, we feel we are not safe anywhere”.52 She was echoed by a woman who asserted “lonely women of England and I am one of them need all the protection we can get”.53 Another female author warned “Housewives in every district are afraid under present conditions to answer the door in daylight – much less after dark”.54 The case of John Christie in 1953 prompted a “Believer in Justice” to ask Home Secretary Maxwell Fyfe to “protect helpless women and children by getting rid of all killers”.55 18 Responses to the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill 1956 also highlighted the issue of particular vulnerabilities. A woman from Shenstone worried that “[s]o many young children and elderly people will be at the mercy of ruthless criminals”, if capital punishment were to be abolished.56 The increased threat of violence that abolition would create would mean “people’s children will never be out of site [sic] to play in safety neither will old people be safe to be left”.57 A correspondent from Clacton-on-Sea stated “we elderly people feel very strongly when we read of cowardly and murderous violence against us helpless folk”.58 19 Anxieties about safety and security were strongly associated with concerns about the maintenance of order. For these individuals, the death penalty was a barricade against social breakdown and an essential means of ensuring the state’s monopoly on violence. Instrumental beliefs in deterrence were strongly related to darker fears about the fragility of social order and, indeed, of civilisation. The prospect of abolition led some letter writers to claim that people would need to arm themselves. Someone who defined themselves as “lonely” stated “we feel we will all need Revolvers for Self Defence”.59 A correspondent from Surbiton asserted “I, for one, should not hesitate to get a revolver for my own protection”,60 and a man from Acton similarly argued “People need to carry truncheons for protection”.61 Capital punishment was necessary to prevent vigilantism. A male author from Birmingham related “I constantly hear threats to take the law into their own hands, if any member of their families is the victim of an attack”.62

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20 It is impossible to know how far personal experiences of crime and violence shaped these individuals’ views of the need to retain the death penalty to uphold social order. They did not link their fears to personal experiences or relate particular incidences of crime or violence. This does not mean that they had not experienced violent crimes. However, research carried out in a more recent context argues that expressive views of crime and punishment reflect particular worldviews, rather than experiences of victimisation. In particular, perceptions of moral decline and unwelcome social change are related to punitive views.63 A Hobbesian worldview expressed in relation to concerns about thinness of the veneer of civilisation and the need for state authority to guarantee safety and security was associated with fears of moral decline,64 exemplified by rising crime rates. This worldview led letter writers and survey respondents to articulate what Steve Chibnall conceptualises as “right wing order fantasies” that emphasise discipline, stability, resistance to change and belief in the superiority of the past.65

Rising crime and violence

21 The “dreadful wave of crime prevalent in this Country”,66 as a woman writing to Chuter Ede in 1948 on behalf of the West Sussex County Federation of Women’s Institutes termed it, was a widespread concern after the Second World War. The 1947 figures for indictable crimes showed a 50 percent increase on those from 1939, with violent robberies and murders having increased in the immediate post-war period.67 Recorded property crime, sexual offences and crimes against the person also increased.68 Criminologist, Hermann Mannheim, acknowledged that “[t]he crime wave in fact has arrived in England as in probably every other country, though perhaps not to the extent originally expected”.69 He attributed this to the loosening of social values during war, the scarcity of consumer goods and policies of austerity.70 Mannheim’s tone was more sanguine than that of the press. According to The Times, crime was “causing grave concern all over the country”. Their “Special Correspondent” argued that it was “misleading to describe what is happening as a ‘crime wave’ because no recession […] is expected for some time to come”.71 Editorials in the Daily Mirror referred to the “crime wave” in order to argue that the solution was more police.72 The Daily Mail stated that “the crime wave must give cause for dismay” and agreed that more police were needed. 73

22 The debate on the Criminal Justice Bill, including its abolition clause, in the House of Lords in June 1948 prompted letters to Chuter Ede that referred to the crime wave as a reason to retain capital punishment.74 A man from Hurlingham urged that hanging could not be abolished “at a time like this when crime is rampant”.75 A female author pointed out that “[s]tatistics have shown that crime on the whole has been on the increase since the end of the war”76 and a man from Hampstead felt Chuter Ede “must be aware that there is now a great wave of brutal murders, mostly of women and girls, sweeping over the London area […]; the aftermath of the War”.77 23 Following the post-war crime wave, the perception of rising crime and violence remained amongst individuals concerned about safety. The “increasing prevalence of ghastly crimes” worried “one of the public” writing to the Home Secretary in 1950.78 Objections to the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill in 1956 raised this theme. A man from Bournemouth opposed abolition because “Every day and week that passes we read of

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more murders”.79 A woman from Cornwall perceived “[c]rimes of appalling violence increase everyday”80 and a woman from Worthing warned “[t]he country seethes with murderers and robbers”.81 Abolition could only lead to more “crimes of that sort”82 and “more murders now than ever, there’ll be”.83 24 The influence of newspaper stories was demonstrated by a male respondent to the Mass Observation survey who observed “there are too many murders these days. You never lift your paper but there’s details of another one”.84 A cotton dyer from Belper lamented “you’re always reading about brutal murders of one sort or another”.85 The survey revealed child murder to be a potent concern. Respondents mentioned “Children’s murderers and the brutality of them”86 and “the number of children who have been murdered recently” as things which they had seen or heard that were “sufficient justification for keeping the death penalty”.87 The role of the press in intensifying fear of violent crime was clearly significant.88 25 There were also concerns about particular folk devils associated with violent crime.89 “Cosh boys”, “thugs”, “Teddy Boys”, “hooligans” and “gangsters” all recurred as figures likely to be responsible for violence and disorder.90 “A Housewife” worried in her letter that “the Gangsters are getting worse every day and severe punishment should be used for these gangs”,91 and a man from London opined “no one has given a thought to the rising generation about the blood thirsty teddie boys”.92 Another correspondent felt “Hooliganism is getting out of hand” and that Magistrates were inclined to “let them off”.93 This theme of dangerous and disorderly young people was also significant in the Mass Observation survey. “Teddy boys all over the country taking to violence”,94 “Gangsters carrying firearms, who offer violence at the slightest provocation”,95 and “more and more juvenile delinquency”96 were mentioned as things seen or heard that had influenced respondents’ views on capital punishment. “Teddy boys” were especially frequently highlighted in letters and survey responses, with a couple of authors also referring to “Teddy girls”.97 26 In the words of Dick Hebdige, Teddy boys were “almost universally vilified by press and parents alike as symptomatic of Britain’s impending decline”.98 Newspaper representations of the mid-1950s associated Teddy boys with violence and made them a byword for delinquency.99 The press construction of Teddy boys as folk devils followed on from interwar portrayals of the threat posed by, variously, violent veterans, dope fiends, motor bandits and racecourse gangs.100 Respectable fears about increased crime and disorder, and its association with “this rising generation”,101 showed how anxiety about social change fixated on the young, who presaged the future.102 Although certain letter writers and survey respondents explicitly stated that Teddy boys and gangsters were responsible for violence and murder, more generalised concerns about juvenile crime were also sutured to the issue of capital punishment. This demonstrates the especially symbolic nature of the death penalty as a form of punishment.103 It was not that people advocated the death penalty for lower level juvenile crime (this view was expressed but very rarely) but that capital punishment symbolised a commitment to a social order that was under threat.

Contesting penal welfarism

27 Penal welfarism refers to an expert-driven approach to criminal justice policy that emphasised rehabilitation, correctionalism and reform, which David Garland argues

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reached its zenith in the 1960s. He asserts that “In the post-war decades criminal justice became the territory of probation officers, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, child-guidance experts, educationalists, and social reformers of all kinds”.104 This did not mean that the criminal justice system always achieved its penal welfarist aspirations in terms of its practices. Garland interprets penal welfarism as enjoying hegemony in the mid twentieth-century, albeit not one that went uncontested. The general public and the “downmarket press” did not necessarily approve of the correctionalist agenda, or accept the wisdom of experts. In popular culture, punitive sentiments remained.105 Indeed, the survival of capital punishment until the mid-1960s demonstrates that there was “political, judicial, and popular resistance” to correctionalism.106

28 Many letters writers and survey respondents who focused on the theme of safety disputed the penal welfarist approach. Of course, they did not use the term “penal welfarism”, but perceived an expert-driven correctionalist agenda that prioritised rehabilitation. Correspondents criticised this agenda’s perceived “leniency”,107 “softness to murderers”,108 and “tenderness towards the criminal”,109 arguing that MPs were guilty of “pampering thugs”.110 This “softness” was as an expression of damaging “sentimentality”111 that reflected wrongheaded and “sloppy” thinking.112 According to this view, those who favoured abolition of the death penalty were “misguided individuals”113 who “confuse[d] humanitarianism with sickening sentimentality”.114 29 Charging abolitionists with sentimentality was not new; Victorian retentionists found abolitionism sickly, sentimental, and insufficiently masculine.115 Mid-twentieth-century correspondents related this criticism to the prevalence of expert discourse on crime.116 According to a “widow in reduced circumstances and poor health”, “crazy ideas” would encourage more crime.117 Those “not blinded by sloppy sentiment or overdosed with psychiatry” experienced “natural anxiety” over rising crime.118 For others, psychiatry was “bosh” and “trash”,119 and “plausible twaddle by gullible people”.120 A letter writer responding to the trial of John Christie expressed frustration that in “every case, more or less, insanity is brought into the case”.121 A female correspondent in relation to Mary Wilson, the last woman in England to be reprieved from hanging, directly questioned the rehabilitative ideal, arguing that for many working class people their “birthright is work – not mental development. If this were seen clearly it would do away with weak youths skipping round a Reform school dressed like Teddy Boys – a ridiculous way of reform”.122 A male letter writer from Surbiton felt that “education and even good “Home” influence cannot entirely eradicate criminal instincts”.123 30 For many letter writers and some survey respondents, the alternative to penal welfarism was the reintroduction of corporal punishment, an issue they understood to be allied with capital punishment.124 Corporal punishment (flogging and birching) as a judicial sentence was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1948. In parliamentary debates, opponents of removing corporal punishment as a sentencing possibility derided the influence of “well meaning reformers and muddle minded psychiatrists”.125 An unsuccessful attempt to amend the Act in 1952 to reintroduce birching for violent crimes committed by adult males was justified on the grounds of the need to combat rising crime.126 Along with debates over the retention of capital punishment itself, such measures demonstrate that although penal welfarism may have been the predominant ethos of criminal justice policy, it was certainly contested.127

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31 A male teacher from Carlisle responding to the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill urged Prime Minister Anthony Eden to vote to retain hanging and asked “Is it possible to add flogging at intervals to imprisonment?”.128 Increases in violent crimes required “the reintroduction of the Cat and the Birch”129 and “[t]he Rope, the Cat, the Birch and the Cane” should be used “in this ungodly society where nobody is safe from attack”.130 A woman from Midlothian was pleased that Gwilym Lloyd George wanted to “protect the unfortunate people of Britain” by advocating the retention of hanging. A niece of friends had been attacked a few months ago and the “villain” was “not even flogged!!!”. 131 A man from Enfield confidently asserted that “there is only one way to stop the crime wave, bring the Birch, and Cat o nine tails back”.132 Some Mass Observation survey respondents saw corporal punishments as a way to deal with criminal folk devils. A man from Nuneaton stated “I believe in the cat for gangsters. It would bring them to their senses”,133 and a housewife from Chesterfield thought “the cat […] might have helped to curb these teddy boys”.134 32 A strong theme in responses from those who contested penal welfarism was the lack of attention given to victims. “One of the public” writing in relation to the Daniel Raven case despaired that “[t]here is now no pity for the victims all the pity is given to the murderers by a mad deluded public”.135 There were “hours of babble about their [victims’] murderers” but no-one thought of them.136 For a woman writing in response to the Christie case, “the innocent victims seemed almost overlooked”,137 and a man from Shoreham-by-Sea wanted Louisa Merrifield to be hanged “as soon as possible”, urging Maxwell Fyfe to “ignore the sickly sentimental cranks who have no thought whatever for the VICTIMS”.138 There was also concern for “the unfortunate victims, and the victim’s relatives” in capital cases.139 A correspondent writing about the Michael Davies case “on behalf of many friends and neighbours” asked David Maxwell Fyfe “Have you no thought or regard for the victim and his unhappy relatives?”.140 According to this retributivist view, the “sympathy” and “leniency” for criminals entailed by penal welfarist approaches meant that the balance of justice was wrong. This related back to fears about the degradation of order.141

Crime as condensing symbol

33 Crime, especially violent crime, is a condensing symbol that acts as a focus for diffuse anxieties about social change. Conditions, individuals and groups become symbolic of crime.142 Pro-death penalty reactions to capital cases in the mid-twentieth century demonstrated how such cases conveyed meanings beyond crime and punishment. One of these was a sense that the nation was in a state of moral decline. Moral decline remains a focus for public anxieties about crime in the twenty-first century,143 and can also be identified in Victorian and interwar discourses on crime and disorder.144 Similarly, it was a concern for mid-twentieth-century letter writers, who stated that “this country was getting worse”145 and “the country was not like this in my youthful days”.146 A woman from Eastbourne feared that petitions to save Daniel Raven meant “this country is morally dead”147 and an author responding to the Ruth Ellis case was “alarmed at the coarseness of morals these days”.148 Such changes were an affront to “decent people of this country”.149 This anxiety, although articulated through language redolent of conservative Christian morality, was usually not explicitly mobilised

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through religious discourse. Comments such as “we are becoming a Godless nation, and a Godless nation is a decadent nation” can be found, but did not predominate.150

34 In particular, concerns about declining morality were linked to perceptions of the dawning “permissive society”. The representation of sexual activity and sexualisation in public life was not characterised as “permissive” in the 1950s,151 but there was a perception that laxer sexual mores were becoming more prevalent and accepted.152 David Cox et al. explore how as a reaction to this in the mid-50s, there was a “flurry of activism against literature and art” that brought about successful prosecutions for obscenity.153 For some letter writers, there was “[t]oo much vice and nudeness”. 154 A man writing in response to Louisa Merrifield’s case also asked that the Home Secretary prevent the Sun Dispatch and Daily Mirror from “publishing indecent photos of nude females”.155 A female survey respondent mentioned that “[t]here’s too much pleasure – too many pictures – too many pictures of naked women in the newspapers” in answer to what she had seen or heard that influenced her views of capital punishment.156 The “pin up”, overtly sexual pictures of young, attractive women, “spread throughout the spectrum of the press” in the 1950s.157 Popular newspapers disparaged criticism of pin ups as prudishness, which Adrian Bingham argues “marginalized” those who disliked them.158 As condensing symbols, capital cases offered a means for venting this dissatisfaction with the presence of the uncovered female body in the public domain. 35 In the early 1950s, sex acts between men were policed “with considerable zeal”.159 A directive from Maxwell Fyfe to the Home Office in 1953 warned that “homosexuals” posed a danger to others, particularly young people. Prosecutions of men for “unnatural acts” and indecency were vigorously pursued.160 Women who worked as prostitutes were seen as a threat to monogamous marriage and represented a loosening of moral standards during the war.161 The urban figures of the male homosexual and female prostitute were foci for cultural anxieties as the uneven transition towards more permissive attitudes and behaviours developed.162 A male correspondent from Bristol was concerned about a figure from the church who “condones homosexuality”163 and a man writing about Michael Davies’s case stated “London to-day is a sink of filth, vice, crime, Rape, Homosexuality, importuners”.164 A woman from Bury St Edmunds argued that “prostitutes and homosexuals should be whipped”165 and an extreme point of view came from a woman from Middlesex, who writing about the Ruth Ellis case, averred “what we need badly is another Jack the Ripper to cleanse out these Bad women in Soho, Mayfair, etc”.166 These highly disapproving views on immorality and “vice” were by no means universal in the 1950s.167 However, for those who interpreted such behaviours in terms of social and cultural threat they were particularly indicative of social ills and declining order. 36 In addition to sex and permissiveness, immigration was the other marker of social change that for some respondents was symbolically wedded to capital cases. Mass immigration from the West Indies and South Asia from 1948 onwards was perceived as a social upheaval changing the character of Britishness. Despite a history of previous migrations, there was a prevalent myth of Britain as a racially homogenous “white” nation, compromised by black and Asian newcomers.168 Along with the young, immigrants were folk devils symbolising the threats of crime, disorder and decline.169 Anxieties centred on West Indian men in particular, who were stereotyped as over- sexed and prone to violence, but other groups such as Maltese and Cypriots were also associated with criminality.170

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37 A letter writer from Birmingham worried that in the absence of hanging, the emergence of private vendettas was “a distinct possibility” due to the “increase in the number of strata in present-day society – which the incidence of diverse immigration has brought and is bringing”.171 “Foreigners” were “responsible for half the serious crime, they should all be deported”.172 A woman from Middlesex called for “strong measures” to deal with “deliberate outrages – many of them the work of aliens”. She conceded that many Maltese, Cypriot and Jamaican people were “law abiding and hard working” but “we surely do not want to be over-populated by dark skinned races”.173 Recent immigrants were perceived as responsible for disorder by a woman who demanded racial segregation “in Buses, queues and seats”. She lamented “[i]n America and Africa the conduct of some of these coloureds (sic) would soon be put in order but all are equal in England”.174 Another correspondent who signed themselves “an old age pensioner and a Conservative, God help us” complained “It’s bad enough having the damn blacks and foreigners foisted on to us”,175 and did not link this particular concern back to crime or disorder. That they included it in a letter to the Home Office about a capital case illustrates the range of meanings attached to the death penalty and its potency as a symbol of more than just crime and punishment.

Conclusion

38 Letter writers and survey respondents who expressed pro-death penalty discourse in relation to concerns about safety reflected feelings of ontological insecurity. They worried about the pace of social change, interpreting it as a threat to established identities and norms. They expressed a desire for order, nostalgia for the past and perceived certain groups as harbingers of social decline. This shows strong continuities with late-twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century research on fear, anxiety, crime and social change and challenges explanations for these fears that are based on the experience of late modernity. As Katherine Beckett argues, it is “unclear that daily life in late modern social conditions necessarily generates an inchoate and diffuse sense of insecurity and craving for order”.176 A variety of historical conditions might engender such anxieties, including conflicts and tensions such as war, genocide and terrorism. Beckett posits that instead of inferring late modernity as the cause of ontological insecurity, it should be understood as “one historical phase among many in which concern about order is relatively salient”.177

39 Indeed, continuities in concerns about order, especially the threat posed by “dangerous” groups, and the perceived need for capital punishment as a deterrent, can be traced back to at least the eighteenth century.178 Clergyman and philosopher, William Paley, argued that the existence of the death penalty for a wide range of crimes was necessary to ensure public safety.179 Late eighteenth-century metropolitan newspapers focused on violent and frightening crimes in a way which was likely to provoke fear.180 Newspaper inspired panics about violent street robbery erupted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the “garotting panics” of 1856 and 1862 being the most famous examples.181 Pre-empting some of the letter writers quoted in this article by nearly a century, in 1862 The Times argued that the punishment for garotting was not harsh enough and that individuals would need to take their own measures for self-protection, such as carrying revolvers.182

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40 Attention to the era which immediately precedes the putative changes to crime control and the way it was perceived by the public that took place in the 1970s unsettles the chronology that has been assumed in criminological work on crime, fear and late modernity. Drawing on the sociologist Reinhard Bendix’s work on the transition from “traditional” to “modern” societies,183 Robert van Krieken argues that the problem with “before” and “after” explanations in relation to crime control is that many of the characteristics understood as typical of the “after” period can be found in “before”.184 He contends that the aspects of social life seen as characteristic of late modernity should be viewed as resulting from long term processes rather than sudden changes, which enables appreciation of continuities. This provides a useful basis for comprehending mid-twentieth-century pro-death penalty discourse expressed by members of the public and its relationship with anxieties about safety and insecurity. Their concerns about social change are reminiscent of those also expressed by individuals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as in preceding eras. Seeing the postwar period as “a taken for granted world of stasis and seeming permanency”185 that contrasts sharply with our own more turbulent times ignores how, to individuals in the mid-twentieth-century, their times could also be perceived as filled with turmoil and upheaval.

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Morris, T., “Compensation for victims of crime and violence”, Modern Law Review, 1961, 24, 6, pp. 744-747.

Morris, T., Crime and criminal justice since 1945, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989.

Morrison, W., Criminology, civilisation and the New World Order, Abingdon, Routledge, 2006.

Mort, F., Capital affairs: London and the making of the permissive society, London, Yale University Press, 2010.

Pearson, G., Hooligan: A history of respectable fears, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1983.

Pearson, G., “Youth crime and moral decline: Permissiveness and tradition”, in Muncie, J., Hughes G. & McLaughlin, E. (eds.) Youth justice: Critical readings, 2002, London, Routledge, pp. 45-49.

Rowbotham, J., “Execution as punishment in England: 1750-2000”, in Kilday, A. and Nash, D. (eds.) Histories of crime: Britain 1600-2000, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2010, pp. 180-202.

Seal, L., Capital punishment in twentieth-century Britain: Audience, justice, memory, London, Routledge, 2014a.

Seal, L., “Imagined communities and the death penalty in Britain, 1930-65”, British Journal of Criminology, 2014b, 54, 5, pp. 908-927.

Seal, L., “Sources of public response to the death penalty in Britain”, Legal Information Management, 2016, 16, 2, pp. 91-94.

Self, H. J., Prostitution, women and the misuse of the law: The fallen daughters of Eve, London, Frank Cass, 2003.

Sindall, R., “The London garrotting panics of 1856 and 1862”, Social History, 1987, 12, 3, pp. 351-359.

Twitchell, N., The politics of the rope: The campaign to abolish the death penalty in Britain 1955-1969, Bury St Edmunds, Arena, 2012.

Tyler, T. R. & Boeckman, R. J., “Three strikes and you are out, but why? The psychology of public support for punishing rule breakers”, Law and Society Review, 1997, 31, 2, pp. 237-266.

Unnever, J. D. & Cullen, F. T., “The social sources of Americans’ punitiveness: A test of three competing models”, Criminology, 2010, 48, 1, pp. 99-129. van Krieken, R., “Crime and social theory”, in Anthony, T. & Cunneen, C. (eds) The critical criminology companion, Sydney, Hawkins Press, 2008, pp. 68-81. van Marle, F. & Maruna, S., “‘Ontological insecurity’ and ‘Terror management’: Linking two free floating anxieties”, Punishment and Society, 2010, 12, 1, pp. 7-26.

Webster, W., Imagining home: Gender, “race”, and national identity, 1945-64, London, UCL Press, 1998.

Wood, J. C., “The most remarkable woman in England”: Poison, celebrity and the trials of Beatrice Pace, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2012.

Wood, J. C., “Crime news and the press”, in Knepper, P. & Johansen, A. (eds) Oxford handbook of the history of crime and justice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 301-319.

Wright, T., “A barbarous penalty which the community has no right to exact”: Why capital punishment was abolished in Britain, 1947-69, unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, August 2014.

Young, J., The exclusive society: Social exclusion, crime and difference in late modernity, London, Sage, 1999.

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Young, J., “Moral panics, Margate and Mary Poppins: Mysterious happenings in south coast seaside towns”, Crime, Media, Culture, 2005, 1, 1, pp. 100-105.

Young, J., The vertigo of late modernity, London, Sage, 2007.

Zimring, F. E. & Hawkins, G., Capital punishment and the American agenda, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Zimring, F. E., The contradictions of American capital punishment, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Newspaper articles

“Crime since the war”, The Times, 23 January 1948.

“Killers and Constables”, Daily Mail, 17 February 1948a.

“The crook and the copper”, Daily Mirror, 24 March 1948b.

“Show some leadership!”, Daily Mirror, 16 April 1948a.

“Murder a la mode”, Daily Mail, 8 July 1948b.

NOTES

1. Letter, male author [chemist and optician], Boston, 27 June 1956, TNA/HO291/96. For reasons of anonymity, I have not included letter writers” names. 2. Letter, female author, Sudbury, 28 June 1956, HO291/96. 3. See Seal (2014a, Chapter 1). 4. Bailey (2000) discusses the consequences of the difference in opinion between the postwar Labour Cabinet, which decided retention was best, and the wider parliamentary party, which was largely abolitionist. 5. Wright (2014) identifies the significant minority of Conservative MPs, born after 1920, who supported abolition alongside the majority of Labour MPs as crucial to ultimately helping to end the death penalty in Britain in 1965. For other recent examinations of the death penalty in twentieth-century Britain, see Hammel (2010, pp. 86-115) ; Rowbotham (2010, pp. 184-188) ; Twitchell (2012) ; Seal (2014a). 6. On these pivotal cases see Seal (2014, p. 23). 7. On press representations of the issue of the death penalty in the 1950s see Twitchell (2012), Chapter 12 ; Seal (2014a, pp. 41-51). 8. Seal (2014a, p. 13). 9. For an overview see Erskine (1970). 10. See also Seal (2014a, pp. 99-100). 11. See Gross (1998) ; Hood & Seemungal (2011) ; Burgason & Pazzani (2014). 12. See Seal (2014b) for a discussion of this shift and the reasons for it. 13. For further discussion of strengths weaknesses of the letters as sources of public opinion see Seal (2016). 14. In 1948, the survey found that in response to whether there should be a five year suspension of hanging, 69 percent disapproved, 13 percent approved, 7 percent approved for certain murders and 4 percent had mixed feelings, (Langhamer, 2012, p. 426). In 1956, the survey found 49 percent approved of hanging for all murders, 7 percent for certain degrees of murder, 18 per cent disapproved of hanging, 25 percent was undecided and 1 percent gave mixed replies, (Langhamer, 2012 p.432). 15. Report on Survey, Correspondence 1956, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-2-A.

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16. Langhamer (2012, p. 418). 17. Davis (1987, pp. 4-5). 18. Bruckweh (2006, p. 53). 19. The predominant symbolic meaning associated with the death penalty in letters from the public was justice, which can be divided further into themes of doubt about the conviction, the need to recognise mitigation, concerns about arbitrariness, concerns about inequity of application, and the need for retribution (Seal, 2014a, Chapter 5). Also significant in the letters was the construction of imagined local and national communities, the latter connoting meanings of Britishness (Seal, 2014b). 20. Unsurprisingly, the letters sent in the 1930s from individuals with a direct connection with the condemned were always to petition for mercy (Seal, 2014b). 21. See Young (1999) ; Garland & Sparks (2000) ; Garland (2001) ; Young (2007). 22. See Karstedt (2006). 23. Seal (2014b, p. 908). 24. Seal (2014b, p. 908). 25. Jackson (2004, p. 946). 26. Jackson (2004, p. 946). See also Hirtenlehrer and Farrall (2013, p. 6). 27. Hirtenlehrer & Farrall (2013, pp. 7-12). 28. Farrall, Jackson and Gray (2009, p. 5). 29. Jackson (2004, p. 962). 30. van Marle & Maruna (2010, p. 8). 31. Giddens (1991, p. 65). 32. Young (1999, p. 15). 33. Young (1999, p. 20). 34. Young (1999, p. 20) ; Garland (2001, p. 9). 35. Garland (2001, pp. 133 & 157). 36. Garland (2001, pp. 79-89). 37. Garland (2001, p. 153). 38. Young (2007, p. 9). 39. Young (2007, p. 10). 40. Young (2007, p. 10). 41. Letter, female author, Meopham, 5 February 1956, TNA/HO291/92. 42. Letter, Ex Marine and Mrs Anxious, Edinburgh, 11 February 1956, HO291/92. 43. Housewife, age 52, no town given ; Housewife, age 40, no town given, Capital Punishment Survey 1948 , MOA-72-1-H and Housewife, age 63, no town given, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-A. 44. Tyler and Boeckman (1997). 45. Bandes (2008, p. 23). 46. Letter, male author, Bristol, 11 November 1956, TNA/HO291/99. 47. Letter, gender unknown, Manchester, 10 July 1956, HO291/99. 48. Letter in response to Peter Griffiths’s case, female author, Crowthorne, 25 October 1948, HO45/23921. Griffiths was executed for murdering a four year old whom he abducted from her hospital bed. 49. Letter, female author, Bridgehampton, 1 February 1956, HO291/92. 50. Letter in response to Michael Davies’s case, gender unknown, unaddressed, 16 January 1954, HO291/231. 20 year old Davies was reprieved for the “Clapham Common Murder” of a 17 year old boy. 51. Letter in response to George Riley’s case, female author, Wolverhampton, 9 February 1961, HO291/250. Riley was executed for the murder of a 62 year old woman in her home. His motive

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was supposedly to steal from her (although he did not take anything), making the crime a capital one. 52. Letter, female author, Bridport, 4 June 1948, HO45/25084. 53. Letter, female author, Romsey, 3 June 1948, HO45/25084. 54. Letter, female author, unaddressed, 3 June 1948, HO45/25084. 55. Letter in response to John Christie’s case, “Believer in Justice”, unaddressed, 12 July 1953, HO291/227. Christie was hanged for his wife’s murder, but the bodies of six other women and a baby were found at his former home. He is believed to have murdered Timothy Evans’s wife and baby – Evans was executed in 1950 for murdering his daughter. 56. Letter, female author, Shenstone, 21 July 1956, HO291/99. 57. Letter, gender unknown, unaddressed, received 30 January 1956, HO291/92. 58. Letter, gender unknown, Clacton on Sea, 11 July 1956, HO291/99. 59. Letter, “A Life for a Life”, unaddressed, received 10 July 1956, HO291/96. 60. Letter, gender unknown, Surbiton, 11 June 1956, HO291/98. 61. Letter, male author, Acton, 5 July 1956, HO291/96. 62. Letter, male author, Birmingham, 14 February 1956, HO291/96. 63. See Gaubatz (1995) ; King & Maruna (2009) ; Unnever & Cullen (2010). 64. This is not to argue that letter writers were consciously channelling Hobbes, but that their perception of the need for authority to be able to control and use strong punishment to uphold the social order belonged to a Hobbesian tradition of political thought. On Hobbes see (Morrison, 2006, pp. 16-21). 65. Chibnall (1977, pp. 47-48). Chibnall draws on Booker (1970) for the concepts of right and left wing fantasies. Left wing fantasy values change, freedom and the possibilities of the future. 66. Letter, female author, Henfield, 9 June 1948, HO45/25084. 67. Chibnall (1977, pp. 51 & 54). 68. Morris, (1989, p. 36). 69. Mannheim (1947, p. 3). 70. Mannheim (1947, p. 7). 71. The Times, 1948, p. 5. 72. Daily Mirror, 1948b, p. 2 ; 1948a, p. 2. 73. Daily Mail, 1948a, p. 1 ; 1948b, p. 1. 74. The Lords deleted the abolition clause from the Bill, see Twitchell, 2012, p. 28. 75. Letter, male author, Hurlingham, 6 June 1948, HO45/25084. 76. Letter, female author, Forest Hill, 2 June 1948, HO45/25084. 77. Letter, male author, Hampstead, 5 June 1948, HO45/25084. 78. Letter in response to Daniel Raven’s case, “One of the Public”, unaddressed, 1 January 1950, HO45/24497. 79. Letter, male author, Bournemouth, 3 July 1956, HO291/96. 80. Letter, female author, Cornwall, 5 July 1956, HO291/96. 81. Letter, female author, Worthing, 15 November 1956, HO291/99. 82. Male bank manager, aged 45, no town given, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72. 83. Male carter, aged 54, Liverpool, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72. 84. Male driver for the Co-op, aged 44, Tranent, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-A. 85. Male cotton dyer, aged 62, Belper, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-4-B. 86. Female shop assistant, aged 40, Gateshead, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-C. 87. Male general labourer, aged 38, Sunderland, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-4-C. 88. In his study of Beatrice Pace, an English woman acquitted of the murder of her husband in 1928, John Carter Wood argues that letters sent to her by members of the public “offer a rare glimpse of how people interacted with the press” (2012, p. 175). Bruckweh (2006, p. 69) notes that

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the German public’s letters concerning Jürgen Bartsch were a form of appropriation of the mass media. 89. Folk devils represent a threat to social stability. Stanley Cohen (2002, p.viii) describes young people as one of the “familiar clusters” from which folk devils are created. 90. The Americanised “gangster” was perceived as a figure with the power to corrupt British youth. This was a cultural anxiety during the interwar period, when British newspapers reported the exploits of Chicago gangsters see (Davies, 2007). Eugene McLaughlin (2005, p. 14) argues that Hollywood gangster movies “flourished between 1945-50”, stoking fears that post-war youth were disposed towards delinquency and antisocial behaviour. “Hooligans” had a longer standing pedigree as a term for disorderly young men. (See Davies, 2007 and Pearson, 1983). “Cosh boy” was a term used in the 1940s and 50s for violent juveniles. (See Pearson, 1983). A film with this title was released in 1953. 91. Letter, “A Housewife”, unaddressed, 7 July 1956, TNA/HO291/96. 92. Letter, male author, London, 11 February 1956, HO291/92. 93. Letter, gender unknown, Notting Hill, 4 November 1956, HO291/99. 94. Male shopkeeper, aged 44, Gateshead, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-C. 95. Male salesman, aged 38, Gateshead, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-C. 96. Male area manager for a limestone producer, aged 30, Withenshawe, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-5-A. 97. Letter, male author, Essex, received 13 February 1956, TNA/HO291/92 and Letter, male author, Enfield, 23 September 1956, HO291/99. 98. Hebdige (2003, p. 82). 99. Bentley (2010, p. 17). Bentley explores how a more nuanced portrayal of Teddy boys, and of contemporary youth culture, can be found in novels of the era. Like the “gangster”, the Teddy boy was also interpreted as an example of Americanisation. See Fowler (2007, p. 76). 100. Wood (2016, p. 309). 101. Housewife, aged 39, Sheffield, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-B. 102. In the context of research conducted in the twenty-first century, King and Maruna (2011, p. 134) found that individuals with punitive views were particularly “indignant about the behaviours of teenagers and young people”. The authors situate this in relation to the recurrence of the young as “the symbolic targets in ‘moral panics’ that actually have less to do with teenage kicks than they do with wider, societal changes”, (p.138). Reviewing the third edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Jock Young (2005, p. 103) commented “the moral panic over the Mods and Rockers was a defence of a world that was slipping away – an act of moral resistance if you want”. 103. Zimring and Hawkins (1989, pp. 16-9) ; Zimring (2003, pp. 42-64). 104. Garland (2001, p. 36). 105. Garland (2001, p. 41). 106. Bailey (2000, p. 310). 107. Letter in response to Mary Wilson’s case, gender unknown, Newcastle, 31 May 1958, TNA/ HO291/242. Wilson was reprieved for murdering her husband and likely also killed two other men. 108. Letter in response to Derek Bentley’s case, female author, Leader of Conservative and Unionist Association, London, 11 December 1952, HO291/225. Bentley was hanged for the murder of a police officer, although the shooting was carried out by his friend, Christopher Craig. 109. Letter in response to John Christie’s case, female author, North Kensington, 29 June 1953, HO291/227. 110. Postcard, gender unknown, Tankerton, 29 June 1956, HO291/96. 111. Letter, female author, Ardgay, 2 July 1956, HO291/96. 112. Letter in response to Ruth Ellis’s case, gender unknown, London, 30 June 1955, HO291/235. Ellis was executed for shooting her lover dead.

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113. Letter, gender unknown, Wallasey, 9 February 1956, HO291/92. 114. Letter, gender unknown, Caterham, 8 February 1955, HO291/92. 115. See Gregory (2012, p. 163). 116. Emsley (2011, p. 131) states that in the twentieth-century a wide range of experts “wrote about crime and criminal justice for different audiences across the country”. It is likely that the letter writers and survey respondents became aware of expert discourses on crime through newspaper reports and features. 117. Letter, Widow in reduced circumstances and poor health, London, [no day] July 1956, HO291/99. 118. Letter, gender unknown, Birmingham, 24 October 1956, HO291/99. 119. Letter in response to John Christie’s case, gender unknown, Liverpool, 26 June 1953, HO291/227. 120. Letter in response to Gunter Podola’s case, male author, Birmingham, 7 October 1959, HO291/246. Podola, a German national, was executed for killing a police officer. 121. Letter in response to John Christie’s case, gender unknown, London, 1 July 1953, HO291/227. 122. Letter in response to Mary Wilson’s case, female author, London, 3 June 1958, HO291/242. 123. Letter, male author, Surbiton, 14 February 1956, HO291/92. 124. Twitchell (2012, p. 108) notes the ideological links made between capital and corporal punishment. 125. Gard (2009, p. 119) quoting Conservative MP, Lieutenant Colonel Sir T Moore. 126. Gard, (2009 p.124). 127. Jarvis (2005, p. 57) explores how conflicts within the 1950s Conservative Party, particularly between the membership and Rab Butler, reflected “the uncertainties felt about modernity”. 128. Letter, male author, Carlisle, 10 February 1956, HO291/92. 129. Letter, male author, Birmingham, 14 February 1956, HO291/92. 130. Postcard, gender unknown, London, 16 February 1956, HO291/92. 131. Letter, female author, Midlothian, 24 July 1956, HO291/99. 132. Letter, male author, Enfield, 23 September 1956, HO291/99. 133. Male plate layer, aged 52, Nuneaton, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-4-C. 134. Housewife, aged 65, Chesterfield, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-6-B. 135. Letter in response to Daniel Raven’s case, “One of the public”, unaddressed, 1 January 1950, HO45/24497. Raven was hanged for murdering his parents-in-law. 136. Letter, female author, Cornwall, 5 July 1956, HO291/96. 137. Letter in response to John Christie’s case, female author, North Kensington, 29 June 1953, HO291/227. 138. Letter in response to Louisa Merrifield’s case, male author, Shoreham-by-Sea, 6 September 1953, HO291/229. Merrifield was executed for murdering a 79 year old woman, to whom she was housekeeper. Her husband was also tried, but acquitted of the murder 139. Letter, gender unknown, Birmingham, 24 October 1956, HO291/99. 140. Letter in response to Michael Davies’s case, gender unknown, Llanelly, 22 January 1954, HO291/231. 141. The idea that the criminal justice system should include attention to the victims of crime was in its infancy. Margery Fry argued in the 1950s for a compensation scheme for victims of personal violence. Rab Butler established a working party on the issue which reported in 1961. As Morris (1961) noted, Fry’s impetus was reformist and derived from the principle that society had failed to protect the victim so should provide compensation via the State. Support for restitution schemes also came from people who believed that the offender themselves should compensate the victim as part of atoning for their crime. This principle appealed to the Conservative Party leadership. See Jarvis, 2005, p. 60. The letter writers did not discuss issues of compensation,

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rather their assumption was that the application of the death penalty brought about justice for the victim and their relatives. 142. Jackson (2004 p.951). The concept of the “condensing symbol” was developed by Edward Sapir and refers to verbal and visual images that convey a range of cognitive and emotional meanings, (Jasper & Poulson, 1995, p. 498). 143. Farrall, Jackson & Gray (2009, p. 6) ; Hummelsheim et al. (2011, p. 329). 144. Pearson (2002). 145. Letter, male author, Stoke-on-Trent, 10 July 1956, HO291/96. 146. Letter, gender unknown, unaddressed, [no date] March 1957, HO291/99. 147. Letter in response to Daniel Raven’s case, female author, Eastbourne, 5 January 1950, HO45/24497. 148. Letter in response to Ruth Ellis’s case, gender unknown, Richmond, Surrey, 6 July 1955, HO291/235. 149. Letter, gender unknown, Notting Hill, 4 November 1956, HO291/99. 150. Letter, gender unknown, Essex, 5 January 1956, HO291/96. Religious discourse was most frequently deployed by letter writers in order to ask for mercy and/or to point out that capital punishment was unchristian. There were also pro-death penalty letters that stressed the need for retribution through use of religious language. 151. “Permissiveness” is associated with the 1960s and 70s, including the liberalisation of laws relating to obscenity, divorce, homosexuality and abortion ; changes to sexual attitudes and behaviour ; as well as increased discussion and portrayal of sex and sexuality in the public sphere. See Collins (1999) ; Hampshire & Lewis (2004). Hampshire and Lewis argue that the social change wrought by the permissive society was the subject of national debate in the 1960s. In their words, “For some, these changes heralded a new era of freedom and individualism ; for others, they signalled a nation in moral decline”, (p.296). 152. Adrian Bingham argues that the popular press of the 1940s and 50s began to cover sex in more detail than before, albeit through advice columns and the reporting of survey findings, which were consistent with respectability and traditional moral values. Newspapers “played a very significant role in opening up the public discussion of sex”. (Bingham, 2009, p. 265). Frank Mort (2010, p. 4) disputes what he identifies as a prevalent narrative of the 1960s as a watershed of permissiveness, arguing rather that changing sexualities and attitudes towards them were the “product of much broader histories” and were not all straightforwardly progressive. 153. Cox, et al. (2015, p. 98). The authors note that this “was a short-lived victory for moral conservatism”, however, as it invigorated opposition to the Obscene Publications Act 1857, which was repealed and replaced by the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (pp. 100-101). 154. Letter, “A Housewife”, unaddressed, 7 July 1956, HO291/96. 155. Letter in response to Louisa Merrifield’s case, male author, Shoreham-by-Sea, 6 September 1953, HO291/229. 156. Housewife, aged 71, Ashton, Capital Punishment Survey 1955-6, MOA-72-3-A. Mort, 2010, notes that “displays of female nudity were at the centre of a series of dramatic cultural contests”, p. 23. 157. Bingham (2009, p. 202). Photographs in 1950s newspapers displayed women’s cleavage and legs, but not toplessness. 158. Bingham (2009, p. 202). 159. McGhee (2004, p. 359). 160. Cox et al. (2015, p. 142). These offences referred to anal sex, oral sex and other sexual practices between men. McGhee (2004) argues that this over policing provoked a liberal backlash, leading to the establishment of the Wolfenden Committee in 1954. The Wolfenden Report 1957 recommended decriminalising “homosexual” acts carried out in private (p.359).

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161. Bell-Williams (2006, p. 269). The Wolfenden Report’s recommendations on prostitution were for restrictive measures to make arrests of women easier and for persistent offenders to face harsher penalties, rather than the liberalising direction advocated in relation to sex between men. See Self (2003, pp. 137-40.) Arrests for solicitation rose in the 1950s, partly reflecting an increase in street prostitution to compensate for loss of business due to the departure of troops, but also as a result of greater police activity. See Laite (2011, p. 176-177). 162. Mort (2010, p. 8) argues for the importance of understanding London as a focus for anxieties about transgressive sex in the 1950s. In the 1940s and 50s, the press publicised anti-vice campaigns and exposes, particularly in relation to London. (Laite, 2011, p. 159). 163. Letter, male author, Bristol, 11 November 1956, HO291/99. The author is likely to be referring to Sherwin Bailey, who in the 1950s led a Church of England group which investigated homosexuality and recommended decriminalisation on the grounds that homosexual practices did not represented a grave threat to society. See Anderson, (2016, pp. 428-429) 164. Letter in response to Michael Davies’s case, male author, Shoreham-by-Sea, received 27 January 1954, HO291/231. 165. Postcard, female author, Bury St Edmunds, received 24 December 1956, HO291/99. 166. Letter in response to Ruth Ellis’s case, female author, Middlesex, 7 July 1955, HO291/235. 167. See Laite (2011 p.185) and Mort (2010). 168. Webster (1998). 169. Cohen (2002, pp. xxii-xxvi) examines how, in a more recent context, “immigrants” and “asylum seekers” have been portrayed as criminal, in addition to other negative attributes. 170. Collins (2001, pp. 410-11). See also Paul Gilroy’s (2002, pp. 95-9) classic study. 171. Letter, gender unknown, Birmingham, 27 April 1956, HO291/98. 172. Letter, gender unknown, Walsall, 29 June 1956, HO291/96. 173. Letter, female author, Middlesex, 18 July 1956, HO291/99. Webster explains that migrants to Britain from European colonies were not necessarily seen as “white”, but were also referred to as “coloured”, p. xvi. 174. Letter, “Widow in reduced circumstances and poor health”, London, [no day] July 1956, HO291/99. 175. Letter in response to Mary Wilson’s case, “An old age pensioner and a Conservative, God help us”, unaddressed, received 3 June 1958, HO291/242. 176. Beckett (2001, p. 920). 177. Ibid. 178. See McGlynn (1989, pp. 249-51). 179. Cummins (1988, p. 67). 180. King (2007, p. 103). 181. Wood (2016, pp. 309-10). 182. Sindall (1987, p. 356). 183. Bendix (1967). 184. van Krieken (2008, p. 70). 185. Young (2007, p. 1).

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ABSTRACTS

Following the Second World War, capital punishment in Britain became an increasingly contentious issue. This article draws on research carried out into public responses to the death penalty in mid-twentieth-century Britain. It is the first to examine the public’s pro-death penalty discourse as it was framed in relation to fears about safety and order in society. I argue that public responses help to shed light on continuities in punitive discourse and its relationship with anxieties about social change. Although criminological literature has frequently placed such sentiments within the context of social and cultural shifts in late modern societies since the 1970s, this article demonstrates that crime had a similar role as a condensing symbol for fears about social change in the 1940s and 1950s.

Après la deuxième guerre mondiale, la question de la peine de mort a été de plus en plus controversée en Grande-Bretagne. Le présent article s’appuie sur des recherches portant sur les réactions publiques à la peine de mort au milieu du 20e siècle. Pour la première fois, les discours publics favorables à la peine de mort sont examinés en relation avec les craintes relatives à la sécurité et à l’ordre dans la société. Mon argument est que les réactions publiques permettent d’éclairer les continuités du discours punitif et la relation de celui-ci avec l’anxiété face au changement social. Bien que la littérature criminologique ait fréquemment situé ces sentiments dans le contexte des mutations sociales et culturelle des sociétés de la modernité tardive depuis les années 1970, cet article démontre que dans les années 1940 et 1950 déjà, la criminalité constituait un symbole condensant la peur du changement social.

AUTHOR

LIZZIE SEAL

Lizzie Seal is senior lecturer in Criminology in the School for Law, Politics and Sociology at University of Sussex. Her research is in the areas of historical criminology and cultural criminology. She is the author of Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain : Audience, Justice, Memory (Routledge, 2014) and is principal investigator for the Leverhulme funded project, “Race, Racialisation and the Death Penalty in England and Wales, 1900-65”. University of Sussex, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, Freeman Centre, Brighton, BN1 9QE – UK - [email protected]

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“It doesn’t take much evidence to convict a Negro”1: Capital punishment, race, and rape in mid- twentieth-century Florida

Vivien Miller

1 A white army sergeant’s wife reported that she had been assaulted in her bedroom by an armed black intruder during the early hours of 11 November 1941, while her husband was on night duty at nearby MacDill Field, Tampa, Florida. Despite a description of the alleged African American attacker and searches by civilian and military police, there was no swift arrest. Edgar Flowers, age 20, was a waiter at the Post Exchange restaurant at the base, where the woman’s husband ate most of his meals and was served regularly by Flowers. He was arrested at the restaurant on 23 April 1942, by Tampa police detectives who did not initially tell him the nature of the charge. Two weeks earlier, the sergeant’s wife had remarked to her husband on the similarity of the waiter to her attacker, but he had dismissed her. She subsequently identified Flowers as her attacker from a police line-up. Flowers was convicted in Hillsborough County of capital rape on 5 June 1942, but his lawyers challenged many aspects of this, including the validity of the arrest, and the process of identification of Flowers as a suspect. They also censured Flowers’ “voluntary” confession to Tampa police, after he had been handcuffed and questioned for twenty-four hours, falsely told that his fingerprints and shoe had been taken from the woman’s apartment, and his pregnant wife had also been arrested.2 The appeal failed, and on 26 June Flowers “went to his death quietly” in the electric chair.3

2 Edgar Flowers was one of thirty men executed for rape in Florida between 1940 and 1964: eighteen in the 1940s, ten in the 1950s and two in the early 1960s, in one of the most active execution states in the southern region, and where there was compelling statistical evidence of selective execution by race.4 Between 1 January 1940 and 31 December 1964, fifty-four men were convicted of capital rape; forty-eight of whom were African American, and twenty-nine died in the electric chair. Of the six white men

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given death sentences for rape, five received commutations to life imprisonment, and one was executed. All thirty who were executed had been convicted of assaulting white girls or women. No white man had been sentenced to death for the rape of a “Negro” girl or woman in Florida, and none of the three black men who had been sentenced to death for attacks on two black women and one child respectively were executed.5 Consequently, “the accusation of rape by a white woman against a black man carried a special burden that could not be readily dismissed” by local communities and criminal justice personnel.6 Indeed, 90 percent of those executed for rape under civil authority in the United States between 1930 and 1964 were African American.7 3 This article focuses on capital rape in mid-twentieth-century Florida to examine which acts of sexual violence were considered by white police, jurors and judges to be so heinous as to warrant the death penalty. Using two gang rape cases from the 1940s, it further examines the explanations offered by offenders for their actions and the ways in which stereotypes of black male behaviour could shape juror decisions to convict. The combination of black male offender and white female victim remained a powerful predictor of execution for rape in 1940s and 1950s Florida. Executions functioned symbolically and practically to police interracial social and sexual behaviour, and to reinforce gender, race, and class boundaries. Nevertheless, specific aggravating factors increased the likelihood of a death sentence being carried out. Extant archival materials underline the common features of capital rape cases: immobilisation and emasculation of a white boyfriend or husband; the targeting of a lone, vulnerable, white women in a manner that threatened the freedom of movement of others; two or more offenders acting in concert; serial offenders; and the invasion of white family homes, particularly bedrooms. All men convicted of capital rape had used a weapon, usually a gun, knife or ice pick, to subdue, threaten or coerce their victim(s). For example, in July 1953, a 12-year-old white girl in Jacksonville was assaulted by a young black male, later identified as Charlie Copeland, holding an ice pick to her throat, as her mother slept in a different room.8 4 Despite the introduction of greater procedural safeguards in the 1930s and 1940s, post- war Florida rape investigations continued to rely on questionable forensic and witness evidence.9 In 1948, one victim who was unable to physically identify her attacker merely stated that he “talked and smelled like a Negro”.10 In many of the cases discussed below, confessions were obtained after hours of continuous interrogation, bullying tactics, and sleep deprivation. Defendants were “railroaded to the electric chair” after hasty trials conducted in racially and emotionally charged communities. In June 1959, Lake County jurors deliberated for six minutes before convicting 19-year-old “near illiterate” Sam Wiley Odum for the rape of a 62-year-old white woman at Leesburg, in a case which the court-appointed attorney described as “more or less a reaction of mob violence”.11 Most defendants were convicted by all-white juries; all were sentenced by white male judges. The novel inclusion of one black juror in Felix Combs’ rape trial in October 1948, and the presence in the “Negro gallery” of three “well-dressed colored men” from “a northern interracial organization”, were highlighted in local news reports.12 5 David Garland notes that “the American polity devolves decision-making about punishment (and much else) to the local level, thereby empowering local political actors in ways that have had major consequences for the history of the death penalty.” 13 County courtrooms in post-war Florida were important sites of local civil rights

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protest, and defence lawyers increasingly challenged the lack of due process afforded lower-class black male defendants, but success was limited. Henry Sparks’s attorney argued that Palm Beach County Commissioners had deliberately excluded African Americans from grand and petit jury venires in 1944 and thus deprived his client of a fair trial, but to no avail.14 Charlie Copeland’s (black) lawyers Ernest Jackson and Releford McGriff asserted repeatedly in 1955-56 that punishing one category of interracial sexual violence by execution was discriminatory and a denial of due process. 15 Nevertheless, long-held certainties about justice in the state were contested by both local Florida and NAACP lawyers, in a period of gubernatorial and legislative unease over the administration of capital punishment, although no governor would take decisive action before 1965. 6 This study draws on death penalty case files, appellate decisions, grand jury reports, governors’ correspondence, and other archival materials to consider differing political, judicial, and popular narratives of sexual violence in wartime and post-war Florida. Not all the legal paperwork is complete or available for every capital rape case. Some death penalty files contain complete trial transcripts and witness testimony; others contain only a summary of proceedings. Similarly, several superior court appeals include lengthy descriptions of the case and grounds for appeal; others stretch to one sentence affirming the capital conviction.16 Additional information on incidents of rape and sexual violence in Florida counties was gathered from local news reports aimed at a predominantly white readership, items published in northern African American newspapers, and syndicated news reports which appeared in titles across the US. 7 Earlier Florida death penalty studies have often focused on the 1949 Groveland case, where the rape accusation of a local white woman led to the capital convictions of two black army veterans (one of whom was later murdered by the local sheriff), a lengthy sentence for a 16-year-old defendant, and the posse murder of another, even though there was undeniable evidence that all four accused men were entirely innocent.17 The 1959 Tallahassee case, where four lower-class young white men kidnapped a much more respectable 19-year-old black middle-class female college student and drove here at knifepoint to the edge of the city where she was brutally gang-raped, also evoked national condemnation and mobilised black community action in defence of black female “bodily integrity and personal dignity”.18 By contrast, this essay examines many of the lower profile rape cases in these decades, to reconstruct the stories of the victims and defendants, and explore their impact on legal and popular understandings of sexual violence. 8 Interracial rape prosecutions, death sentences and executions were declining throughout the United States by the 1950s. In the 1940s, 161 black men were executed for rape; 81 in the 1950s.19 In her recent historical synthesis, Estelle Freedman argues that, after World War II, new efforts and strategies to reform the prosecution of sexual assault, the actions of organisations such as the International Labor Defense, the Civil Rights Congress which publicised cases of southern black men accused of rape and provided attorneys, and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) focus on rape prosecutions, along with more “widespread embrace of sexual liberalism”, were some of the key factors contributing to greater questioning of white women’s accusations of interracial rape and more attention to black defendants’ treatment by police and in court.20 Historian Lisa Lindquist Dorr also found that most black-on-white rape cases in twentieth-century Virginia did not end with execution,

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and generally “proceeded quietly and smoothly through the legal system, without mob action, without the intervention of the NAACP or the Communist Party, without appellate decisions, and without news coverage beyond the local community”.21 9 Many interracial rape complaints did proceed relatively quietly through Florida’s post- war criminal justice and appellate systems, while others generated intense media and political scrutiny. Rape accusations also continued to fuel community outrage and class conflict between the small town, small farmer, and angry white advocates of “rough justice” and middle-class supporters of due process (a category that included the growing number of black lawyers practicing in southern jurisdictions) in the 1940s and 1950s.22 The only recorded US lynching for 1945 involved the abduction and shooting of a black male prisoner, under indictment for the rape of a 5-year-old white girl, by “persons unknown” from an unguarded jail in Madison County, Florida.23 Further, the moral codes of socially and politically conservative white jurors in local Florida courthouses were referenced by white supremacy, religion (particuarly the dominant Baptist and Methodist denominations), and respectability. Fundamentalist beliefs, invocation of scripture, and religious language remained important parts of political and social discourse. Consequently, tolerance of liberal sexual mores was often very limited.24 Finally, state supreme court justices remained unsympathetic to appeals based on racial bias.25 Local and state histories are essential cognitive pieces in the construction of broader, regional and national, frameworks for understanding crime, law, punishment and culture, but this study of Florida’s capital rape history also complicates Freedman’s more progressive view. 10 It is impossible to determine what percentage of the total number of rapes in Florida in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s were reported to police or sheriffs, and how many complaints were summarily dismissed. Some defendants were indicted on a capital rape charge which was later withdrawn: 19-year-old white defendant Kenneth Lee Holcomb was released in September 1958 after spending three months in the Pinellas County jail because the complainant was reluctant to proceed.26 The propriety of the complainant often informed police and state attorney decisions to pursue a case or curtail the investigation.27 In the thirty execution cases between 1940 and 1964, the victims included children, virginal teenagers, army wives, young mothers, middle-aged housewives and grandmothers. Traditionally, “confident, articulate, white women” of respectable status and with family support were better able have their claims taken seriously.28 It is noteworthy that one third of the Florida complainants were army wives, and the site of the attacks was often the home on or near to one of the state’s many military bases. These types of attack could therefore stoke national fears over public safety in a state whose income depended on military spending and tourism, and undermine national military investment in Florida. Further, state officials believed that any suggestion that local police, jurors, and courts were not competent to protect military personnel and their families had to be resisted.29 11 Voluntary teams of law students identified 285 rape convictions in Florida between 1940 and 1964: of 132 white males (46 percent), 152 black males (54 percent), and one Native American.30 In the cases of the 132 white men, there were 125 white female victims, including 34 children under the age of 14 years, and seven African American female victims. In the cases of the 152 black men, there were 68 African American female victims, including 26 children under the age of 14 years, and 84 white female victims. The Native American defendant had also been convicted of raping a white

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woman. Of the six white men sentenced to death for rape, four had been convicted of attacks on white children, and only one had been executed. Three black men had been sentenced to death for attacks on two black women and one child respectively, but none were executed.31 12 The 285 cases do not include an additional thirteen from Brevard and Hillsborough Counties where the race of defendants and victims was not identified, but were most likely to be white intra-racial rape offences. Generally, these did not result in a capital conviction or execution. In 1956, James H. Raulerson and Fritz H. Clark of Duval County were “the only white men ever sentenced to death for the rape of a white adult”, but their convictions were later reversed by the state supreme court.32 In December 1955, they and two other armed men attacked a couple parked on a secluded road near Jacksonville, robbed the man, ordered him into the trunk of the car, and then assaulted his female companion.33 White intra-racial felony-homicides which news reporters routinely described as “rape-slayings”, did end in execution, as in the case of George Lowell Everett. He was electrocuted in June 1958 for the murder of a military wife near Tyndall Air Force (close to Panama City), but had first raped the young mother while she and her toddler son were at home. There was no jury recommendation of mercy, and appeals were unsuccessful.34 13 The legal definition of rape was narrow: it was gender-specific; the male perpetrator could not be married to the victim; and use of force, penetrative sexual intercourse and female resistance were key elements. Ejaculation and sperm residue on the victim were not required, but in practice, this could determine whether a case was prosecuted as rape or attempted rape.35 In August 1948, one attorney told Clearwater jurors that a victim had “not put up enough resistance” and hinted that sexual relations between her and the defendant were consensual, but the judge confirmed that “if the state could show that the victim was so terrified by the attack that it made her speechless, it is not necessary to show resistance”.36 Consequently, the onus was on the complainant to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that relations with the alleged attacker had not been consensual. It was contended in Flowers’s appeal that his victim had “tacitly consented” to sexual relations with her attacker because she had not demonstrated sufficient resistance and there were no marks on her body. Lawyers Bryan and Bryan drew on previous “experience and observation” to argue that “the average woman” who awoke to find a stranger in her bedroom would “scream and call for help”, thus the complainant’s “calm” demeanour suggested than no rape had taken placed.37 14 Further, as McGuire notes, “Unsubstantiated charges of the rape of white women by black men had been part of the southern political culture for decades”.38 William Henry Anderson was executed in July 1945, even though his lawyer had presented the governor and state pardon board with persuasive evidence that Anderson and the white woman he had been convicted of raping “were intimate since August 1944”. She usually visited him in the “colored section” of Fort Lauderdale, but the rape charge stemmed from his visit to her home in one of the segregated white residential districts. 39 Even where there was persuasive medical and forensic evidence that a rape had occurred, juries chose the lesser and non-capital offence of assault with intent to commit rape. In February 1946, Samuel Jiminez, Diego Hernandez, and Raymond Rodriquez picked up a young Anglo woman in Tampa, who was waiting for a female friend to get off work at midnight. She seemed to have willingly got into their car and visited a tavern with them, but when they drove her to an out-of-town dirt road, she

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refused to have sex with them. They tried to beat consent from her and when she refused, she was assaulted in the back of the car. At the trial, Jiminez and Hernandez were each sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and Rodriquez to three years.40 15 There were also striking differences in the disposition of rape cases within Florida. Those executed for rape between 1940 and 1964 were convicted in only ten of Florida’s 67 counties: Duval (5), Alachua (5), Pinellas (4), Broward (4), Dade (4), Hillsborough (3), Leon (2), Lake (1), Palm Beach (1) and Columbia (1).41 During these decades, Florida was undergoing considerable social, economic, and political transformation as military personnel, wartime migration, and post-war immigration fuelled a population boom, increasing total state population from 1.9 million in 1940 to 2.8 million in 1950, and 5 million in 1960. Southern and coastal counties, such as Dade and Pinellas, experienced the most dramatic growth. By the early 1960s, Dade and Hillsborough, dominated by the cities of Miami and Tampa, provided 25 percent of all commitments for all types of offences to the state prison system. Duval, Broward, and Pinellas counties together accounted for 18 percent.42 Racial segregation and discrimination were under sustained attack, for example, during the 1956-1957 Tallahassee bus boycott to successfully end segregated public transport in the state capital, and during the sit-ins, boycotts, and mass demonstrations at St. Augustine in 1963-1964, even as defenders of white supremacy and black disfranchisement resorted to increasingly strident and violent resistance.43 Further, older agriculture and extractive industries in the northern and central sections of the state were being eclipsed by a Sunbelt economy based on technological and defence-space-military investment, and leisure-tourism.44 Race, class, and labour tensions were just as evident in Florida’s resort cities and modernising, more pluralistic, southern counties in the 1940s and 1950s, as in the rural, small town, conservative Democrat-dominated northern panhandle counties, but this does not fully explain why capital rape jurors in some counties were more punitive than in others. 16 As soon as a white woman reported an interracial sexual assault, local African American men were rounded up and questioned by city police and local sheriffs, until a suspect was identified. Black communities were plagued by police violence in this period.45 The Palm Beach Post made light of the “zoot suit round up” of over a hundred local black men during a “6-day manhunt” in the West Palm Beach resort area in October 1944 that ended with the arrest of Henry Sparks.46 Former “carnival roustabout”, Felix Combs was the “57th man questioned” in Clearwater over two home invasion assaults in 1948; of a white “bride-to-be” on 5 August, and the 30-year-old wife of a city police officer on 24 August, as “a wave of terror” swept through Pinellas County. Local white vigilantes intimidated African Americans by burning a 6-foot cross near their homes.47 A silver dollar stolen during the second assault was recovered from a local tavern, and the proprietor “identified Combs as the one who spent it”. Combs initially claimed he had won the items in a crap game, but confessions to two robberies and two violent sexual assaults were quickly obtained by Clearwater police officers and the Pinellas County sheriff.48 17 The majority of Florida rape complaints involved one offender and one victim, but gang rapes – which Susan Brownmiller defined as two or more men assaulting one woman – resulted in twelve executions between 1940 and 1964.49 Scholarship on the history of the twentieth-century southern region is punctuated by cases of gang rape, with a recurring pattern of abduction by force and with a weapon, multiple assaults, and abandonment of the victim in a remote location, often without clothing. These actions

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underlined the disposability of the female victim and the perpetrators’ lack of fear of consequences.50 James C. Williams, Freddie Lee Lane, and James Davis were electrocuted in quick succession on the morning of 9 October 1944, for the rape of a 22-year-old army wife. The Gadsden County courthouse was surrounded by 250 sheriff’s deputies, state road patrol officers and state guardsmen on 24 August when their trial was to begin. However, the sheriff and other deputies guarding the convoy of cars from Alachua County, where the men had been held for safekeeping, had been halted by armed “persons unknown”. The threat of lynching, and the judge’s decision that the defendants were “too odious to the inhabitants” of Gadsden County to ensure an impartial jury, led to a change of venue. All three defendants pled guilty at their trial in Alachua County.51 18 In order to determine the most appropriate penalty, of life imprisonment or death, the victim was called to give her account in camera. She stated that around 9 pm on 29 Saturday July, she was driving alone when another car with three armed black males sped past and blocked her route. She was forced to stop, two men got into her car, and she was wedged between them in the front seat as they drove off. Shortly after, they crashed into a ditch, she was then repeatedly raped at gunpoint, and driven through the Chattahoochee area before being raped again in nearby woods. She was then shot in the side of the forehead (her scars were visible in court), deliberately covered with brush and leaves, and left for dead. After a period of unconsciousness, she stumbled to the roadside, and summoned help from a passing motorist early on the morning of 30 July. Within hours, Williams, Lane and Davis had been arrested in a stolen car in Suwannee County by state patrolmen and military police. Confessions were obtained from all three defendants at the state prison on the morning of 31 July.52 By the 1940s, black rape defendants were often removed to other counties to stymie lynching threats. Occasionally, a sheriff might rescue an African American “suspect” from a white mob, especially if the wrong person was targeted.53 However, the removal of a black suspect to a different county was also part of the terror tactics of local police, as illustrated in the Flowers case. During the car journey in the company of white police officers, the fear and vulnerability of black defendants increased, particularly if they did not know where they were going, how long the journey would take, and as police often took circuitous routes to deliberately pursue a confession.54 19 Criminologist James Messerschmidt notes that gang rape is typically associated with youthful offenders, often marginal boys and men lacking wealth and status, and with extreme forms of violence. Thus, “group rape helps maintain and reinforce an alliance among the boys by humiliating and devaluating women thereby strengthening the fiction of masculine power,” and because “the immediate sensation of masculine power was seductive for these boys, group rape became a resource for accomplishing gender and constructing a (…) collective, publicly aggressive form of masculinity”.55 The written confessions of Williams, Lane, and Davis reveal much about the performance of young, lower-class masculinity, petty crime, and opportunistic sexual violence. Williams and Davis had never met before late July 1944, but 16-year-old Davis was invited by Lane to accompany him and Williams on a trip “north.” For three to four days prior to the rape attack, they stole or hijacked several cars, and drove back and forth along the rural backroads of north Florida and southern Georgia, alternatively sleeping in the woods or the cars. The confessions detail their visits to relatives’ homes, gas stations, and “colored stations” or roadside stands selling food, all funded by selling stolen cars or robbing dime stores, thus their alliance was maintained largely through

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petit and grand larceny.56 When they spotted the lone white woman in the Ford sedan, the “plan” was armed robbery and carjacking, and thus the rape was characterised as an opportunistic after-thought. 20 Obtaining confessions by physical force had recently been declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, and the legality of Williams, Lane and Davis’s confessions were addressed at length in the Transcript of Record, but it was significant that the most cooperative defendant was the youngest, and possibly most vulnerable to police persuasion. Davies was one of five defendants between the ages of 16 and 20 years who were executed for rape 1940-1964, when the age of majority in Florida was still 21 years.57 The 1940s also witnessed growing anxieties over bandits and juvenile delinquency. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover frequently voiced his concern over “the creeping rot of moral disintegration”, murder and rape committed by male youth offenders, and drunkenness and prostitution among girls.58 In the Transcript of Record, Williams, Lane, and Davis come across as shiftless, dishonest, and unpitying figures, and conformed to long-held white views about African Americans being naturally predisposed to crime and natural predators of white women.59 21 The black sexual predator archetype appeared in many post-war newspaper descriptions: one suspect was described as a “lust-mad, hulking, sullen thick-lipped Negro self-confessed rapist” by a Fort Lauderdale paper in February 1945.60 Complaints of predatory black rapists emasculating white men and assaulting white women in public and tourist spaces were vigorously pursued by local law enforcement, as swift arrests and punishment were important to placate anxieties over public safety and to maintain racial control. Around 11 pm. on 26 March 1946, a white divorcee (with three young children) and her date were sitting under the stars on a beach near Hollywood, when they were threatened by two black men with knives. One sat on the male date and robbed him of money, including two silver dollars and a watch, while the other assaulted the woman; they then switched places and she was assaulted again. The couple immediately alerted police, and James Andrew Maxwell (aged 29) and Joe Ferguson (aged 41) were arrested at their homes in the early hours of 27 March. An emerald ring belonging to the divorcee and two silver dollars were found in the defendants’ possession.61 Maxwell and Ferguson were moved to neighbouring Dade County’s more secure multi-story jail because of the threat of mob violence, and were transferred back and forth under armed guard, but a change of venue petition was denied.62 There had been strong forensic and circumstantial evidence linking Maxwell and Ferguson to the crimes of armed robbery and rape, but their lawyers mounted a robust defence which laid the ground for subsequent appellate challenges based on violation of the 4th amendment’s search and seizure provisions, the complainants’ identification of the defendants, and judicial errors regarding the admission of evidence and charges to the jury, although ultimately without success. 22 In their testimony to the Broward County court, Maxwell and Ferguson told jurors that on the evening of 26 March, they had not gone to the beach but had visited several jook joints, pool halls, and gambling parlours in Fort Lauderdale’s segregated African American section, and claimed a female friend had “pawned” the emerald ring to Maxwell for $ 30.63 However, their testimony also demonstrated that both men were unfaithful husbands, and often engaged in casual sexual relations with several black women. Their conduct thus conformed to long-held white views about lax black male sexual mores and sexual incontinence, and further reinforced popular beliefs that

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African Americans and whites adhered to different standards of sexual propriety. Neither Maxwell nor Ferguson was in regular employment, and both appeared to be living off their wives’ earnings. Ferguson’s wife worked long hours and could not account for his whereabouts at the time of the rape as she was asleep.64 23 As a result, the effort by defence lawyers to make jurors sympathetic to their clients, by questioning the evidence and the victims’ accounts, and by offering alibis for the time period in which the robberies and rapes had occurred, may have backfired. The alternative narratives provided by both defendants may have reinforced juror suspicions rather than provided reasonable doubt as to their guilt. Jurors refused to doubt the veracity of the white victims’ complaints. In both the Hollywood and Gadsden County cases, the attacks by two or three generally unsympathetic offenders on respectable women, the multiple offences of abduction, armed robbery and assault, the confessions in the Gadsden County case, the emasculation of the white male robbery victim in the Hollywood case, and the special burden of interracial rape accusations, all increased the likelihood of capital conviction. Maxwell and Ferguson were executed in August 1947. 24 The likelihood of execution also increased if a black serial sexual predator was identified. Lonnie Lee Talley was executed in October 1948 for an attack on a young mother in her rural home near Jacksonville on 22 July 1947.65 At trial, five additional women waived their anonymity to testify that they had also been assaulted by Talley that same week.66 24-year-old Talley was a married war veteran who worked as a truck driver for a local Jacksonville firm. He offered an alibi for the afternoon of 22 July, but the testimony of the women, their identification of Talley in police line-ups, his distinctive truck, and forensic evidence therein persuaded jurors, the judge and later supreme court justices that Talley was a serial rapist who posed a serious and continuing threat to the white women of Duval County. It was reported that he approached a lone woman to “ask her for a glass of water, or request information about the road, or ask for pliers or some other tool feigned to be needed in the adjustment of the motor or truck, with the usual question, ‘Is your husband at home?’” Talley’s white lawyer Albert W. Graessle, Jr, a future president of the Florida Bar Association, and from 1956 the circuit judge for Clay, Duval and Nassau Counties, (unsuccessfully) challenged the inclusion of the collateral and ultimately damning testimony of the other rape victims, because Talley was on trial for one offence only.67 25 One reported interracial assault could heighten local white anxieties and stoke racial tensions, but a series of attacks generated white panic and prolonged disruption to black residents as police dragnets and interrogations continued for days. “A single thumbprint on a pane of glass” led to the arrest of 21-year-old Willie George City in June 1959. The Sheriff of Pinellas County announced that City had confessed to assaulting five women, aged 55 to 72 years, in their bedrooms, and the attempted rape of a sixth, over a period of twenty-two months. White residents’ anxieties had increased with each reported assault in southwest Largo, and over a hundred men were questioned, including “every Negro deliveryman and yard worker who frequented the area”. City was charged with one assault, of a 61-year-old woman on 17 October 1958. She had given police the best description of the so-called “nude rapist” who removed all his clothes before entering the victim’s home.68 26 City had arrived in Largo in 1956 and had a legitimate job in a downtown Clearwater hotel. Pinellas was a flourishing coastal county, with a popular resort area and booming

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technological industries. Educated and highly-skilled professionals took up technological posts, while lower-skilled white and black workers serviced new housing developments and hotels.69 City had been picked up by police on at least three occasions prior to summer 1959, on suspicion of rape and assault, but had been released each time due to lack of evidence. He pled guilty without contest. The state pardon board refused clemency on 6 October 1959.70 City was executed on the same day in November 1959 as John Edward Paul, another African American convicted of interracial rape in Pinellas County. In fact, the last three black men to be executed for the rape of white women in Florida, were all from Pinellas, where suspicion over growing numbers of non-white workers and residents, anxieties over public safety and the sanctity of the white home, and white community anger, all framed the prosecution of interracial rape complaints. 27 In April 1960, white defendant Robert Wesley Davis pled guilty to raping an 11-year old girl, an act that he had forced two young boys to watch by threatening them with an ice pick. In May 1960, white civil rights activist Jefferson Poland wrote to Governor LeRoy Collins of his brief acquaintance with “Wes” in Leon County jail, and criticised the state’s desire “to exterminate” Davis, “a confirmed criminal, an admitted homosexual, [and] a social outcast.”71 Homosexuality was illegal in Florida, and gay men and women endured physical harassment, economic sanction and social disgrace.72 Defence lawyers also highlighted Davis’s troubled childhood, introduced evidence that he had been sexually abused by his sex-worker mother’s many husbands, and raised mental health concerns. Davis had spent fifteen of his twenty-nine years in state orphanages and prisons, and many contended that state officials had systematically failed to provide material and psychiatric help to a vulnerable and neglected young person.73 The now former governor told Poland that the appeals process and pardon board still offered hope.74 28 State supreme court justices acknowledged Davis’s “underprivileged upbringing” and other “handicaps”, but also characterised him as an incorrigible sexual offender who had rejected treatments to “cure” his homosexuality, was incapable of rehabilitation, and remained “a menace to any human being exposed to him”. Further, Davis had showed no remorse for his actions or sympathy for his victim. Thus, of all the post-war critiques of capital rape defendants, the justices’ assessment of Davis was the most damning: “The events of the assault constitute a most hideous perpetration of child abuse by vicious indulgence in the most abominable and detestible [sic] of lusts. Guilt of rape in its most vile form is manifest”.75 Davis was executed on 7 August 1961, the only white man to be executed for rape in twentieth-century Florida. It is not clear whether jurors and justices considered this attack on a white female child by an “incurable” male homosexual more aggravating than a similar attack by a white male heterosexual offender, but Davis’s sexuality, so-called incorrigibility, and cold-heartedness rendered him unworthy of mercy, thus neither the supreme court nor the governor would intervene to halt the execution. In his last statement from the electric chair, Davis complained, “They knew what I would turn out to be and they never gave me no help”. 76 It was not necessarily clear at the time, but this was the last execution for rape in Florida. 29 There was growing gubernatorial and legislative unease over the administration of capital punishment in Florida by the early 1960s. Every governor had robustlydefended capital punishment until January 1959, when Collins announced his support for

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abolition on religious and moral grounds. He urged Florida legislators to repeal the death penalty, yet continued to sign death warrants.77 Nationally, many Americans, including US Supreme Court jurist Arthur Goldberg, were troubled by racial bias in the prosecution and punishment of rape, and debated whether death was a proportionate penalty for non-lethal rape.78 Florida legislators did support the creation of a fifteen- member special investigative commission to consider the abolition of capital punishment in Florida, which met in 1963 and confirmed what many citizens, commentators, lawyers and politicians already suspected: the death penalty for rape was not administered impartially. Nevertheless, commissioners did not favour removing rape from the list of capital offences.79 Thus, neither legislative unease nor evidence of discriminatory application was enough to deliver even partial death penalty abolition. 30 In August 1965, Tobias Simon, a Miami-based lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), took a leading role in the national “prodefendant, problack, civil rights reform” strategy being coordinated by the ACLU-NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) comprehensive constitutional attack on the death penalty. Simon informed Florida Chief Justice Glenn Terrell: “The death penalty for rape is a tool of the racists and bigots – and its purpose is to impose punishment upon Negroes where the methods of the lynch mob and the Ku Klux Klan have failed or have fallen into disrepute”.80 Six months earlier, Governor Haydon Burns, former mayor of Jacksonville, self-proclaimed white “moderate” and an avowed supporter of capital punishment, announced that he would not sign death warrants for any men convicted of rape until Simon’s class action appeal alleging racial bias in the administration of capital punishment had been addressed by the state supreme court.81 Many Floridians were outraged and wrote to Burns to denounce his callous removal of protections for white women. Constituents like Mrs. Justine V. Prince argued that rape was the “most heinous crime of all” and continued to warrant the severest punishment.82 In reality, there were no executions in Florida at all after Burns’ announcement. Nationally, executions were halted by judicial stays issued in 1967 and 1968, and a national death penalty moratorium continued until 1977.83 31 Even as the age of death penalty abolition slowly dawned in the United States, widespread reluctance to abandon the death penalty and executions was evident in many states, including Florida. Executive and legislative unease over selective execution by race, particularly in capital rape cases, was not shared by many local constituents or law enforcement, particularly if an African American serial rapist was believed to be at large, or a gang rape was reported. An April 1950 editorial in the St. Petersburg Times began “‘Rape by Negroes’ is a phrase calculated to inspire swift and flaming mass hatred in the South”.84 Ten years later, interracial black defendant-white victim rape accusations could still generate intense community reaction and juror retribution. Some commentators believed that the convictions of four white male rapists for their premeditated attack on a young black woman in Tallahassee in 1959, and a handful of similar white male convictions in other states, signified that popular and official attitudes toward rape were changing in important ways in the southern states during the late 1950s. However, the life or lengthy sentences handed down to these offenders did not equate to the death sentences that many black male defendants could still routinely expect, particularly if they had been convicted of an assault on a white girl or woman.

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32 Simon’s assertion that legal execution for rape was a functional replacement for the older “methods of the lynch mob and the Ku Klux Klan”, was borne out in several cases in late 1950s and early 1960s Florida. Sam Wiley Odom the only rape defendant from Lake County to be executed in June 1959, had been saved from mob violence, but was subsequently convicted after six minutes of juror deliberation.85 Further, “the protection of white women” continued to serve “as the ultimate symbol of white male power and the foundation of white supremacy” in much of the southern region. The protection of white women in their bedrooms, on Florida’s golden beaches, and on the county roads and state highways remained important factors in the disposition of Florida rape complaints in the local courts, appellate courts, and state pardon board offices in the post-war decades.86 At the same time, white women’s accusations of interracial rape were under greater popular and judicial scrutiny, and certain “types” of rape were much more likely to be prosecuted as capital offences than others. It is also clear that due process reform, black Civil Rights protest, and changing sexual attitudes did have an impact on deliberations in local county courthouses, but popular, political, and judicial narratives about sexual violence were shifting much more slowly and tentatively than in other states or regions. It is worth remembering that executions for rape in Florida were not halted in response to popular protest or a groundswell of abolitionist sentiment, but by direct executive intervention.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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NOTES

1. Ocala Star-Banner, 7 October 1959, 8. 2. Brief of Bryan and Bryan, Tampa, Florida for Appellant, to Florida Supreme Court, 10 June 1944, p. 1-12, in Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Part 8, Series B, Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System, 1910-1955, Legal Department and Central Office Records, 1940-1955, microfilm reel 32, frames 210-22 ; Flowers v. State, 152 Fla.649 (1943) ; Flowers v. State, 12 So.2d 772 (1943) ; Palm Beach Post, 31 March 1943, 10 ; St. Petersburg Times, 19 October 1943, 20. 3. Tampa Morning Tribune, 27 June 1944, 10. 4. Florida Department of Corrections, “Execution List, 1924-1964” at : 5. St. Petersburg Times, 14 August 1965, 3A. This pattern was repeated in every southern state, see for example, Partington (1965, p. 47), Paternoster and Kazyaka (1988, pp. 255-262) ; Marquart, Ekland-Olson, and Sorensen (1998) ; Rise (1992, p. 482). 6. Lawson, Colburn & Paulson (1986, p. 25). 7. See U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, “National Prisoner Statistics : Executions, 1930-1965” NPS Bulletin No. 39 (June 1966), p. 3 ; Florida, “Report of the Special Commission for

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the Study of Abolition of Death Penalty in Capital Cases, 1963-1965”, pp. 8 & 12 ; Wolfgang & Riedel (1973, p. 127) ; Cahalan (1986, pp. 10-15). 8. Fort Pierce News Tribune, 19 July 1953, p. 10. 9. These include : Powell v. Alabama 287 U.S. 45 (1932) ; Norris v. Alabama 294 U.S. 587 (1935) ; Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936) ; Chambers v. Florida 309 U.S. 227 (1940). 10. St. Petersburg Times, 5 October 1948, p. 17. 11. Klarman (2004, pp. 117-121) ; Rise (1992, p. 462) ; Tallahassee Democrat, 17 June 1959, p. 10. 12. St. Petersburg Evening Independent, 4 October 1948, p. 1. 13. Garland (2010, p. 38). 14. Palm Beach Post, 8 December 1944, p. 6 ; 12 December 1944, p. 3. The appearance of the first women jurors at rape trials also warranted comment. See Palm Beach Post, 30 August 1950, p. 4. 15. Fort Pierce News Tribune, 14 December 1955, p. 1 ; Palm Beach Post, 18 February 1965, p. 63. 16. See for example, James v. State, 55 So.2d 582 (1952) ; Beard v. State, 69 So.2d 770 (1954). 17. Lawson, Colburn & Paulson (1986, pp. 1-26) ; King (2012) ; Irvin v. State, 66 So. 2d 289 (1953). 18. Tallahassee Democrat, 22 June 1959, 1 & 2 ; McGuire (2004, pp. 906-931) ; McGuire (2010, pp. xx, 33-34 & 149) ; Dorr (2004, pp. 235 & 242). 19. Dorr (2004, pp. 205-237) ; Campbell (2013, p. 166). 20. Freedman (2013, pp. 271-274). 21. Dorr (2000, p. 722). 22. Pfeifer (2004). 23. Atlanta Constitution, 30 December 1945, 7A ; Davis (1990, pp. 277-298). 24. Newman (2001) ; Harvey, in Feldman (ed), (2005, pp. 101-124). 25. See State Ex Rel. Copeland v. Mayo, 87 So.2d 501 (1956) ; Manley II and Brown, Jr. (2006, p. 283). 26. Ocala Star-Banner, 4 September 1958, 4. 27. For discussion of the treatment of African American rape victims and their complaints in late nine- teenth- and early twentieth-century Florida, see Miller, (2000, pp. 175-216). For black rape victim experiences in mid-20th-century Chicago see Flood, (2005, pp. 38-61). 28. Bourke (2007, pp. 394-395). 29. Generally, military wives were from other states, often living in poor quality housing and without family support, reliant on friendship networks with other wives, surviving on low wages unskilled jobs in the “small out-of-the-way towns” near to southern training bases, and confronted with bewildering southern racial mores. See Leder (2006, pp. 78-83). 30. This type of local data collection was part of the national LDF strategy to gather state-by- state evidence for a major constitutional death penalty challenge in the mid-1960s. See Meltsner (1973, pp. 1111-1139) ; Tauber (1998, pp. 191-219) ; Foerster (2012). 31. St. Petersburg Times, 14 August 1965, 3A. 32. Ibid. 33. Raulerson v. State 102 So. 2d 281 (1958), at 284-285. Following a successful severance motion, James H. Raulerson and Fritz H. Clark were tried together but separately from the other two defendants. 34. Washington Post, 29 May 1955, A3. 35. Section 794.01, Florida Statutes. The definition of rape was also outlined in, for example, “Charge to the Jury”, 25 September 1947, in State vs. Lonnie Lee Talley, Death Warrants, Series 12, Box 31, FF 7 : Lonnie Lee Talley, Duval County, 1948, Florida State Archives, Tallahassee. 36. St. Petersburg Times, 5 October 1948, p. 17. 37. Brief of Bryan and Bryan, Tampa, Florida for Appellant, to Florida Supreme Court, 10 June 1944, p. 12, in Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Part 8, Series B, Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System, 1910-1955, Legal Department and Central Office Records, 1940-1955, microfilm reel 32, frame 219. 38. McGuire (2010, p. 24).

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39. Quoted in Vandiver (1992-1993, p. 336). 40. The Supreme Court mandate underlines that justices thought there was evidence to support the charge of rape rather than attempted rape, see Jiminez v State, 158 Fla.719 (1947). 41. In terms of all 196 executions between 1924 and 196, the geography of capital murder, rape, and kidnapping is equally skewed : 38 of the 196 men were convicted in Duval County, 24 in Dade, 15 in Hillsborough, 11 in Pinellas, and 10 in Alachua 10. Driggs notes that 28 of Florida’s 67 counties did not execute anyone during this 40-year period. See Driggs (1992-1993, pp. 1208-1209). 42. Florida, Division of Corrections, Third Report, 1 July 1960–30 June 1962, p. 72. 43. Rabby (1999) ; Orlando Sentinel, 18 December 1994 [online edition] ; Colburn (1985, 1991) ; Warren (2008) ; Washington Post, December 29, 1951, 8 ; Bartley, N., (1969) ; McMillen (1994). 44. Shell-Weiss (2005, pp. 79-99) ; Mormino (2006) ; Stronge (2008). 45. Rose (2007, pp. 39-69) ; Dunn (2016, pp. 133-139). 46. Palm Beach Post, 3 October 1944, p. 1. 47. Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 29 August 1948, p. 1 ; St. Petersburg Evening Independent, 31 August 1948, p. 1 ; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 15 September 1948, p. 6 ; 29 August 1948, p. 1. 48. St. Petersburg Evening Independent, 28 August 1948, p. 1 ; 24 January 1949, p. 1 ; Palm Beach Post, 29 August 1948, p. 25 ; 5 October 1948, p. 1 ; St. Petersburg Times, 5 October 1948, p. 17. At trial, Combs’ lawyer successfully persuaded the court to disallow his client’s confession, but Combs then told jurors that he had in effect committed the two rapes that he had confessed to. See St. Petersburg Times, 14 September 1948, p. 15. 49. Brownmiller (1975, p. 187). 50. See Carter (1969) ; Kinshasa (1997) ; Goodman (1994) for discussion of the 1931 Scottsboro case. See also Stevenson (2009), Dorr (2004, p. 241) ; McGuire (2010, pp. 61, 64 & 142). 51. Transcript of Record, Circuit Court, Alachua County, Summer Term, 1944, Death Warrants, Series 12, Box 29, FF1 : James C. Williams, Freddie Lee Lane, and James Davis, Alachua County, 1944. 52. Ibid. 53. New York Times, 2 August 1949, p. 14. 54. Brief of Bryan and Bryan, Tampa, Florida for Appellant, to Florida Supreme Court, 10 June 1944, p. 79, in Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Part 8, Series B, Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System, 1910-1955, Legal Department and Central Office Records, 1940-1955, microfilm reel 32, frame 287. 55. Messerschmidt (1993, p. 114). 56. Transcript of Record, Circuit Court, Alachua County, Summer Term, 1944, Death Warrants, Box 29, FF1 : James C. Williams, Freddie Lee Lane, and James Davis, Alachua County, 1944. 57. Driggs (1992, pp. 1199-1202). 58. For example, Washington Post, 9 July 1943, p. 1 ; Washington Post, 23 July 1950, M13 ; Atlanta Constitution, 27 June 1943, A5. 59. Nelson (2015) ; LeFlouria (2015, p. 246). 60. Quoted in Vandiver (2006, p. 25). 61. Transcript of Testimony & Proceedings, 23 & 24 May 1946, Death Warrants, Series 12, Box 31, FF1 : James Andrew Maxwell and Joe Ferguson, Broward County, 1947, Florida State Library and Archives, Tallahassee, Florida. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 18 June 1948, p. 1 ; Florida Times Union, 6 October 1948, p. 3. 66. “Admissibility of Separate Offenses Motion,” filed 17 November 1947, Lonnie Lee Talley, Duval County, 1948, Series 12, Box 31, FF7.

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67. Talley v State, 160 Fla.593 (1948). 68. St. Petersburg Times, 20 June 1958, 1B. 69. Kerstein (1993, pp. 614-630) ; Mormino (2002, pp. 3-21). 70. Ocala Star-Banner, 13 November 1959, p. 1. 71. Jefferson Poland to Governor Collins, 1 May 1960, in Record Group 102 : Governors 1921-1971, Series 776 LeRoy Collins Administrative Correspondence, 1955-1960, Carton 53 : Capital Punishment, Florida State Library and Archives, Tallahassee, Florida. Poland, a former Florida State University student, Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and ACLU activist, had been arrested for participating in a lunch-counter sit-in in Tallahassee in 1960. See Rabby (1999, pp. 133-134). 72. Bertwell (2005, pp. 410-431). 73. Driggs (1992, p. 1203). 74. Governor to Mr. Jefferson Poland, 6 May 1960, in Record Group 102 : Governors 1921-1971, Series 776 LeRoy Collins Administrative Correspondence, 1955-1960, Carton 53 : Capital Punishment, Florida State Library and Archives, Tallahassee, Florida. 75. Davis v. State, 123 So. 2d 703 (1960) at n16. 76. Palm Beach Post-Times, 30 October 1977, p. 23. 77. Dyckman (2006, p. 197). 78. Palm Beach Post, 18 February 1965, p. 63 ; Washington Post, 10 May 1963, A18 ; Rudolph v. Alabama, 375 U.S. 889 (1963) ; Washington Post, October 22, 1963, A1 ; Banner (2002, p. 248) ; Garland (2010, pp. 217-219). 79. Florida Laws, 1963, Chapter 63-362.The proposal to change rape from a capital to a non- capital offence was defeated 9 to 4. A proposal to completely abolish capital punishment was defeated 10-3. See Commission Report, 42. 80. St. Petersburg Times, 14 August 1965, 3A. 81. Miami Herald, 1 March 1965, p. 1. 82. Governor to Mrs Justine V. Prince, 4 May 1965, Record Group 102 : Governors 1921-1971, Series 131, Haydon Burns Correspondence, 1965-1967, Box 8, Capital Punishment – 1965, Florida State Library and Archives, Tallahassee, Florida. 83. New York Times, 4 April 1967, p. 37 ; Meltsner (1973, p. 127) ; Adderly v. Wainwright, 46 F.R.D. 97 (M.D. Fla. 1968) ; Adderly v. Wainwright, 272 F.Supp. 530 (M.D. Fla. 1967). The last two executions in Florida in the pre-Furman period took place in May 1964 ; they did not resume until May 1979. For an incisive examination of the restoration period, see Von Drehle (1995). 84. St. Petersburg Times, 7 April 1950, p. 13. 85. St. Petersburg Times, 14 August 1965, 3A ; Tallahassee Democrat, 17 June 1959, p. 10. 86. McGuire (2010, p. 169).

ABSTRACTS

Thirty men were executed for rape in Florida between 1940 and 1964, in a state undergoing rapid population growth, Sunbelt economic change, and black freedom struggle protest and activism. No white man was sentenced to death for the rape of a “Negro” girl or woman, and all twenty- nine African American men and one white man had been convicted of assaulting white girls or women. This essay focuses on these thirty capital cases and the compelling statistical evidence of

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selective execution by race to examine which acts of sexual violence were considered so heinous as to warrant the death penalty: gang rape, serial offending, and the invasion of the white family home by the burglar-turned-rapist. As in other southern states, Florida courtrooms were important sites of Civil Rights protest, as black defendants and their lawyers sought to challenge racial inequities in the prosecution of interracial sexual violence and the lack of due process afforded non-white offenders, although success was limited.

Trente hommes ont été exécutés pour viol entre 1940 et 1964 en Floride, dans une période de forte croissance démographique, de mutation économique dans le sud des États-Unis, de lutte pour l’émancipation des Noirs, de manifestations et de militantisme. Aucun Blanc n’a été condamné à mort pour le viol d’une fille ou femme noire, tandis que ces 29 hommes afro- américain et un blanc ont été condamnés pour l’agression de filles ou femmes blanches. Cet article examine ces 30 dossiers capitaux et les preuves statistiques écrasantes d’une mise à mort fondée sur la race pour analyser quels actes de violence sexuelle étaient considérés assez odieux pour mériter la peine de mort : le viol collectif, les crimes en série, ainsi que la violation du domicile d’une famille blanche par un cambrioleur virant au violeur. Comme dans d’autres états du Sud, les tribunaux de Floride étaient d’importants lieux de manifestations pour les droits civiques, alors que les accusés noirs et leurs avocats s’efforçaient de contester – avec un succès mitigé – les inégalités raciales dans les poursuites visant la violence sexuelle interraciale, ainsi que l’absence de procès équitable envers les accusés non-blancs .

AUTHOR

VIVIEN MILLER

Vivien Miller is Associate Professor of American & Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is the author of Hard Labor and Hard Time : Florida’s “Sunshine Prison” and Chain Gangs (2012) and Crime, Violence and Sexual Clemency : Florida’s Pardon Board and Penal System in the Progressive Era (2000). She is also co-editor of Transnational Penal Cultures : New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance (2014) and Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime Fictions (2012). She has published journal articles on crimes of passion, kidnapping, jewel thieves, convict leasing, and capital punishment. She is currently working on the death penalty in the pre-1972, United States.University of Nottingham, University Park, UK- Nottingham NG7 2RD - [email protected]

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Death Row Resistance, Politics and Capital Punishment in 1970s Jamaica

James Campbell

1 In February 1972, Mario Hector and Winston Williams were found guilty in Kingston, Jamaica, of the murder of Nicholas Miller. A security guard employed at the First National City Bank, Miller was shot dead on 6 November 1970 in the course of a robbery. Hector and Williams denied any involvement in the crime. An apprentice printer before his arrest, Hector claimed in an unsworn statement at his trial that on the day of the murder he had gone “to the Jones Town post office where he posted some finished lessons for correction,” before heading to a department store to purchase stationery and then on to a library to carry out some research. He also alleged that he was beaten repeatedly by police before signing a “confession” that was written without his input and which he was not permitted to read. Williams denied ever having met Hector before he was taken into custody and could not recall his whereabouts at the time Miller was killed.1

2 On their conviction, Hector and Williams were both sentenced to death, which was then the mandatory penalty for murder in Jamaica, and immediately transferred to death row at the St Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town. On arrival, they were met by the prison’s senior warder, assigned a religious affiliation when they declared they had none, and escorted to a reception room where they were fingerprinted, photographed and searched. They were dressed in prison uniforms with “the word ‘Condemned’ written in bold black letters across the back” and taken to A block, which at that time housed the death cells. There they were beaten by guards and locked in solitary confinement.2 In keeping with English common law precedent, executions had traditionally been conducted swiftly in Jamaica, usually within a few weeks of sentencing, but that was no longer the norm by the 1970s due principally to an increasingly lengthy appeals process. Hector spent three years on death row and Williams seven years before their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by Jamaica’s Governor-General, Florizel Glasspole.

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3 The history of the death penalty in Jamaica, and the wider Anglophone Caribbean since the 1970s has mostly been told by legal scholars who have focused on a series of appeals heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the United Kingdom, which has remained Jamaica’s highest appellate court since independence in 1962. In those studies, the main explanatory factors for developments in Caribbean capital punishment are identified as European legal and penal cultures, the activities of international human rights organisations and London-based lawyers, and the political concerns of the UK government.3 By contrast, there has been little analysis of the events in local courts and prisons where death penalty appeals originated and condemned prisoners awaited their fate. The years that Mario Hector and Winston Williams spent under sentence of death coincided with critical events in the modern history of capital punishment in Jamaica that played a key role in initiating a concerted national and international campaign against executions that involved lawyers, activists, government ministers and members of the public. This article documents these events and argues that they stemmed in important ways from the actions of condemned prisoners themselves. It uncovers wide-ranging acts of resistance committed by death row prisoners that forced capital punishment onto the political agenda in Jamaica, generated significant doubts about the justice and efficacy of the death penalty, and led to an unofficial moratorium on executions in the late-1970s during which numerous death sentences were commuted. In this way, prisoner resistance supplemented, and sometimes even underpinned, concurrent legal challenges to capital punishment. It generated a spirit of resilience among the condemned that helped them to endure the horrendous conditions of their incarceration and, in the short-term at least, proved more successful than court action in securing relief for individual convicts from the gallows. 4 The article draws on a wide-range of previously neglected sources. At the heart of the analysis is Mario Hector’s own, remarkable account of his life under sentence of death. This work offers unparalleled insights into the ways that condemned convicts experienced and challenged their imprisonment and death sentences in 1970s Jamaica, but it is not an unproblematic source. It was written in the early-1980s, several years after the events that it narrates. Hector had established himself as a prominent prison activist and organiser by this point, suffered years of deprivation and abuse, raising concerns about the reliability of his recollections. That he had also become involved with the work of the Jamaica Council for Human Rights and undertaken a sociology degree also raises the possibility that his views of the mid-1970s were coloured – whether deliberately or inadvertently – by his later experiences and evolving political beliefs. Hector also wrote under difficult conditions. Although no longer facing execution, he remained incarcerated and faced the constant threat that guards might discover his manuscript. He relied on fellow inmates to hide papers and smuggle them to the outside where the Jamaica Council for Human Rights coordinated the book’s publication. The vehemence with which Hector condemns Jamaica’s legal system, prisons and wider political culture suggests that the risks he took did little to inhibit his writing, though it should be noted that it was in the interests of both Hector and the JCHR – which had long fought against capital punishment and worked on Hector’s case – to stress the humanity of condemned prisoners and the injustices perpetrated by the Jamaican courts.

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5 In a foreword to the book the JCHR described some of Hector’s hypotheses as “difficult to support”, citing as an example his claim that colonialism was responsible for capital punishment. This gives further reason to believe that the views Hector expressed were largely his own. Moreover, his descriptions of prison conditions and acts of resistance are corroborated by other sources, including interviews with other condemned inmates, extensive newspaper reports, legal records, and two major inquiries into capital punishment commissioned by the Jamaican government. The first of these inquiries, which reported in June 1975, was chaired by the lawyer and human rights activist Dr Lloyd Barnett who was charged with investigating the kidnapping of a prison warder by death row inmates, including Hector, on the night of 26 December 1974. The second inquiry, headed by H. Aubrey Fraser, the Director of the Norman Manley Law School, had a broader remit to assess whether the death penalty in Jamaica should be “abolished, limited or modified”, and in what conditions condemned prisoners should be held. After eighteen months of investigations that involved psychologists and social workers interviewing dozens of condemned inmates and submissions from a range of legal, political, religious and human rights bodies, as well as member of the public, the Fraser Report was published in 1981.4 6 In identifying death row prisoners as key actors in the history of capital punishment, this article pioneers a new direction for historical scholarship on the subject. There is a small but powerful sociological and criminological literature on the “living death” endured by prisoners who have been condemned to die. Largely focused on the United States, this work finds little evidence of death row resistance and, indeed, identifies conditions on death row that strongly militated against collective action.5 As sociologist David Garland has argued, the death penalty in the U.S. became increasingly regulated, medicalised and sanitised during the twentieth century, and death row developed into the most tightly managed of all carceral environments. Criminologist Robert Johnson described Alabama’s death row in the late-1970s as “like a tomb.” Consisting of four tiers of cells in two blocks, death row prisoners were separated from the outside world by five locked gates, and such was the construction and layout of the cells and the regulation of prisoners’ daily routines that communication even between tiers of cells within the same block was “almost impossible”.6 While prisoners might talk and play games with men in neighbouring cells, and, through these activities, provide each other with some psychological support, there was almost no scope for organised resistance. On the contrary, Johnson concluded that the condition of death row inmates was characterised by powerlessness, fear and an emotional emptiness that bred apathy, passivity and decay.7 7 Historians of the twentieth century death penalty have rarely focused their attention on death row, concentrating instead on movements to abolish capital punishment, legal challenges to death sentences and changes over time in methods of execution.8 Ethan Blue’s work on death row culture in 1930s California and Texas is an exception. Blue notes that historians have paid considerable attention to the transformation of the practice of capital punishment in the United States, tracing the emergence of private, bureaucratized and sanitized killings carried out in electric chairs, gas chambers, and by lethal injection, but they have generally ignored the ways that condemned prisoners, “responded” to what he calls “the emergent killing regimes” of the mid- twentieth century.9 While acknowledging that the condemned prisoners in his study rarely engaged in explicit acts of resistance, Blue argued that they were routinely

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unwilling to “die on the state’s terms.” Instead, they strived to shape the manner in which they passed their final days and the way in which they died through forging communal bonds based on songs, religion and gallows humour, and sometimes taking their own lives before the executioner could do his work.10 8 There is evidence that similar acts of self-determination occurred on death row in Jamaica in the 1970s. Condemned prisoners formed close personal attachments with each other, sang hymns together and, in at least one case, cheated the hangman by committing suicide soon after an execution date was set.11 As Blue argues, these individual and communal assertions of humanity and dignity mattered on their own terms for the condemned, their families and the many state officials involved in the processes of execution. They were an implicit rebuke and challenge to the “meanings of death” that the state sought to impose. Yet the accounts of Hector and others demonstrate that in the Jamaican context they also served as an essential basis for more overtly political oppositional acts that fundamentally destabilised capital punishment. In this way, the case of Jamaica’s death row in the 1970s offers evidence of what criminologist Ashley Rubin calls the processual nature of prisoner resistance. Rubin argues that in their efforts to challenge Foucauldian accounts of prisons as “totalising institutions,” scholars “have overused (and misused) the label ‘resistance’” to describe prisoner behaviours that “challenge the prison regime’s personnel, rules, values, or power,” but lack political intent. He proposes the term “friction,” as a more accurate definition of behaviours that principally benefit individual prisoners and are not “consciously aimed at undermining the authority of the prison regime.” Rubin stresses that there is no binary opposition between friction and resistance. Rather, they exist on a continuum. Friction can be a precursor to or preparation for resistance, and particular prisoner behaviours can operate as either friction or resistance depending on their circumstances and motivations.12 To understand why and how resistance developed on Jamaica’s death row requires looking both within and beyond the prison walls, placing prisoners at the centre of the narrative and taking their capacity for political thought and action seriously, but also – as recent studies of the black prison rights movement in the United States have shown – investigating the social and political contexts in which prisons and prisoners are situated and the ramifications of prisoners’ acts on the outside.13 9 The remainder of this article addresses the causes, course and consequences of death row resistance in 1970s Jamaica in four parts. It focuses first on the conditions in which inmates sentenced to death in Jamaica were incarcerated; second, on acts of resistance by condemned prisoners; third, on unsuccessful legal challenges to Jamaica’s juvenile death penalty laws that were central to the decision to grant clemency to Mario Hector in 1975, and fourth, on public criticism and political debates about the future of capital punishment in Jamaica that provided the context in which Winston Williams’s life was spared and Pratt and Morgan first entered death row in 1979.

Death Row, Jamaica

10 The St Catherine District Prison has housed all condemned male prisoners and been the site of all executions in Jamaica since 1900. When Mario Hector and Winston Williams were convicted in February 1972, condemned prisoners were held in A block, but four months later death row was moved to an expanded and more secure location on the

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upper floor of the prison’s Gibraltar Block where twenty-six single-person cells were arranged on either side of a corridor.14 A further three cells were situated adjacent to the death chamber that housed the gallows and used to hold inmates in the days immediately preceding their scheduled execution. The row was not as tightly managed as was typical in the United States, but it was, and remained, a brutal, austere, fetid and unsanitary place, filled with desperate men and prone to regular outbreaks of violence that were sometimes perpetrated by prisoners, but more often by poorly paid, overstretched and mostly untrained guards.15 Each cell was furnished with a narrow bed, a table and chair, all made of concrete, and prisoners were provided with a water mug and a slop bucket.16 They also had access to a shower, were granted two visits and could write two letters each week and were allowed into the corridor between their cells for fifteen minute periods of exercise two or three times per week. An enclosed outdoor recreation area reserved for condemned men was unused due to staff shortages.17 The cell doors remained closed at all other times except for a few minutes each morning when prisoners were taken, usually in groups of three, to empty their buckets, fill their water jugs and wash.18 Radios and reading material of any kind were prohibited in the cells, as were all items of personal hygiene. Prisoners were not permitted to wear shoes and were rarely provided with changes of clothes, and then only at the whim of prison guards. As much as the physical severity of these conditions, Hector recalled the tedium of life on the row. Echoing the sentiments of condemned prisoners in the United States, he wrote of, “time…seemingly endless time…Sitting empty-eyed…Standing because you’re tired of sitting…Consideration…frustration… silence…Time…silence…the death sentence…time.”19

11 Record numbers of Jamaican prisoners experienced the stultifying conditions of death row in the 1970s, due in large part to the island’s spiralling murder rate.20 In 1962, there were 57 reported murders in Jamaica, but by 1972 that figure had more than trebled to 188 and by 1980 it stood at 699.21 This was a unique moment in the history of Jamaican murder. Prior to independence, most homicides involved domestic violence and from the mid-1980s an even greater increase in the murder rate was linked to transnational drugs trafficking. The high murder rate of the late-1960s and especially the 1970s, however, was mainly due to a post-independence intensification of links between politicians and criminal gangs, as Jamaica’s two main parties—the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party—forged mutually beneficial connections with violent street gangs. In return for promises of homes, jobs and protection from the police, criminal dons organised whole communities to support their chosen candidates. The violence – which tended to spike around elections – was most intense in west Kingston which was home to large numbers of socially excluded migrants from rural communities and where poverty and unemployment were so entrenched “that people were prepared to fight or kill to get their candidate elected and thus tap into the political-patronage network”.22 Many of the prisoners on death row were drawn from such communities. The Fraser Report found in 1981 that, “[t]he areas in which these men grew up are usually neighbourhoods of concern to the police because of the frequent violence, gang warfare and political conflicts which are prevalent.” Condemned prisoners understood that these conditions had contributed to their own violent pasts: “They argue quite vociferously that the culture of the neighbourhood imposes on them the need to be tough and ready to defend the ‘territory’, (their own neighbourhood) from attack and interference from ‘outsiders’”.23

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12 As Jamaica’s homicide rate increased from approximately 4 per 100,000 in the early-1960s to 17 per 100,000 in the late-1970s, it placed a huge strain on the country’s police, criminal justice apparatus and prison system. The ruling PNP government responded to the violence by enacting two new and controversial pieces of legislation. First, the Suppression of Crime Act (1974), gave the police broad new powers to carry out searches without a warrant and make arrests on the basis of reasonable suspicion. Second, the Gun Court Act (1974), created a new court designed to speed up the trial of crimes involving illegal firearms by significantly restricting defendants’ due process rights, but this did not extend to capital cases, and the proportion of murders that were solved fell sharply from more than 90 percent in the early-1960s to just 50 percent by the late-1970s. Many violent criminals in this period were able to exploit their community and political connections to avoid prosecution or even flee Jamaica,24 but still there was a significant increase in total murder convictions. Death by hanging was the mandatory penalty for murder and the number of death sentences handed down by Jamaican courts each year grew from roughly fourteen in the late 1960s to an average of nearly fifty in the 1970s.25 What is more, the men who were condemned to death – and in this period they were, with three known exceptions, all men26 – were more likely than in previous eras to appeal their convictions not only in Jamaican courts but also to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and this meant that prisoners spent far longer on death row than ever before before their cases were resolved.27 Among prisoners condemned to hang in this period who were eventually put to death, no man spent longer on the row than Thomas Ransford, who was held for more than nine years and three months between his conviction on 30 April 1974 and his execution on 19 July 1983. At least seven other men were incarcerated for more than seven years before their executions and several men whose sentences were eventually commuted were held for even longer.28 13 By 1975, there were thirty-six men awaiting execution in Jamaica and by January 1979, after three years during which no executions were carried out, the figure had risen to seventy-nine.29 A report, based on interviews with forty condemned prisoners conducted in August and September 1979, provides an insight into the lives of these men prior to their convictions. Among the findings were that most of the men were from low socio-economic backgrounds, grew up in violent neighbourhoods and came from large but unstable families in which the children “tend[ed] to be fathered by several different men” and frequently had to look after themselves. Many of the prisoners blamed their current circumstances on parental neglect, and particularly noted beatings and ill-treatment they had suffered at the hands of men with whom their mothers cohabited, but who were not their biological fathers. The average age of the prisoners when they were interviewed was twenty-six, though their average age was just twenty-three at the time of the crimes for which they were sentenced to hang. 30 Only five of the men were married (including three who murdered their wives), but many more were in stable relationships and some were visited by girlfriends on death row. Most of the men recalled that their first sexual experience occurred before the age of ten, and twenty-six had children, of whom eighteen had more than one child. Thirteen of the men were practicing Rastafarians and many others wore dreadlocks. Only fourteen were literate, a consequence of infrequent attendance at school, which in turn was normally due to having to help out with work at home, including tending to animals and caring for younger siblings, and also a lack of money for bus fares and lunch. In terms of occupational status, thirty-one men were described in the report as

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“unskilled” and most had jobs that were “sporadic” and “seasonal” and provided a low and irregular income.31 Mario Hector’s pre-conviction employment as an apprentice printer and his literacy marked him out from the majority of condemned prisoners. 14 Amidst the indignities and violence of life on the row, there were moments of humanity among the prisoners. On Hector’s first night in A Block, the man in the neighbouring cell rapped on the wall, “expressed his condolences” and warned that the warder on duty would “brutalize us” if he heard any noise coming from the cells. The following morning, the same man initiated Hector more generally in “the rules and regulations that governed the Row and the inherent norms of day-to-day survival”.32 A decade later, the condemned prisoner Anthony “Fines” Ashwood, who spent ten years on death row following a murder conviction in 1983, also drew strength from fellow inmates. “Men banded together,” he explained, “because we all faced the same fate”.33 As Johnson found among the death row population in Alabama, however, prisoners nonetheless deteriorated both physically and psychologically while on death row. A psychological examination carried out in April 1991 on Ivan Morgan, who had been under sentence of death since 1979 and had, on three occasions, been moved to the death cell adjacent to the gallows only for his execution to be postponed at the last minute, provides an unusually detailed and official record of the impact of death row on an inmate’s mental health. In the course of the examination, Morgan was hyperactive, “laughed a lot” and gave responses “that were clearly inappropriate and euphoric”. The report found that Morgan was extremely emotionally disturbed and on the verge of psychosis. He suffered from acute insomnia, regularly envisioned the death cell and spoke of the traumatic cycles of hope and despair that he experienced as, one after another, his dates with death came and went: “We get hope – then it is dashed away – then hope – it is terrible”. He had “only occasionally coherent periods of cognition” and his “emotional organization [was] breaking down”.34 15 The spectre, sounds, and smells of death were everywhere in Gibraltar Block. Prisoners interviewed in 1975 by the Barnett Commission complained bitterly that guards taunted them about their impending hangings and terrifying rumours circulated about the experience of dying on the gallows. The situation was only intensified in the days surrounding executions. Until steps were taken to muffle the noise in the wake of prisoner complaints, the lever which activated the gallows “made a disturbing sound that reverberated throughout the institution”. Prisoners also had “haunting” memories of a cart that was wheeled past their cells carrying a crude, prison-made coffin in preparation for a hanging and would later pass back again taking the body of the executed prisoner for burial. Anthony Ashwood, who estimated that between thirty and thirty-five men were executed during his time on death row in the 1980s, recalled that the cart “have on two wheels and a pure squeaking it make when dem a push it.” He remembered too the graveyard, situated behind the prison kitchen and near to a football pitch,35 where executed prisoners were laid to rest within sight of those who still awaited their date with the gallows. Reaching up to peep through a vent high in his cell wall, Ashwood “could see the grave dem a dig[.]”36

Resistance on Death Row

16 Mario Hector’s account of his time on death row shows that harsh physical and psychological conditions, coupled with the growing delays between sentencing and

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execution, were critical to the growth of convict resistance. Hector himself claimed that he appealed his case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London not because he “hoped to find justice” in what he called “that ancient capital of colonialism”, but rather “to earn some time” in which to develop a plan to reverse his conviction or in some other way to save his life.37 In conjunction with other prisoners on the row, Hector persistently challenged the conditions of his incarceration and his death sentence while his appeal wound its way through the courts. Most dramatically, on 26 December 1974, he was among a group of up to twenty-four death row prisoners who seized one of the prison warders – a man named Clarke – and held him hostage. The Barnett commission was established in response to this incident and found that a litany of security lapses had facilitated the kidnapping. At least two months earlier, the prisoners had obtained hacksaw blades with which they painstakingly cut through the bars of their cells. They used oil from their food to lubricate the blades and stuffed the cuts with soap to keep the bars in place and cover up their work. There were normally two warders assigned to Gibraltar Block, but on the night in question one was called away to do yard patrols due to staff shortages elsewhere in the prison and this left Warder Clarke alone. At about midnight, Clarke attended one of the prisoners who had called for some water and he was seized as soon as he stepped into the death row corridor. In the ensuing commotion, seven prisoners attempted to flee, but five returned to the cell block and barricaded themselves after they encountered Senior Warder Murray who had heard Clarke cry for help. The two other men were found later the same night in the prison wash-house where they were brutally beaten by guards.38

17 The Acting Director of Prisons alleged that the men who kidnapped Warder Clarke were planning a massive jail break and their subsequent criticism of prison conditions was nothing more than a cover story adopted after the escape attempt failed, but the Barnett Commission concluded that there was no credible evidence to support this interpretation and the prisoners’ aim all along had been to bring various grievances to public attention. To this end, the prisoners refused to release Clarke until they were permitted to meet with the Prime Minister, Michael Manley, the chairmen of the Jamaica Council of Churches and the Jamaica Council for Human Rights and two journalists. A deal was eventually brokered whereby Clarke was freed and five of the prisoners, including Hector, were granted an audience with Manley at which they outlined their complaints.39 These focused on four main issues: the inadequacy of legal representation in capital trials and appeals, delays in the legal process, specific individual cases of injustice and hardship, and the manner in which executions were carried out.40 18 In Hector’s account, the kidnapping was not the result of lax security but rather one element of a broader, coordinated campaign of resistance that had originated in attempts to improve conditions on death row that dated back many months. Among the prisoners’ complaints about their treatment on death row were a “lack of proper medical attention, lack of sunlight, inadequate exercise, insanitary conditions, infrequency of baths and the attitudes of Prison staff frustrating their visitors”. Interviewed after the event, Hector – who served as chief spokesman for the prisoners – explained that it had been necessary to take such action, because the prisoners’ earlier efforts, to “expose the injustices manifested by Judicial administration and [the] inhuman practices in the prison”, had proved unsuccessful.41

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19 Hector traced the origins of the resistance campaign against death row conditions to 1972 when prison guards attacked Eaton Baker, one of six young men who had been condemned to die for the November 1969 killing of Warder Reginald Taitt during a riot at Hill Top prison in St Ann’s parish. Other prisoners on death row started shouting in protest and, as Baker fought back, their cries were taken up by inmates in other cell blocks until the entire prison was in “a state of pandemonium”.42 Anticipating violent repercussions from the guards, the condemned prisoners planned a collective response. Knowing they could not win a physical confrontation, they agreed that they would refuse to leave their cells when called out the following morning. After one prisoner was finally coaxed out and beaten, a second tipped over his slop bucket so the warders would have to cross the mess to get at him, and declared that he would die “right there in the filth” rather than leave his cell. The men then demanded a meeting with the prison superintendent to outline their grievances, and when that was refused they went on hunger strike. They were again soon joined in their action by prisoners in neighbouring cell blocks.43 Eventually, the superintendent did agree to a meeting and it was at this point that Hector was chosen to represent the death row inmates. He elicited a promise from the superintendent that the assault on Baker would be investigated and, while there is no evidence that this ever happened, the superintendent did make several other concessions, including allowing death row prisoners access to books and newspapers and the right to keep soap, toothpaste and towels in their cells.44 20 This small victory appears to have done little in the short term to improve death row conditions and certainly did not address the prisoners’ vociferous complaints about the judicial system and the poor legal representation they had at trial and throughout the appeals process.45 It did, however, have far-reaching psychological, ideological and practical implications. In Hector’s account, the men were no longer filled with “fear and despair”, but instead recognised the power of collective action and saw for the first time the significant difference “between death on the gallows and death at the end of a gun or the swing of a baton, while bearing the spirit of resistance”.46 Allowed access to books, Hector became a vociferous reader and immersed himself in canonical texts of African-American resistance and anti-imperialist struggle by Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, and the Black Power prison activists George Jackson and Eldridge Cleaver. He also read the Caribbean writers Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney and Trevor Munroe, as well as Marx and Fanon.47 Inspired by these works, Hector interpreted the circumstances of death row prisoners as an extension of the wider oppression of black and poor people in Jamaica. “To my mind”, he wrote, “our condition and status in society had not changed at the point of arrest. It was only a case that the place of our suffering had changed from the ghettos to the prison”.48 In part, this interpretation reflected a generational shift. Hector recounted that the “older people”, alongside whom he was first incarcerated on death row in 1972, “perpetuated the myth that a prisoner of the Row could do nothing to influence the ultimate decision of one’s case and survival. They encouraged the idea that all one ought to do was pray, sing, fast and have faith”. By contrast, the younger prisoners were more militant. As Hector explained, their concern was “how to save our lives by any means necessary” and they believed that they “would have to personally contribute to any relief that might be forthcoming”.49 This militancy was a response in part to the oppressive conditions on death row, but Hector suggested it was also borne out of Jamaican independence, or, more precisely, what he called the betrayal of independence. “All of us were born into a

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society that was telling us we were free and independent people”, Hector wrote, “but it was a lie: the lie of emancipation”.50 21 Although Hector’s autobiography was not published until 1984, its analysis of capital punishment is consistent with the views that Hector and other prisoners expressed to the Barnett Inquiry nearly ten years earlier. This suggests that Hector’s critical views on the injustice of Jamaican law and the inhumanity of death row were formed during his time under sentence of death, even if his political philosophy likely continued to evolve over later years as he became a leading figure in prison protest movements, engaged with the Jamaica Council for Human Rights and successfully completed O levels and the first stages of a B.Sc. Sociology degree. Hector was chosen by his fellow inmates on death row to represent their views in meetings with the Barnett Commission and Prime Minister Manley and this suggest that there was at least some wider sympathy among condemned inmates for his political views.51 There is no direct evidence on this point, but death row prisoners were certainly politically engaged.52 At a time when so many murders were connected to electoral politics, it is unsurprising that some expressed party political affiliations. Before Rupert Anderson was executed in 1971, he asked Rev. Fr. Francis Kempel S.J. of St. Joseph’s Church, Spanish Town to read psalms 18 and 91, and handed him a note, which read: “I am asking the people of Jamaica to vote for Michael Manley in the General Election because I am dying a comrade”.53 Other expressions of political consciousness were more aligned with Hector’s more radical anti-colonialism, such as when condemned prisoners who were Rastafarians interpreted their conviction and sentence as an attack on their distinctive cultural and religious identity. A committee established in 1979 to consider the reform or abolition of the death penalty in Jamaica, found that “Many of the men who wore dreadlocks positively believe that their appearance caused the judge and jury to be biased against them. They argue that Rastas are given a hard time by the agents of the State”.54 In a related vein, the condemned prisoner Anthony Ashwood came to view the death penalty in the 1980s as an instrument of class oppression, arguing that most of the men who were hanged were those who could not afford legal assistance.55 22 Hector’s assessment that condemned prisoners did not perceive their execution as inevitable and were committed to contesting their sentences also stands up to closer scrutiny. Interviewed in the late-1980s shortly after his death sentence had been reversed on appeal, one prisoner who had entered death row in 1976 commented that, “despite the terrible conditions, most of the men live with hope that their cases will be reviewed and they will not hang”.56 Ashwood likewise spoke of choosing “the way of survival”, though he attributed his hope and faith to the will of God.57 It is nonetheless clear that for many prisoners hope was not based only on faith, or on legal challenges or appeals for clemency that were dependent on outside support and decision-making, but was intimately bound up with their daily struggles for survival on death row. Indeed, the battles that played out over Jamaican capital punishment in courtrooms in both Kingston and London during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s could not have taken place without the more prosaic conflicts that were fought on death row through coordinated acts of convict resistance. 23 Hector himself gave three specific examples of this connection between events on death row and the struggle against individual convictions and the death penalty more broadly. The first concerned prisoners’ correspondence with their attorneys and other supporters on the outside. Hector wrote that the “free flow of letters” was “crucial to

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the intelligent and calculated struggle for life on the Row”, but access to stationary was heavily restricted and prison guards often blocked communications.58 An informal grapevine involving prisoners who were not on death row consequently became the main link between condemned inmates and the outside world. The system was based on an illegal trade in prison supplies that were stolen by prisoners and then exchanged with corrupt guards in return for contraband, including “stamps and stationary and outgoing letters”.59 The guards would sell the prison supplies on the outside, while the prisoners would trade the contraband amongst themselves, including to death row prisoners, in particular those, like Hector, who were widely believed to be innocent. In this way, Hector was able to send letters to church groups and human rights organisations, including the UN Commission on Human Rights and Amnesty International, which took up his case as part of a broader campaign against the execution of convicts who had been under the age of 18 when they committed their alleged offences. The case attracted widespread publicity. At a press conference in England, the black civil rights activist Angela Davis – herself a former prisoner – drew attention to Hector’s plight in an illustration of the pan-African dimension of the anti- death penalty movement. Meanwhile, back in Kingston, hundreds of ordinary citizens signed petitions in support of clemency.60 24 A second example of coordinated prisoner activism in Hector’s autobiography focused on the aftermath of the Warder Clarke kidnapping. Hector described the kidnapping as a “spark” that set off resistance across the Jamaican prison system. Another warder was taken hostage at the recently established Gun Prison and the convicts involved won an audience with the national security minister. Shortly afterwards, a riot broke out at Tamarind Prison Farm, and, at the General Penitentiary in Kingston – Jamaica’s largest prison, three more warders were seized by inmates and members of a parliamentary sub-committee on crime were sent to negotiate their release.61 25 Back at the St Catherine District Prison, inmates on death row prepared meticulously to give testimony about the conditions of their incarceration to the Barnett Commission. Along with men from the general prison population, who they communicated with through ventilators in the prison walls, they formed the Prisoners’ United Liberation League (PULL), an organisation that advocated far-reaching reforms across the Jamaican penal system and within a year claimed to have nearly 400 members, before it was outlawed. While the inquiry was still in progress in March 1975, news arrived that the executions of four men were to be carried out imminently. Three of the men broke away from their guards and armed themselves as they were transferred from death row to the cells adjacent to the gallows. The army was called in to restore order, the men were recaptured and viciously beaten and the prison put on lock-down. Through the prison grapevine and PULL, however, other death row inmates were able to send off thirty-six “notes and messages” alerting relatives, attorneys and human rights groups to the impending executions. They also drew up a petition for a stay of execution, which was signed by hundreds of inmates and sent to the Governor-General.62 Ronnie Thwaites, an attorney for one of the men who was scheduled to be hanged, told the Barnett Commission of Inquiry in 1975 that “the atmosphere at the prison was once again ‘electric’ because of the decision to hang the men”, and the Commissioners voiced their dismay that the executions had been scheduled while their investigations were ongoing.63 The executions were eventually stayed for one week to allow for the Commission to submit an interim report for the consideration of the Governor-General and Privy Council, and then further postponed until the Commission had completed its

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work.64 Two of the four men – Carl Bryan and Noel Absolom – were finally hanged in late-February 1976, but Everton McFarlane and Errol Gayle had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. On the eve of Bryan and Absolom’s executions, prisoners protested once again, sending a news release to the Legal Aid Clinic for distribution to the media claiming that both men were innocent and calling for an investigation into the case.65

Clemency and the Politics of the Death Penalty in 1970s Jamaica

26 By the time that Carl Bryan and Noel Absolom were executed, the death sentences imposed on Mario Hector and several of the other condemned men involved in acts of resistance at St Catherine District Prison had been commuted to life imprisonment and the prisoners transferred to the Kingston General Penitentiary. Hector had learned that his life was to be spared from a radio news broadcast shortly after lunch on 12 September 1975. The Jamaica Privy Council, which reviewed all death sentences and issued recommendations on clemency to the Governor-General, was not required to explain its decisions, but in this case did so with reference to Hector’s age. Along with Eaton Baker, Paul Tyrell, Horace Coates and Everton McFarlane, whose sentences were commuted on the same day, the crime for which Hector was condemned to death had been committed when he was under the age of 18 and he had been sentenced in line with the provisions of a controversial 1948 amendment to Jamaica’s Juvenile Law that prohibited capital punishment only for offenders who were under 18 at the time of sentencing.66 Appeals against the Juvenile Law and the controversy and delays they generated were crucial to the fate of individual prisoners and – more broadly – helped create the conditions that sustained a broader attack on the death penalty throughout the rest of the decade, notably by drawing national and international attention to the law’s capriciousness and fallibility, and contributing to the long delays in enforcing death sentences that allowed for the emergence on death row of a group of radical prisoners united in common cause.

27 Since the late-1960s, Jamaica’s juvenile sentencing laws had been applied inconsistently by local courts and subjected to constitutional challenges before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The law was first reviewed in the case of Maloney Gordon, who was condemned to death in November 1967 for the murder of Andrew Barton in Kingston. Court records indicate that Gordon’s sentencing was based on entirely inconclusive evidence of his age and a misunderstanding of the law on the part of the judge. After the jury had returned its verdict, the trial judge sought clarification of Gordon’s age at the time of the murder rather than – as the law required – at the time of the trial. The prosecution hastily obtained a birth certificate from Spanish Town for a child named Eustace Gordon who had been born to one Violet Bailey on 28 September 1948. Bailey was called to testify and identified herself as the mother of the accused. She explained that Eustace was her eldest son and, as he had been just 18 years and 4 months old when Barton was killed, Maloney – his younger brother – could not have been older than 17 at that time. This evidence did not persuade the judge, however, who explained that he had observed the accused in the course of the trial and found “as a fact from all the circumstances that on the date [of the murder] he was over eighteen years old”.67

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28 After an initial appeal on the facts of the case was dismissed in 1968, the case was brought before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which quashed Gordon’s death sentence due to the inconclusive manner in which the trial judge had ascertained his age and, further, ruled that Jamaican courts had “no jurisdiction to pass sentence of death” upon persons who were under 18 at the time of their offence. This judgment was based on schedule 2. 20 (7) of Jamaica’s 1962 constitution, under which no person was to suffer a more severe penalty for any criminal offence than “the maximum penalty which might have been imposed for that offence at the time when it was committed”. The decision also rested on the principle that the Jamaican Constitution trumped the common law, but this formulation was at odds with an earlier Judicial Committee ruling in the case of Director of Public Prosecutions v. Nasralla (1967), which found that the Constitution did not establish any new rights that were inconsistent with the common law as it had stood when the Constitution was adopted in 1962.68 As such, Gordon’s case did not bring a final resolution to the legal and constitutional questions concerning Jamaica’s death penalty laws and young offenders.69 On the contrary, the Jamaican Court of Appeal repeatedly ignored the judgment over the following years and instead relied on Nasralla to support rulings that offenders should only be treated as juveniles if they were under the age of eighteen when sentenced rather than at the time of their offence. This position was established in the non-capital cases of R. v. Williams (1970) and R. v. Martin Wright (1972) and these were subsequently cited as precedents later in 1972 when the Court dismissed the appeals of Eaton Baker and Paul Tyrell against death sentences imposed for their part in the Hill Top Prison murder, which was committed in 1969 when they were only seventeen.70 In due course, the matter was taken once more before the constitutional court, but the Judicial Committee upheld the death sentences, reversing its earlier judgment in Gordon and dismissing Baker and Tyrell’s appeal in a split 3-2 decision announced in May 1975.71 29 In the majority judgment in Baker, delivered by Lord Diplock, the justices declared themselves unwilling to deviate from the literal meaning of Jamaica’s juvenile capital punishment law even while recognising that it could result in “a degree of inequality of punishment between two persons of the same age who committed similar crimes on the same day”, but were tried and sentenced at different times.72 The justices nonetheless gave a strong steer in support of clemency for the appellants, drawing attention to the potential for the prerogative of mercy to serve as a mechanism for mitigating unequal punishments in appropriate cases. In a dissenting judgment that was damning in its assessment of his colleagues’ reasoning, Lord Salmon advocated for clemency more explicitly. Condemning the Juvenile Law as “barbarous and absurd,” Salmon rejected the view that Jamaican legislators could have deliberately introduced “a law having such strange and palpably inhuman results in the hope that they might be rectified by the prerogative of mercy”.73 He also expressed the hope that, when assessing the case for clemency, the Jamaican Privy Council might take into account the fact that the appellants had spent four years under sentence of death.74 30 The extent to which the Privy Council’s decision to grant clemency was influenced by the length of time that Baker and Tyrell had spent on death row is unknown. No execution had previously been carried out in Jamaica so long after a sentence of death had been imposed, but it would not have been wholly exceptional if they had been hanged. In the early-1970s, three men went to the gallows after almost three years each on death row (Aston White, Alexander Francies, Lawrence Sinclair) and in the

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early-1980s several prisoners were executed after delays of more than seven years. A commuted sentence on the grounds of age, likewise, was not an inevitable outcome of the clemency process. Official death certificates indicate that at least two men may have been under 18 at the time of murders for which they were executed in the late-1960s and early-1970s, while Everton MacFarlane was only 17 in early-1975 when the Jamaica Privy Council upheld his death sentence and issued a warrant for his execution to proceed.75 31 In this light, the efforts by death row prisoners and others to challenge and destabilise the death penalty in the early 1970s appear all the more significant to saving the lives of MacFarlane and the other young prisoners whose sentences were commuted in September 1975. Without the kidnapping of Warder Clarke, the resultant Barnett inquiry, and the concerted protests by prison inmates and human rights groups against executions in March 1975, MacFarlane would have died long before the Privy Council decided to grant clemency. Furthermore, a chorus of opposition to the execution of juvenile offenders, which included repeated petitions from Amnesty International, prompted an amendment to the Juvenile law in 1976 such that punishment would thereafter be determined by an offender’s age at the time an offence was committed rather than at sentencing.76 Irrespective of its constitutional merits, imposing the death penalty on juvenile offenders had become politically unacceptable in Jamaica. 32 While the actions of Hector and other condemned prisoners had done much to encourage debate on the future of capital punishment, it is important to recognise that theirs were not lone voices and their acts of resistance on death row took place against an unprecedentedly favourable backdrop outside the prison walls – both nationally and internationally. There was at this time unprecedented questioning of the probity and justice of capital punishment in many sections of Jamaican society, notably by the Jamaica Council for Human Rights (JCHR) and church groups, as well as Amnesty International, which wrote annually to the Governor-General from 1974 to 1976 on the issue of juvenile executions.77 Several lawyers associated with the JCHR, including Dennis Daly, persistently challenged death sentences through the courts and helped to mobilise public discontent with the judicial system that resonated with complaints that death row prisoners made about their treatment in the courts when interviewed by the Barnett Commission. The suspension of executions in the United States for a five year period following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Georgia v. Furman (1972) as well as growing opposition to capital punishment across Western Europe, also contributed to an international context in which the death penalty was under siege as never before. On several occasions during the 1970s, American and European activists protested death sentences in the Caribbean, including notably in the case of Michael X, hanged in Trinidad in 1975 and the case of Larry Tacklyn and Erskine Burrows, whose execution in Bermuda in December 1977 was widely condemned and prompted several days of riots on the island. It is reasonable to suggest that the death penalty had not been so political salient in the Anglophone Caribbean since the brutal repression of the Morant Bay uprising in 1865. 33 In 1977, the Minister of Justice, Carl Rattray, himself a committed advocate of penal reform and abolition of the death penalty, identified the case of Michael Bernard as a key reason why around 2,000 people had signed a JCHR petition calling for an investigation into the use of the death penalty. Bernard had been found guilty of shooting dead 18-year-old Clifton Stevenson in Tivoli Gardens in June 1972, mainly on

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the basis of testimony from a 14 year old girl, Paulette Stewart, who appeared at the original trial as the sole eye-witness to the crime. The conviction was later upheld on appeal, but nearly eighteen months after Bernard’s original trial, in late-1974, Stewart retracted her evidence and claimed that a man named Shorty Lloydie had threatened to shoot her if she did not identify Bernard as Stevenson’s killer.78 Following this revelation, a new petition seeking clemency for Bernard was submitted to the Governor General who sought guidance on the case from the Court of Appeal. At hearings in July 1975, three appellate judges concluded unanimously that there was no merit to Stewart’s new version of events and it was in fact her new testimony rather than the original evidence that was given under duress. Notwithstanding this finding, Bernard’s death sentence was eventually commuted on the same date as Mario Hector’s due to his status as a juvenile, but the case left deep scars. In a submission to Cabinet in 1977, Rattray warned that there remained acute public distrust in the judiciary and the unregulated work of the Jamaica Privy Council on clemency appeals in death penalty cases. He continued, “the massive public support for Michael Bernard was clearly rooted in the revulsion of the general public in having the execution in their name of a man in respect of whom there might exist even the scintilla of a doubt”.79 34 The death penalty by this time was in a state of paralysis in Jamaica, a further indication of the long term impact of the events set in train by the protests on death row in 1974. The Jamaica Privy Council nominally continued with its regular function of reviewing capital sentences and determining whether or not the law should take its course, but while it commuted at least twenty-one death sentences between April 1976 and May 1979, it issued no execution warrants during that time, seemingly on account of ongoing political machinations about the future of capital punishment.80 In the wake of the 1977 petition and with the number of prisoners on death row growing to unprecedented and barely sustainable levels, a select committee was formed in the Jamaica House of Representatives to consider the revisions to the country’s capital laws proposed by the Barnett Commission. After undertaking only cursory enquiries, the committee recommended that no changes should be made. Dissatisfied with this outcome, the Cabinet returned the issue to committee in early-1978 but with the same result, except that the committee noted specifically on this occasion that it lacked the resources to conduct a full investigation into the “effect of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime”.81 In the wake of this report, Rattray called for a formal suspension of the death penalty pending a more detailed study of its effects.82 This proposal was rejected in the House of Representatives on 30 January 1979 by a narrow vote of twenty-three to twenty, but a week later the Senate voted in favour of an eighteen- month suspension of executions.83 Commentary in Jamaica’s leading daily newspaper, the Gleaner, expressed exasperation at the state of affairs, which it believed left the Governor-General and Jamaica Privy Council “in a most unenviable position”, imposed psychological cruelty on condemned prisoners by delaying executions and raising hopes of a reprieve, and insulted public opinion, which, it argued, supported the continuation of hanging. “The present situation”, the Gleaner concluded, “is chaotic.”84 35 By the end of the year only a modicum of order had been restored and the future of the death penalty in Jamaica remained shrouded in uncertainty. In June 1979, Rattray established the Fraser Commission to investigate the future of the death penalty.85 The Jamaica Privy Council, meanwhile, began a review of the cases of all condemned prisoners and in May 1979 commuted the death sentences imposed on Winston Williams and three other men to life imprisonment. The reasons for the decision in

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Williams’s case are opaque, but might have reflected that the life of his accomplice, Hector, had already been spared, or the fact that he had spent more than seven years on death row. Critically – and in contradistinction to prisoners who were executed after similarly lengthy spells under sentence of death just a few years later – Williams had long since exhausted his legal appeals, so the delay in enforcing his death sentence was largely due to government inaction, which once again attests to the significant impact of the Warder Clarke kidnapping on the fate of the death row prisoners who participated in it. 36 While Williams’s life was spared, however, the Jamaica Privy Council also in May 1979 issued warrants for the execution of eight other prisoners. A court injunction issued on the eve of the first of these scheduled hangings caused a further delay and it was not until August 1980 – when the Senate’s eighteen-month moratorium had expired but the Fraser Committee had yet to report – that Conrad Dwyer eventually became the first person hanged in Jamaica in more than four years. A further fifty-eight men would die on the gallows at St Catherine District Prison over the next eight years, including Stanford Dinnal and Nathan Foster who were put to death on 18 February 1988 in the last Jamaican executions to date.

Conclusion

37 In January 1979, four months before Winston Williams left death row, he was joined in the cells by Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan, men who would spend far longer under sentence of death even than he did. Fourteen years and three scheduled execution dates passed before their sentences were commuted by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in a judgment that ruled the execution of a condemned prisoner more than five years after sentencing to be unconstitutional.86 Since that time, the Judicial Committee’s judgment in Pratt, legal reforms including an end to mandatory sentencing in murder cases and a series of further death penalty rulings by the Judicial Committee in cases from across the Commonwealth Caribbean have served to perpetuate the suspension of executions in Jamaica. Amidst high public support for the death penalty, some steps have been taken to remove the legal barriers to the enforcement of capital sentences. Most notably, as a result of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (Constitutional Amendment) 2011, the requirement imposed by Pratt that executions should be carried out within five years of sentencing no longer applies. This has not, however, led to the resumption of hangings. Murder is now mostly tried as a non-capital crime and in 2016 there was only one prisoner under sentence of death.87

38 Mario Hector’s account of his time on death row demonstrates that the culture and law of capital punishment and the origins of anti-death penalty activism in Jamaica are rooted not only in appellate proceedings and the associated campaigning work of national and international lawyers and human rights organisations, but also in events instigated by the many condemned men within the walls of St Catherine District Prison dating back to the early-1970s. The diverse forms of individual and collective action in which death row prisoners engaged had far reaching consequences. While these consequences did not include the abolition of capital punishment, death row resistance helped to revolutionise the political debate about the death penalty in Jamaica and the lives of many death row prisoners were spared as a result. Furthermore, prisoners’

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resistance was one of the key reasons for the long delays in the execution of death sentences on which anti-death penalty jurisprudence would turn for the next two decades. 39 The history of Jamaica’s death row in the 1970s opens up new research questions about what was a critical moment for capital punishment globally, as the ranks of abolitionist countries swelled, Amnesty International launched a campaign for universal abolition, and international bodies including the Council of Europe and United Nations took steps towards restricting the death penalty in international law. On the basis of Jamaica’s experience, further investigation is required of the contributions – direct and indirect, intended and unplanned – that condemned prisoners in all countries made to the advance of the abolitionist cause in this era. This must involve, in particular, study of prisoners’ everyday struggles to endure life under sentence of death and the intersection of those struggles with legal appeals against individual death sentences and wider political and human rights campaigns against the death penalty. The Jamaican case shows, too, that more needs to be done to integrate countries in the Global South into histories of capital punishment – especially its abolition – that to date have overwhelmingly centred on North America and Western Europe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J., Life after Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity, Piscataway, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2012.

NOTES

1. “Man arrested on second murder charge”, Gleaner, 23 Nov. 1970, p.10; “Bank Murder Trial”, Gleaner, 25 Feb. 1972, p.4. 2. Hector (1984, pp.6-7). 3. See, for example, Schabas (2002, pp.341-344); Fitzgerald (1996, pp.143-153); Harrington (2004, pp.127-132); Knowles (2004, pp.282-308); Morrison (2006, pp.403-424). 4. Barnett (1975); Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, p.1). 5. For an overview of literature on death row inmates and conditions, see Cunningham & Vigen (2002, pp.191-210). 6. Johnson (1981, p.44). The phrase “living death,” was used by condemned men in Alabama when interviewed by Johnson in 1978. 7. Johnson (1981, p.148), cited in Smith (2008, p.245). 8. See, for example, Ancker (2004); Banner (2003); Garland (2010); Hood & Hoyle (2008); Johnson & Zimring (2009); Schabas (2002). 9. Blue (2011, p.115). 10. Blue (2011, p.116). 11. “Cooper’s Hill killer hangs self,” Gleaner, 21 April 1972, p.1. 12. Rubin (2015, pp.24 & 36-37) [italics in original] 13. There is an extensive literature on the prisoners’ rights movement in the United States, but see in particular Berger (2014, p.2) and Thompson (2016). 14. Hector (1984, p.29). 15. On death row conditions since the 1970s, see Hellerstein (1990, pp.17-22); Amnesty International, Jamaica: Proposal for an Inquiry into Deaths and Ill-treatment of Prisoners in St Catherine District Prison, Amnesty International Index, AMR 38/04/93 (1993, pp.2-3); Inter- American Commission on Human Rights (2012, pp.66-68). 16. As the number of condemned prisoners increased during the 1970s, other cells had to be used where prisoners slept on bug-ridden mattresses on the floor. Vaz-Green (2005, p.90). 17. Barnett (1975, pp.4-5). 18. Hector (1984, p.16). 19. Hector (1984, p.15). On boredom among US death row inmates, see Johnson (1981, pp.47-48); Westerweld, Cook (2012, p.112). 20. Murder was the only offence for which the death penalty was imposed in this period. 21. Figures on reported murders for 1962-78 in Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, p. 42). Figures for 1979-82 in Daily Gleaner, 16 March 1983. 22. Clarke (2006, p.428); Harriott (2003, pp.91-92). 23. Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, p.21). 24. Jamaica, Department of Statistics (1953-1989). 25. Persons Sentenced for Murder, including infanticide (fiscal Year). Source: Criminal Investigation Department, Jamaica Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1953 to 1989. 26. I have found evidence of three women sentenced to death in 1970s Jamaica. Pearleta Segree, Viola Watson and Icema Braham. Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1972 and 1975 respectively. See “4 on Death Row get reprieve,” Gleaner, 28 July 1972, p.18; “Mother of eight sentenced to death,” Gleaner, 21 October 1972, p.2; “Bernard will not Hang,” Gleaner, 13

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September 1975, p.1. The last woman executed in Jamaica was Agnes Hire, who was hanged in 1891. See Gleaner, 16 September 1891, p.3. 27. The right of appeal in murder cases was introduced in Jamaica in the 1930s, but the appeal process became lengthier after independence, as the new Jamaican Constitution and shifts in British and international death penalty law and practice opened up new avenues for review. These developments also made the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council more receptive than in earlier periods to complaints against the death penalty, though it would be several more years before JCPC rulings significantly restricted capital punishment. Appellate proceedings were also facilitated by local shifts in administrative practice and human rights culture, including the extension of legal aid, the formation of the Jamaican Council for Human Rights in 1968 (and the associated work of abolitionist lawyers) and the creation of the office of the ombudsman in 1978 with powers to investigate complaints of “injustice or breaches of human rights” by the state. On the ombudsman, see Barrett (1985, p.69). 28. All figures calculated by author based on dates of sentencing and execution. The seven men held for more than seven years before execution were Anthony Forbes, Noel Riley, Elijah Beckford, Fernando Marks, Andrew Scarlett, Francis Woodhouse, and Nathan Foster. Earl Pratt and Morgan were condemned to death on 15 January 1979 and spent more than fourteen years on death row before their sentences were commuted in line with the Privy Council’s ruling in Pratt and Morgan v. Attorney-General for Jamaica [1993]. 29. Amnesty International (1984, p.11). 30. Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, pp.18-20). 31. Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, pp.20-23). 32. Hector (1984, p.13). 33. Vaz-Green (2005, p.100). 34. Psychological Report, Ivan Morgan, 11 April 1991, Pratt and Morgan v. The Attorney General for Jamaica and another (Jamaica) [1993], UK Privy Council, 37. Morgan’s condition is consistent with what has been identified as death row syndrome, the “psychological effects for inmates that can result from extended periods of time spent on death row, in harsh conditions, coupled with the unique stress of living under sentence of death.” Smith (2008, p.242). 35. In 1974, the Barnett commission had recommended an end to the practice of carrying executed bodies on noisy carts, but Ashwood’s recollections indicate this had not been acted on. See Cabinet Submission, Report of Commission of Enquiry into incidents which occurred at the St. Catherine District Prison on 27 December 1974, Jamaica Archives, 1B/31/371 1975; Vaz-Green (2005, p.104). 36. “Condemned to die – the story of a former death row inmate,” Gleaner, 7 September 2007. 37. Hector (1984, p.57). 38. Barnett (1975, pp.26-28). 39. Barnett (1975, pp.28-29). 40. Cabinet Submission, Report of Commission of Enquiry into incidents which occurred at the St. Catherine District Prison on 27 December 1974, MNSJ-18, Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Jamaica. 41. Barnett (1975, p.24). 42. Hector (1984, p.32). 43. Hector (1984, pp.33-34). 44. Hector (1984, p.39). 45. The “non-implementation of some of the recommendations contained in the Report of the Barnett Commission of Enquiry” was identified as a primary cause of rioting at the St Catherine District Prison in August 1976. See Cabinet Submission, “Report on the causes and circumstances surrounding the incidents which occurred at the St. Catherine District Prison on the 26th August 1976” (Farquharson’s Report), 2, Jamaica Archives, 1B/31/179 1977.

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46. Hector (1984, p.36). 47. Hector (1984, p.57). 48. Hector (1984, p.30). 49. Hector (1984, p.19). 50. Hector (1984, p.30). 51. Barnett (1975, p.25); Hector (1984, acknowledgments, np). 52. As early as 1950, the annual report of the Visiting Committee of the St Catherine District Prison noted critically that “political feeling is present within the Institution to a greater extent than is desirable, or natural, rival factions whilst not conflicting openly, withholding co- operation as fully as should be expected in an Institution of the sort”. Annual Report of the Visiting Committee of the SCDP for 1950, St. Catherine District Prison: correspondence with Wardens and others; minutes of meetings, reports etc. Nos 73-76. (1946-50), Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, 4/19/3a/74. 53. “Man hanged”, Gleaner, 20 October 1971, p.2. The term “comrade” here indicates identification with the PNP. 54. Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, p.22). 55. Vaz-Green (2005, chapter 14). 56. Hellerstein, Whitman (1990, p.21). 57. Vaz-Green (2005, chapter 14). 58. Hector (1984, p.59). 59. Hector (1984, p.61). 60. Hector, (1984, p.64). 61. Hector (1984, pp.84-85). 62. Hector (1984, pp.88-93). 63. “Interim report in prison inquiry on Tuesday”, Gleaner, 30 March 1975, p.2. 64. “Interim report in prison inquiry on Tuesday”, Gleaner, 30 March 1975, p.2. 65. “Prisoners protest … Convicts to be hanged today”, Gleaner, 25 February 1976, p.2. 66. Hector (1984, pp.99-100); “Bernard will not Hang”, Gleaner, 13 September 1975, p.1. 67. Maloney Gordon v. The Queen, 11 Jamaica Law Reports (J.L.R.) (1969). 68. Patrick Nasralla, a Kingston furniture dealer, was tried in February 1963 for the murder of one of his employees, Gilbert Gillespie. He was acquitted of the capital charge, but the jury failed to agree on whether he was guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter. Two years later, defence lawyers successfully appealed against prosecution efforts to try Nasralla for a second time for Gillespie’s manslaughter, resting their case on section 2. 20 (8) of the Jamaican Constitution, which guards against double jeopardy. “Nasralla Case”, Gleaner, 19 October 1966, p.2; “Judgment in Case against Nasralla”, Gleaner, 17 March 1967, p.5; Director of Public Prosecutions v. Nasralla [1967], UKPC 3. 69. Maloney was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Maloney Gordon v. R. [1969], UKPC 29. 70. Williams was convicted of aggravated robbery in the Home Circuit Court in Kingston on 3 October 1969 and sentenced to five years imprisonment and four lashes. Born in February 1952, Williams appealed his sentence on the grounds that juveniles could not be sentenced to imprisonment or lashes and he had been only 16 years and 7 months when the crime was committed in September 1968. Although the court rejected this interpretation of the juvenile law, it upheld Williams’s appeal on other grounds, namely that following R. v. Brown, 7 WIR (47), the punishment was excessive and under the provisions of the Larceny Law and the Probation of Offenders Law punishments should not be imposed that could have a detrimental effect on the offender. The court accepted that a long term of imprisonment with hardened criminals would be detrimental to a young offender like Williams. See “Court here dissents from Privy Council ruling against death penalty”, Gleaner, 22 August 1970, p. 4. In R. v. Martin Wright, the Court

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confirmed that it was not bound by Gordon on the grounds that, first, the judgment was per incuriam, as it had not engaged with the earlier findings in Nasralla, and, second, the Juveniles Law predated the Jamaica Constitution and therefore could not be rendered inconsistent with it. R. v. Martin Wright (1972), 12 J.L.R; Baker v. R. (1975), 13 J.L.R. 71. Baker v. R. (1975), 13 J.L.R. 72. Baker v. R. [1975], UKPC 22, Majority Judgment, 5. 73. Baker v. R., [1975], UKPC 22, Minority Judgment, 11. 74. Baker v. R., Minority Judgment, 16. 75. Calculating the exact age of executed prisoners is difficult due to the unavailability and unreliability of birth records. The two men who appear from their death certificates to have been executed for murders committed when under 18 were George Grant, executed as an 18 year old in 1969 for a murder committed 18 months earlier, and Lawrence Sinclair, whose age was recorded as 20 when he went to the gallows in 1972 for the 1969 murder of Stafford Williamson. Sinclair’s age was contested and he was sentenced on the basis of a birth certificate presented to the court that showed him to have been born in 1950. Two other prisoners – Clifton Larman and Carlton Bowen – were sentenced to death in August 1963 when death records show they can have been no older than 18. For all death records, see “Jamaica, Civil Registration, 1880-1999”, Database with images, FamilySearch, http://FamilySearch.org, accessed 2015, Registrar General’s Department, Spanish Town. 76. The Death Penalty: A Survey by Country. Jamaica, Amnesty International Country Dossiers Catalogue, ACT 05/03/79. 77. “Don’t abolish the death penalty”, Gleaner, 26 September 1977, p.8. 78. Text of Report to G-G on Michael Bernard’, Gleaner, 5 September 1975, p.22. 79. Carl Rattray, Cabinet Submission: Capital Punishment, 1B/31/98 – 1977, Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Jamaica; “Rattray gets petition on death penalty”, Gleaner, 31 January 1977, p.1. 80. Amnesty International (1984, p.5). 81. Amnesty International (1984, p.7). 82. Amnesty International (1984, p.7). 83. Amnesty International (1984, p.8); “House votes to retain capital punishment”, Gleaner, 31 January 1979, p.1; “Senate votes for suspension of death penalty”, Gleaner, 10 February 1979, p.1. 84. “A Decision, Please!”, Gleaner, 16 April 1979, p.6. 85. Report of the Committee to Consider Death (1981, p.1). 86. See Judgment, Pratt and Morgan v. The Attorney General for Jamaica and another (Jamaica) [1993], United Kingdom Privy Council (UKPX) 37. See also Highet, Kahale III, Phillips (1994, pp.775-783). 87. See Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (Constitutional Amendment) Act 20111, United Nations Treaty Body Database, http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/.../ INT_CCPR_NGO_JAM_103_9245_E.pdf, accessed 2016; “Death Sentence for Hanging”, Gleaner, 9 May 2016.

ABSTRACTS

Scholarship on the modern death penalty has mostly focused on issues related to abolition. It has tended to prioritise legal and constitutional developments and the role of international human rights standards in shaping global capital punishment laws and practices. National studies have

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been overwhelmingly concerned with the United States. This article opens up several new perspectives on recent death penalty history through an examination of events in Jamaica in the 1970s. In particular, it identifies death row as an important site of resistance to executions. In reconstructing the conditions of Jamaica’s death row and the dramatic struggles over the fate of individual prisoners that played out in the cells as well as in the courts, it makes the case that a full understanding of opposition to the death penalty must incorporate the experiences, actions and ideas of condemned prisoners alongside the work of activists, lawyers, judges and politicians. The article also uncovers the local roots of opposition to the death penalty in Jamaica. This challenges accounts that depict the de facto moratorium on executions that has been in place across much of the Anglophone Caribbean since the early-1990s as a form of neo-colonialism imposed by British and other international courts and at odds with local public opinion, law and penal culture. More generally, the article serves as a reminder of the continued importance of local context to the administration, enforcement and abolition of capital punishment, even in an era of growing international concern with executions.

Les recherches sur la peine de mort contemporaine ont principalement examiné les questions relatives à l’abolition. Elles ont eu tendance à mettre au premier plan les évolutions légales et constitutionnelles et le rôle des standards internationaux en matière de droits de l’homme dans la production des lois et des pratiques relatives à la peine capitale. Les études nationales se sont principalement concentrées sur les Etats-Unis. Le présent article – qui se penche sur les événements survenus en Jamaïque dans les années 1970 – ouvre plusieurs perspectives nouvelles sur l’histoire récente de cette peine . En particulier, il montre que les quartiers de condamnés à mort ont constitué des lieux importants de résistance aux exécutions. En reconstituant la situation dans ces quartiers et les luttes dramatiques qui se déroulaient tant en détention que dans les tribunaux autour du sort de certains prisonniers, il argue que pour comprendre complètement l’opposition à la peine de mort, il faut prendre en compte les expériences, les actions et les idées des condamnés comme des activistes, des avocats, des juges et des politiciens. Cet article dévoile également les racines locales de l’opposition à la peine capitale, contestant la thèse selon laquelle le moratoire de fait sur les exécutions – qui a régné dans une grande partie des Caraïbes anglophones depuis le début des années 1990 – constituait une forme de néo- colonialisme imposé par les Britanniques et les tribunaux internationaux , et était en porte-à- faux avec l’opinion publique, le droit et la culture pénale locales . Plus généralement , cet article rappelle qu’il est toujours aussi important de tenir compte du contexte local de la mise en œuvre comme de l’abolition de la peine de mort, même à une époque qui voit s’accroître au plan international la préoccupation pour les exécutions.

AUTHOR

JAMES CAMPBELL

James Campbell is Associate Professor in American History at the University of Leicester where he works on the history of race, crime and punishment in the United States and the Caribbean. His publications include Slavery on Trial: Race, Class and Criminal Justice in Antebellum Richmond, Virginia (Florida, 2007), Crime and Punishment in African American History (Palgrave, 2012) and “Murder Appeals, Delayed Executions, and the Origins of Jamaican Death Penalty Jurisprudence”, Law and History Review, 33,.2, 2015. He is currently working on a study of the death penalty in British Overseas Territories, University of Leicester - [email protected]

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Articles

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Le vagabondage, ou la police des existences irrégulières et incertaines : sens et usages d’un délit (France, 1815-1850)

Pierre Gaume

1 En février 1821, inquiet des « vols multipliés » qui se commettent dans le département, le préfet du Rhône s’adresse ainsi aux maires : « Messieurs, […] J’ai donné à la gendarmerie royale les ordres et les instructions nécessaires pour qu’elle ait à redoubler de zèle et d’activité dans la recherche des malfaiteurs ; mais […] ces efforts seraient insuffisants, si elle n’était efficacement secondée dans ses recherches et dans son action par MM. les maires, leurs adjoints et les gardes champêtres […]. Je fixerai particulièrement votre attention sur les mendiants et vagabonds voyageant sans titre et qui, dans cet état, n’offrent aucune garantie à la société. Ces individus se répandent presque sans obstacle dans les campagnes ; sous le prétexte de mendier, quelques-uns observent les maisons isolées, et saisissent les occasions pour y commettre des vols. D’autres sont des individus frappés de condamnations ou de mandats de justice à l’exécution desquels ils se sont soustraits. C’est à cette classe errante que l’on doit attribuer la plupart des délits qui se commettent dans les campagnes. Or, il est évident que si les lois et règlements sur les passeports étaient exécutés avec soin, si l’autorité locale faisait arrêter et remettre entre les mains de la gendarmerie tous les individus qui, étant étrangers au département, s’y présentent sans passeport et dans un véritable état de vagabondage il est évident, dis-je, que les communes seraient préservées des délits auxquels les expose le défaut de surveillance envers ces vagabonds »1. 2 Confronté à un climat d’inquiétude sécuritaire, source de « justes alarmes », le préfet s’en remettait à l’arme policière qui lui paraissait la plus adaptée : à travers la surveillance des étrangers et le contrôle des mobilités2, grâce à l’arrestation des individus suspects, en état de vagabondage, les auteurs de vols ne manqueraient pas d’être arrêtés ou, du moins, forcés de s’éloigner. De telles instructions devaient se

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répéter en bien d’autres occasions, constituant une réponse, ici à l’apparition de bandes inquiétant les populations, là au mouvement d’ouvriers sans emploi vers les grandes agglomérations, etc. En agissant ainsi, ce magistrat s’inscrivait en effet dans une tradition historique, forgée au cours de l’époque moderne, qui tendait à faire du vagabondage un instrument essentiel du maintien de l’ordre, adossé à une police des circulations qui connut, elle aussi, d’importants développements. Après les travaux de J.-P. Gutton, B. Geremek ou R. Castel, plusieurs études majeures sont venues éclairer ce processus3. À travers les lois et ordonnances incriminant le vagabondage, il était possible de lire l’affirmation d’une exigence croissante de préservation de l’ordre public, fixant l’attention de la police sur les classes populaires et leurs mobilités, perçues comme sources de désordre potentiel. Cette « police des pauvres », ainsi que la désignent les historiens anglo-saxons, fut une part importante de l’activité ordinaire des agents, en ville comme à la campagne4. Dans cette perspective, le délit de vagabondage eut un rôle considérable : le caractère relativement indéterminé, ouvert, de l’incrimination rendait possible l’interpellation de nombreux individus menant une même existence irrégulière ou incertaine, à la lisière de l’ordre légal, suivant des contours qui connurent des variations importantes – juristes et historiens ont pu parler de délit « attrape-tout » à ce sujet5. L’adoption d’ordonnances ou de lois répressives, à l’image des Vagrancy laws anglaises, tout comme l’inscription du délit dans le Code pénal, en 1810, consacraient donc l’avènement d’une police « préventive » qui, au nom de la dangerosité présumée de certaines populations, des préjugés entourant leurs modes d’existence, autorisait leur arrestation et leur condamnation, sur la base de cette seule présomption6. Malgré les réticences de certains magistrats, gênés d’une telle entorse au droit, ce processus conduisit souvent l’appareil judiciaire à imaginer des procédures rapides, hâtives, où les cas étaient traités de façon sérielle – consacrant le nouveau rôle de la police dans la chaîne pénale7. La loi de 1863 sur le flagrant délit en fut un des exemples les plus marquants8. Ce rôle historique du vagabondage connut sans doute son apogée entre la fin du XIXe siècle et le début du XXe siècle, période marquée par une envolée des arrestations et des condamnations, ainsi que par une inflation discursive sur ce thème9. Tandis que s’affirmait le souci d’une nouvelle prise en charge, marquant les débuts de l’État social, les crises et les bouleversements économiques conduisaient à interroger les partages à l’œuvre. Si l’idée d’une assistance aux vieillards et aux invalides parvint à s’imposer, la question des valides restait problématique : parmi la masse d’individus sans travail, il était nécessaire de distinguer entre les chômeurs involontaires, victimes malheureuses, et les paresseux volontaires, mendiants et vagabonds professionnels appelant une juste répression10. Du fait de cette double inflation, statistique et discursive, les historiens ont eu tendance à se focaliser sur cette période, des années 1870 aux années 1910, voire sur l’entre-deux-guerres, délaissant parfois le premier XIXe siècle.

3 Aussi cet article se propose-t-il de revenir sur le sens et les usages pratiques du délit de vagabondage en France, entre 1815 et 1850, au lendemain de sa codification définitive, en 1810. Il s’agira d’abord de montrer combien cette codification a pu contribuer à faire du vagabondage un instrument important du maintien de l’ordre : relevant d’une logique de police préventive, le délit rendait possible l’incrimination d’une large gamme d’individus jugés suspects, au nom de leur incapacité commune à répondre d’un ancrage positif dans l’ordre légal (défaut de ressources et de domicile avéré, c’est-à-dire d’attaches communautaires ou professionnelles). Afin, toutefois, de mieux saisir le type exact de police que le vagabondage permit de mettre en œuvre, les populations qu’il se

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donnait pour cible, ses liens avec la réglementation des circulations devront être interrogés. Au-delà des seuls papiers, dont l’importance reste essentielle, il fut aussi le contrepoint d’un important effort réglementaire, visant à encadrer et à limiter les mobilités des populations pauvres. Aux tentatives d’organiser des secours localisés, à destination des indigents domiciliés, répondait l’arrestation des individus qui, dénués de ressources, persistaient à circuler. Aussi les « étrangers », inconnus du lieu, furent- ils l’une des principales cibles de l’action policière – mais non la seule. Après avoir délimité l’horizon d’application du délit, nous tenterons d’en éclairer la mise en œuvre concrète, pratique, au service de cette police des existences irrégulières, incertaines, qui fut une part importante de l’activité des forces de l’ordre. En effet, au-delà de l’arrestation, le délit ouvre la voie à une gestion complexe, à la croisée des appareils policier, administratif et judiciaire. Loin de conduire systématiquement à l’inculpation, l’interpellation débouche fréquemment sur des formes d’accommodement, des mesures d’expulsion ou de rapatriement, etc. Confrontés à des réalités individuelles très diverses, avec, à leur disposition, des moyens d’intervention et d’investigation limités, les forces de l’ordre, les autorités administratives (maires, préfets) et les magistrats doivent opérer un travail quotidien d’orientation et de triage. Cela ne va pas sans provoquer de tensions et de conflits entre ces différents acteurs, qui peinent parfois à s’accorder sur l’acception du délit. La répression du vagabondage obéit également à des temporalités et à une géographie dont nous essaierons de dégager certains traits, pistes de réflexion appelant des précisions ultérieures. Elle doit, enfin, composer avec des obstacles et des limites importants, dans le cadre d’une étatisation limitée, où les considérations et les réalités locales continuent souvent de prévaloir sur l’application uniforme du droit et de la loi. Terminons en évoquant les sources utilisées. Afin de saisir la signification sociohistorique du délit, nous avons essayé d’articuler différents types d’archives, à différentes échelles. Fruit de recherches menées dans le Rhône, notre corpus était d’abord composé de plus de 200 dossiers individuels, en partie issus des fonds de la préfecture, en partie du tribunal de Villefranche-sur-Saône11. Parfois sommaires, souvent incomplets, ils permettaient cependant d’appréhender les modalités de gestion des individus après leur interpellation, au-delà des seules réalités statistiques consignées dans les rôles des greffes et les registres des prisons. Afin d’élargir le propos, cette documentation a été confrontée à de nombreux courriers officiels et administratifs : le dépouillement des arrêtés et circulaires du préfet du Rhône fut ainsi complété par des textes issus d’autres départements, recueillis lors d’un travail précédent12. Il le fut aussi par la consultation des archives du ministère de l’Intérieur, et par la très riche correspondance du ministère de la Justice, conservée dans la série BB18 des Archives nationales (CARAN). Dans ce même souci d’élargir notre propos, la lecture de la Gazette des tribunaux s’est avérée précieuse, éclairant la pratique judiciaire. Enfin, n’étant pas familier du droit, nous avons dû consulter les auteurs de la doctrine, afin d’apprécier au mieux le sens de la législation.

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Le vagabondage, instrument juridique d’une police préventive ?

« Incrimination préventive », « délit de suspicion »13 : le vagabondage dans le Code pénal de 1810

4 La spécificité du délit de vagabondage fut, en effet, très tôt relevée par les juristes et les historiens du droit14 : suivant une phraséologie héritée de l’Ancien Régime, l’article 270 n’incrimine aucun fait positif mais une situation, un état social défini de façon purement négative, ce que J.-F. Chassaing appelait une « infraction de comportement » 15. Plus surprenant, le délit permet d’inverser la charge de la preuve, suivant une logique accusatoire : c’est au prévenu, suspect a priori, qu’il revient de prouver la réalité de son domicile et de ses moyens d’existence, que ce soit en produisant des papiers ou des attestations, en faisant appel à des individus capables de répondre de lui, ou par des déclarations suffisamment précises pour être vérifiées. Le vagabondage dessine donc les contours d’un délit de suspicion, qui vient sanctionner l’incapacité à produire des garanties d’un état – en fait d’un ancrage positif dans la société et l’ordre légal. C’est bien à ce titre que M. Raymond est inculpé en 1826 : « Cet individu ne donnant aucune preuve à l’appui de ses assertions, et refusant d’ailleurs de fournir les renseignements propres à vérifier sa position, il y a lieu de le considérer comme vagabond et sans aveu »16. 5 Six ans plus tard, P. Trouillé est condamné pour cette même raison, du fait du mystère entourant son existence17. Particulièrement suspect dans un contexte de généralisation des papiers, cet état d’incertitude et d’indétermination sociale vaut donc présomption de culpabilité. Le délit est, par ailleurs, fortement marqué par la logique de l’aveu, héritée des périodes précédentes : l’incapacité à se faire réclamer est un puissant motif de suspicion, qui peut mener à l’inculpation. F. Massot,

6 J. Vercker ou M. Auclair sont tous considérés comme vagabonds pour n’avoir pu se recommander de personne18. À l’inverse, l’intervention d’un « réclamant » entraîne l’annulation des poursuites, fait peu ordinaire dans la procédure pénale19. 7 Les sanctions associées au délit confirment son statut particulier. Si l’article 271 prévoit un emprisonnement de trois à six mois, rapidement modéré par l’application des circonstances atténuantes20, la peine peut être portée à cinq ans dans certains cas aggravés, renforçant la suspicion d’intentions coupables (travestissement, port d’armes ou d’objets pouvant servir à des vols)21. Plus important encore, le vagabondage est entouré de mesures de précaution qui sont autant d’exceptions au droit commun. Hormis les repris de justice, il est le seul délit où la prévention interdit la libération provisoire22. De plus, après leur peine, les détenus restent à la disposition du gouvernement pour une durée indéterminée, à l’appréciation de l’administration23. Or, cette mise à disposition, souvent assortie de mesures contraignantes (prolongation de détention, interdiction de certains lieux, etc.), était conçue comme un élément central de la pénalité. La Cour de cassation le rappelle dès 182324, F. Hélie et A. Chauveau le confirment dans leur traité25. Elle survit d’ailleurs à la réforme pénale de 1832, sous la forme modifiée de la surveillance de la haute police2726. Enfin, l’article 272 prévoit que les étrangers condamnés pour vagabondage peuvent être expulsés du territoire. 8 Pour justifier pareilles mesures, les juristes soulignent certes le refus coupable de se soumettre aux lois sociales, mais ils insistent aussi sur le caractère préventif du délit.

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Comme l’association de malfaiteurs, c’est au titre des « faits préparatoires » ou des « actes préparatoires d’autres crimes et délits » que le vagabondage doit être sanctionné27. Sans revenir sur l’étiologie du crime qui s’impose en ce début de XIXe siècle, rappelons que c’est dans le désordre des existences populaires qu’il est censé prendre corps28. Or, le vagabondage, en ce qu’il atteste du goût d’une vie déréglée sinon aventureuse, au mépris des obligations sociales, est le symbole de ces inclinations qui portent le peuple au crime. Il est aussi le lieu de toutes les collusions possibles entre catégories populaires et ennemis de l’ordre légal, détenus libérés, malfaiteurs en fuite… F. Hélie et A. Chauveau l’expriment ainsi : « Comment [les vagabonds] n’inspireraient-ils pas de crainte quand leur position et leurs besoins leur font en quelque sorte une loi impérieuse du crime et que leurs courses incessantes, en effaçant les traces de leurs pas, les dérobent aux recherches de la justice ? »29 9 En incriminant un état d’incertitude sociale, le vagabondage fonctionne donc comme une arme policière redoutable permettant de saisir, d’interroger, éventuellement de sanctionner tous les individus regardés comme autant de malfaiteurs potentiels du fait de leur mode de vie. Il fut ainsi mobilisé contre des populations aux ressources fragiles, jugées trop incertaines, mal assurées. À l’image du jeune Béasse, qui se targuait d’avoir 36 états30, le vagabondage fut opposé à de nombreux individus vivant de petits métiers, en ville ou sur les routes, souvent à la frontière de la misère et de l’illégalité : marchands ambulants et petits travailleurs itinérants sont des profils qui reviennent fréquemment31 et, sous la Restauration, les colporteurs furent explicitement recommandés à l’attention des parquets32. Le délit fut aussi convoqué contre divers groupes vivant de ressources illicites, inavouables : prostituées clandestines33, mendiants étrangers aux localités34, bonneteurs et petits escrocs35. Il fut, enfin, particulièrement utile dans la traque de certains malfaiteurs, voire de déserteurs ou d’« intrigants » politiques. En 1826, J. Dufour est détenu comme vagabond car on le soupçonne d’être un voleur ou un criminel en fuite36. En 1822, P. Bailly et I. Rossfelder sont, eux, interpellés et retenus car on suppose qu’ils peuvent être des retardataires ou des déserteurs37. Délit à spectre large, le vagabondage permit donc d’atteindre bien plus que le vagabondage, en fait tous les individus suspects d’affinités avec le désordre et le crime, unis dans une même incapacité à répondre de leur mode d’existence.

Au service d’une police des circulations et des populations pauvres : le contrepoint d’un important appareil réglementaire

10 Au-delà de ces spécificités juridiques, le vagabondage participe d’un dispositif plus général d’encadrement des mobilités. Sans revenir sur l’histoire de l’identification ou de l’assistance, il est nécessaire de souligner à quel point le délit, dans ses modalités d’application, est tributaire du cadre tracé par la réglementation.

Passeports et papiers

11 Dans la lignée de l’Ancien Régime, les papiers sont toujours au cœur du dispositif de contrôle des mobilités : imposé à tout voyageur, le passeport intérieur doit garantir identification et suivi des déplacements, tout en assurant le partage entre les circulations licites, validées, et celles, illicites, qui entraînent une présomption légale de vagabondage38. Aussi l’arrestation des vagabonds résulte généralement de leur

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incapacité à produire des papiers en règle et, dès qu’il s’agit de renforcer la répression, les passeports sont la première arme mobilisée. En 1817, dans un contexte marqué par les difficultés frumentaires, alors qu’il s’agit de contenir les manifestations de la pauvreté, d’éviter qu’elles n’entraînent des circulations incontrôlées, ministres et préfets rappellent la nécessité de tenir la main à la vérification des papiers et à l’arrestation des vagabonds39. Vagabondage et passeports sont donc deux instruments d’une même police que les autorités convoquent à des degrés variables, suivant les circonstances. Dès que les circulations deviennent massives, inquiétantes, ou que le contexte politique le réclame, on invite les maires à restreindre la délivrance des passeports, et la menace d’une arrestation pour vagabondage est agitée40. C’est le cas en 1822, lors de la foire de Beaucaire41. Cela l’est encore en 1831, lorsque, à la suite de vols et d’incendies, plusieurs préfets renforcent les contrôles en la matière42. Les années 1848-1849 marquent cependant l’apogée de cette pratique. Afin de tenir éloignés ouvriers et individus sans travail, le gouvernement Cavaignac impose des restrictions à l’attribution des passeports en direction de Paris : nécessité d’attester d’un domicile ou d’un emploi dans la capitale, obligation d’obtenir le visa du préfet ou du sous-préfet43. Le garde des Sceaux invite ensuite les parquets à sévir, et les condamnations pour vagabondage s’envolent44. Les lois du 9 août 1849, organisant l’état de siège, et du 9 juillet 1852, sur l’interdiction de séjour, consacrent cette évolution, les autorités ayant le pouvoir d’interdire l’accès de Paris et Lyon aux repris de justice et aux individus sans ressource n’y ayant pas de domicile. Au-delà des seuls passeports, les autorités cherchent aussi à renforcer la surveillance des groupes suspects par les papiers. Entre 1816 et 1824, l’obligation pour les colporteurs de se munir d’un livret est maintes fois rappelée, tout comme le risque d’une condamnation pour vagabondage en cas de contravention45. G. Haudebourg signalait, lui, le cas des marins et des militaires démobilisés46.

Fixation des pauvres et partages assistantiels

12 Le cadre d’application du délit est aussi déterminé par l’organisation assistantielle, dont un objectif majeur est, en ce début de XIXe siècle, de fixer les pauvres dans leurs communes, à travers des secours localisés47. Cette fixation doit permettre une meilleure gestion de la pauvreté, sous le contrôle des élites locales, mais aussi de conjurer les désordres liés aux circulations, à travers l’incrimination des indigents qui persistent à s’éloigner – « mendiants étrangers » ou « mendiants nomades » que le vagabondage vient sanctionner48. La crise frumentaire de 1816-1817 est l’occasion d’affirmer cette logique duale, à valeur de paradigme : aux invitations à organiser des secours locaux, sous l’autorité de bureaux de bienfaisance, répondent les injonctions à arrêter mendiants et vagabonds saisis hors de leurs localités (commune ou canton). Dès le printemps 1816, puis durant l’hiver et au début de l’année 1817, les préfets multiplient les arrêtés et circulaires en ce sens49. Dans la Nièvre, le programme est clairement tracé : « Ainsi donc, chaque commune aura, par la combinaison des deux mesures qui viennent d’être développées, dans ses bureaux de bienfaisance des secours assurés aux pauvres infirmes, et dans les travaux de ses chemins vicinaux […] un moyen d’occuper chaque année ses pauvres valides, pendant la courte stagnation des travaux particuliers [Le préfet fait ici référence à la création d’ateliers de charité]. Dès lors, il ne restera plus aux indigents infirmes ou valides de prétexte pour sortir de

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leurs communes. […]. Une fois la mendicité ainsi interdite, tout mendiant trouvé hors de sa commune pourra être poursuivi comme vagabond »50. 13 L’importance de cette politique est ensuite réaffirmée par le gouvernement, dès l’été 1817, entraînant une nouvelle vague d’arrêtés51. On en perçoit encore les échos sous la monarchie de Juillet. En 1831, le préfet du Tarn-et-Garonne ordonne l’expulsion des mendiants et vagabonds étrangers à son département, après avoir invité les maires à organiser des secours locaux52. Entre 1840 et 1842, les efforts déployés en Saône-et- Loire pour créer un système d’assistance dans les communes, ainsi qu’un dépôt de mendicité à Mâcon, visent d’abord à éloigner « mendiants nomades » et « vagabonds étrangers ». Les mendiants locaux peuvent, eux, bénéficier d’une certaine tolérance53. Contrepoint d’un appareil réglementaire visant à resserrer la surveillance sur les populations pauvres et les mobilités, le vagabondage devait en ressaisir les échappés.

Une cible prioritaire : les individus évoluant en marge de l’ordre local

14 Opposé à tous ceux dont l’existence paraît suspecte, incertaine, le vagabondage oriente le regard policier vers les inconnus de passage, étrangers au lieu. L’extranéité est la première condition d’interpellation, déclenchant la vérification des papiers. Ce point a suffisamment été éclairé par l’historiographie pour que nous y revenions54. Au-delà des agents, ces étrangers suscitent souvent l’attention des populations. En 1822, suite à un incendie, les habitants du canton de Lucenay (Saône-et-Loire) orientent les recherches vers un vagabond suspect55. De même, la tentative de vol commise à Béligny (Rhône), en 1846, est vite attribuée à un étranger que l’on avait vu rôder dans les environs56. Certaines arrestations témoignent cependant de relations plus complexes entre sociétés locales et individus de passage. Quelques-uns sont connus des habitants, qui les ont accueillis ou côtoyés, mais leur insertion demeure fragile, sujette à réévaluation en cas d’écarts ou de tensions avec la communauté. P. Bailly ou P. Garnier ont chacun vécu au contact des villageois avant qu’un incident ne provoque leur arrestation57. Celle-ci révèle alors la persistance d’une certaine défiance vis-à-vis de ces individus, maintenus dans une position d’extériorité.

15 Le regard policier est également orienté par une série d’archétypes. Les multiples visages de la pauvreté itinérante occupent une place de choix58 : mendiants sac au dos à l’image de C. Brenner59, vieillards esseulés, enfants vêtus de haillons tels les frères Ferrare60. D’autres types reviennent fréquemment : jeunes femmes soupçonnées de prostitution, jeunes hommes de désertion, colporteurs et petits marchands ambulants61. Souvent, les individus se signalent par un comportement suspect ou par les écarts qu’ils commettent, surpris en train de fuir ou de mendier, lors de rixes, d’escroqueries, voire de tentatives de vol62. D’autres, enfin, provoquent la rencontre avec les autorités pour négocier secours de route et papiers, ou pour obtenir d’être incarcérés, l’hiver en particulier. En novembre 1836, X. Bouillot exige ainsi d’être arrêté sous peine de faire un mauvais coup63. Il n’est pas rare, non plus, que le vagabondage permette de saisir des « mauvais sujets », notoirement connus, dont le passage suscite scandale ou appréhension. Aux arrestations d’individus dénoncés pour mener une vie trop licencieuse, immorale, répondent celles des bonneteurs, voleurs ou petits escrocs, signalés à l’attention des forces de l’ordre64. Repérage et saisie des suspects prennent donc appui sur un savoir policier forgé au contact des populations. Plusieurs dossiers témoignent de l’expérience acquise par les agents et les magistrats confrontés à la gestion de ces individus, qui occupe une part importante de leur temps65.

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Une police complexe et incertaine ? la gestion des vagabonds

Des arrestations nombreuses, des poursuites rares : un délit peu judiciarisé

16 En ce premier XIXe siècle, le vagabondage est une cible majeure de l’activité policière. J. Merriman en a démontré toute l’importance dans la pratique ordinaire des agents66. Nos archives le confirment : en 1821, 48,4 % des individus détenus sans jugement ni mandat à la prison de Roanne, à Lyon, le sont pour ce motif67. À Paris, S. Delattre relevait des chiffres tout aussi importants68. Or, le délit est peu poursuivi devant les tribunaux : 2 386 cas en 1825, 2 738 en 1835, puis 4 074 en 1845. L’augmentation est significative, mais le vagabondage ne représente que 5 à 6 % des affaires jugées69. À l’inverse, les taux de renvois sont élevés, de l’ordre d’un tiers selon G. Haudebourg70. Sur les 209 dossiers que nous avons étudiés, entre 1820 et 1850, 30 % seulement aboutissent à une comparution. Cet écart entre arrestations et poursuites s’explique certes par la nature « préventive » du délit : justifiées par une simple présomption, nombre d’interpellations se soldent par des relaxes. Cependant, il signifie aussi que le vagabondage relève principalement d’une gestion policière et administrative, ce que déplorent certains magistrats71. La part laissée à l’appréciation des maires et des agents, confrontés aux populations, est en effet considérable72.

Accommodements, relaxes, reconductions : la gestion policière et administrative

17 Or, ces derniers ont souvent tendance à privilégier diverses formes d’accommodements. Par compassion ou pour hâter l’éloignement de ces inconnus, ils leur offrent parfois secours et assistance. Sans gîte et sans emploi, N. Truquin reçoit trois sous d’un commissaire en 184373. La Gazette des tribunaux rapporte, elle, le cas d’un jeune homme apparemment sourd et muet, qui fut placé par le maire chez un coutelier avant d’être démasqué74. Bien des individus sont également accueillis au poste de police pour la nuit, accablés par les fatigues et la misère75, et certaines condamnations n’ont d’autre but que d’offrir à des malheureux une prise en charge minimale, pendant quelques jours76. Passeports et secours de route entrent dans le même type de transactions : en 1822, la « femme Henriette », vagabonde libérée, obtient un passeport d’indigent sous un nom d’emprunt, bien que le maire l’ait reconnue77. C. Ray reçoit, elle, des secours de route à l’aide d’un faux récit78. Mises en garde et admonestations font également partie du registre déployé par les autorités. Interpellés en Isère en 1836, T. Baron et J. Boni sont conduits à Lyon, où le préfet suggère de les libérer après les avoir sermonnés79. De la même manière, des renseignements positifs, fussent-ils partiels, peuvent suffire à provoquer la relaxe : arrêté en 1831, G. Alvazy est relâché sur la déclaration d’un peintre qui le dit brave garçon80. À ces libérations s’ajoutent les procédures légales du cautionnement et de la réclamation. Si les cas d’enfants rendus à un parent ou remis à un tiers sont les plus nombreux81, elles concernent aussi certains adultes. A. Malamonette, interpellé dans le Rhône en 1844, est libéré à la demande du maire de Grandrif (PuydeDôme), bien qu’il ait quitté la commune depuis dix ans82. La femme Bautier est, elle, relaxée en 1828 sur la requête d’une lingère qui l’a employée83.

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18 Les autorités disposent également d’un important arsenal de mesures administratives : passeports assortis d’injonctions, ordres de reconduction ou d’expulsion, etc. Elles concernent d’abord les étrangers au royaume, régulièrement reconduits aux frontières sans avoir été jugés ou condamnés. À Lyon, la mesure est opposée aux Suisses, Savoyards et Piémontais retrouvés sans ressources dans la ville, ainsi qu’aux prostituées étrangères84. En 1824, le ministre de l’Intérieur en recommande l’usage contre les « Mistous », bandes de vagabonds apparues dans l’Est de la France85. Alternative à une procédure coûteuse, fastidieuse, ces mesures d’expulsion permettent de contourner la nécessité d’une qualification juridique des faits. Relevant des compétences du préfet, sous la forme d’arrêtés, elles sont fréquemment sollicitées par le parquet, dès que les poursuites s’annoncent incertaines ou impossibles. En 1826, après que la chambre du conseil a prononcé le non-lieu, J.-F. Jansens est ainsi confié par le procureur au préfet, qui le fait reconduire aux frontières86. La pratique en est attestée jusqu’au début des années 1830, avant que la Cour de cassation ne rappelle l’impératif d’une condamnation préalable87. Ces mesures de reconduction, toutefois, concernent aussi les citoyens nationaux. Devant la difficulté à établir les identités à distance ou la véracité de certains récits, les autorités privilégient la confrontation physique, directe, ordonnant de conduire tel individu devant le maire de la commune où il dit être né, ou devant le préfet du département. Arrêté en 1826 dans le HautRhin, J. Dufour est ainsi envoyé à Lyon – il dit y être né. Traduit devant le préfet puis le procureur, il est ensuite transféré à Épernay, où il est soupçonné de vol. Après vérification, il est renvoyé à Lyon et inculpé pour vagabondage88. Afin d’éviter ces démarches, les autorités préfèrent souvent délivrer des passeports avec itinéraire obligé ou injonction de se présenter à destination. En 1822, M. Auclair et M. Pinot reçoivent à Lyon un passeport avec itinéraire obligé et « feuille de route impérative » pour se rendre devant le préfet de l’Allier, où elles sont nées89. Ces procédés témoignent aussi de l’empressement des autorités à éloigner, à moindres frais, des individus susceptibles de troubler l’ordre, ou dont la gestion s’avère problématique – ainsi des prostituées ou des « idiots », régulièrement expulsés et reconduits dans leurs communes90. Procureurs et préfets n’hésitent pas, enfin, à user des possibilités offertes par le Code pénal, de lamise à disposition à la surveillance de la haute police. En 1834, le préfet du Rhône rappelle que la condamnation de M. Vallon devait surtout permettre de l’expulser de Lyon en tant que surveillée91. En ce début de XIXe siècle, l’ordinaire du vagabondage échappe donc encore largement à l’action des tribunaux.

Comprendre l’intervention de la justice pénale

19 Dès lors, les raisons qui décident des poursuites et des condamnations sont plus difficiles à saisir. La persistance d’une forte opacité, qu’agents et magistrats n’arrivent pas à percer, revient souvent. Soupçonnant une volonté de dissimulation coupable, les tribunaux prononcent des peines lourdes, généralement assorties d’une mise sous surveillance. P. Trouillé, C. Mercier ou X. Bouillot sont condamnés à plusieurs mois de prison et à cinq ans de surveillance pour n’avoir pu fournir des renseignements valables92. Quelques années plus tôt, en 1828, la « femme sans nom », vagabonde parisienne persistant à taire son identité, était condamnée à trois mois de prison et mise à disposition du gouvernement, après cinq renvois d’audience93. Viennent ensuite les éléments signalant un « mauvais sujet », à l’immoralité plus ou moins avérée. Le refus d’entendre avertissements ou injonctions entre dans cette catégorie. En 1836, J.

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Drevet est inculpé car il a ignoré le délai de quinze jours qui lui était fixé, mendiant à Villefranche-sur-Saône au lieu de rentrer à Saint-Étienne94. Des renseignements défavorables, attestant d’une mauvaise réputation ou d’inconduites notoires, peuvent aussi entraîner des poursuites. En 1849, M. Tory est condamné à quinze jours de prison pour vagabondage et mendicité habituelle, le commissaire ayant souligné sa paresse et sa tendance à courir la campagne95. Enfin, plusieurs individus sont inculpés pour avoir persisté dans des comportements répréhensibles, qui leur avaient déjà valu d’être sanctionnés. J.-B. Monsu, à peine sorti de prison pour vagabondage, est à nouveau arrêté en janvier 1831 avec d’autres mendiants. Il est condamné à six mois de prison96. L’existence d’antécédents est certes déterminante mais, en l’absence de casier judiciaire, elle dépend étroitement de la mémoire des agents et de la sagacité des magistrats. J. Trouvé, qui cachait son nom, est ainsi reconnu par le procureur qui l’a déjà fait condamner. Il lui en coûte treize mois de prison97. Des faits aggravés ou des atteintes trop manifestes à l’ordre public, quand il s’agit d’individus étrangers, à la situation incertaine, peuvent aussi entraîner des poursuites pour vagabondage. C’est le cas de la mendicité en réunion ou avec me- naces, des escroqueries et des rixes, des tentatives de vol, voire de la prostitution clandestine. Le vagabondage se substitue alors à d’autres chefs d’accusation, plus difficiles à établir, ou s’y accole. A. Troubadier, surpris de nuit dans la cour d’une maison, est inculpé de tentative de vol, mendicité et vagabondage. Il est finalement condamné pour ce dernier chef à six mois de prison et cinq ans de surveillance98. Délit à spectre large, le vagabondage relève donc de formes de gestion variées, à la croisée de différents appareils, ce qui suppose des efforts de coordination qui ne vont pas sans heurts.

L’action répressive, entre collaboration et divergences

20 La nécessité de cette collaboration se lit dans les échanges fréquents qu’entretiennent forces de police, magistrats et autorités administratives. Au-delà des cas individuels, en particulier des étrangers, objets d’une importante correspondance99, il faut aussi mentionner les nombreuses lettres et circulaires visant à mobiliser les agents. Ministres de l’Intérieur et préfets usent d’efforts considérables pour expliciter la réglementation et convaincre les maires de l’importance de cette police des circulations100. Ils interviennent aussi, au besoin, pour faciliter l’action des magistrats. En décembre 1848, à la demande du parquet, le préfet de police de Paris organise un service de surveillance en banlieue pour lutter contre l’afflux d’immigrants belges, qui encombrent prisons et tribunaux101. De façon symétrique, gardes des Sceaux et procureurs invitent régulièrement leurs officiers à agir de concert avec l’administration et la police. Ces efforts ne doivent pas, cependant, masquer les frictions et les heurts. Des divergences opposent fréquemment maires et préfets. En 1835, celui du Rhône reproche au maire de Condrieu d’avoir libéré trois mendiants vagabonds, provoquant une vive réponse de sa part102. Elles divisent également le corps des magistrats. Interrogé sur les relaxes prononcées dans son ressort en 1849, le procureur de Riom incrimine les juges103. Certaines sont l’écho de désaccords plus profonds, touchant à l’acception de la loi. En effet, forces de police et autorités administratives tentent régulièrement d’imposer une lecture extensive de la législation. À deux reprises, en 1822 et 1829, le préfet du Rhône prend des arrêtés qui ordonnent de poursuivre comme vagabonds diverses catégories de mendiants, passant outre la définition légale des délits104. De même, lors de certains épisodes répressifs, les

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forces de police tentent de s’affranchir des limites fixées par le Code pénal. Tandis qu’ils multiplient les arrestations d’individus interpellés sans papiers réguliers, les agents exigent en même temps, afin de défendre leur action et de préserver leur autorité, que ces arrestations débouchent sur des condamnations, détournant le sens de la législation (le défaut de passeport n’entraîne qu’une présomption). En 1849, le préfet de l’Allier demande explicitement au ministre de l’Intérieur d’agir en ce sens, requête aussitôt transmise au garde des Sceaux105. Les relaxes sont, elles, très mal vécues106. Confrontés à ces pressions, les magistrats adoptent des réponses ambivalentes. Le parquet entend bien sévir pour appuyer l’action dissuasive de la police. Aux bandes de vagabonds parcourant son ressort en 1829, le procureur de Mortagne (Orne) oppose son intention de les poursuivre avec vigueur107. De même, en novembre 1848, le parquet de Paris multiplie les poursuites à l’encontre des migrants belges, afin de faciliter leur expulsion108. Les magistrats, toutefois, font aussi valoir les contraintes propres à l’exercice de leur métier. En plus des difficultés matérielles (prisons et tribunaux surchargés, effectifs insuffisants), ils insistent sur les règles de la pratique et de la procédure juridiques, à commencer par la nécessité de qualifier précisément les faits. Invité à justifier certaines relaxes, le procureur de Fontainebleau rappelle que la présomption à l’origine de l’arrestation ne résiste pas toujours à l’instruction, conduisant à des remises en liberté parfaitement fondées109.

Une gestion circonstanciée ? Limites et aléas de la lutte contre le vagabondage

21 Au-delà de ces tensions, la répression du vagabondage obéit aussi à des rythmes et à une géographie qu’il nous faut essayer d’apprécier.

Espaces, temporalités : une police d’intensité inégale

22 Éclairée par les statistiques officielles (CGAJC), la géographie du vagabondage reflète un double ordre de réalité, inextricablement mêlé : d’un côté, la prépondérance de certaines régions urbaines ou à forte activité industrielle, manufacturière, abritant une population de migrants et d’ouvriers aux revenus et au statut incertains ; de l’autre, les efforts déployés par les autorités pour conjurer les inquiétudes liées à la présence de ce prolétariat, en usant de la répression pénale. Derrière le ressort de Paris dont la prépondérance est écrasante, seules les cours d’appel de Lyon et Colmar, situées dans des zones frontalières marquées par une forte activité industrielle (textile), enregistrent des taux significatifs110. Rennes fait cependant exception jusqu’en 1835, sans doute en raison de la présence endémique de mendiants, voire de marins ou de militaires démobilisés, et de l’étendue du ressort111. À une autre échelle, les arrestations éclairent la carte de la vigilance policière : centres-villes et chefs-lieux, grands axes de circulations112. On retrouve aussi les espaces associés à la surveillance des déplacements : cabarets et auberges, portes des villes, foires et marchés113. Dans les grands centres urbains, les interpellations disent l’intensité d’une vie d’extérieur que la police tente de contenir : individus arrêtés sur les places et les quais, dans les chantiers ou les commerces, etc. Hors de ces lieux, la surveillance continue de relever des populations, qui interviennent parfois directement114.

23 La lutte contre le vagabondage obéit de même à certaines temporalités. Aux moments de moindre activité répressive répondent des phases d’accélération. Les périodes

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d’inquiétude et de fragilité politiques en sont une, à l’image des débuts de la Restauration. Marquées par les difficultés frumentaires, les années 1816-1817 le sont aussi par les peurs politiques héritées des épisodes révolutionnaire et impérial115. Elles se traduisent par des appels répétés à combattre la malveillance et ses agents, souvent assimilés aux vagabonds et aux étrangers parcourant les campagnes116. Police des circulations et répression du vagabondage revêtent alors une importance cruciale – Decazes le rappelle en août 1817117. Ministres et préfets ordonnent de renforcer la surveillance des groupes mobiles et des populations suspectes : militaires circulant sans titres, colporteurs sans livret, groupes d’étrangers vite assimilés à des mendiants, dont on réclame l’expulsion118. Afin de lutter contre les mendiants vagabonds, les autorités tentent également d’organiser l’assistance, et les parquets veillent à la répression des pauvres qui persistent à circuler119. Les années 1848-1849 offrent un autre exemple d’accélération répressive liée à des inquiétudes politiques. Révolution de Février et journées de Juin ont réveillé la crainte des circulations populaires et des agglomérations d’ouvriers. Autorités administratives et parquets agissent alors de concert pour endiguer le flux de migrants vers Paris, ce dont témoigne la hausse des poursuites et des expulsions120. La lutte contre le vagabondage peut aussi être réactivée par l’arrivée d’un nouveau personnel politique, suivant un certain volontarisme. C’est le cas pour le Rhône, en 1822, avec l’accession du comte de Tournon à la préfecture : plusieurs circulaires rappellent aux maires leurs obligations en matière de police des circulations et, dès février, un arrêté interdit la mendicité dans le département121. Devant la crise des ateliers de soie, le préfet organise des patrouilles afin de chasser les vagabonds122. Les arrestations sont nombreuses, comme les ordres de reconduction et d’expulsion123. Les périodes de difficultés économiques et de crises frumentaires sont d’autres temps forts de la répression. En 1816-1817 comme en 1829-1830, manque de travail et chertés provoquent l’apparition de bandes de mendiants et de vagabonds inquiétant les populations124. Les autorités répondent alors par une mobilisation accrue des appareils policier et judiciaire. C’est le cas dans le ressort de Lyon au printemps 1817, ou dans celui de Mortagne, en 1829125. Enfin, la lutte contre le vagabondage connaît aussi, ponctuellement, des accélérations lors de crises sécuritaires. En 1834, une série d’« attentats » commis sur les routes et dans la ville de Lyon pousse le préfet à organiser des perquisitions en banlieue, afin d’arrêter et d’éloigner les vagabonds126. 24 Instrument d’une police qui se veut préventive des désordres, le vagabondage fonctionne donc à des niveaux d’intensité variable. Son usage dépend également de certaines limites, dans le cadre d’une société encore peu étatisée.

Insuffisances et limites : une étatisation encore incertaine ?

25 Parmi ces limites, les insuffisances de l’appareil répressif sont souvent mises en avant, de la faiblesse des effectifs au manque de formation de certains agents127. Elles conduisent régulièrement les autorités à s’avouer désarmées, notamment lors des crises frumentaires ou économiques. En avril 1817, le procureur de Lyon fait état de ses difficultés à combattre les bandes de vagabonds avec aussi peu de gendarmes128. En 1829, ceux de Mortagne et de Mantes dressent le même constat129. Le faible empressement de certains agents à s’acquitter de leur mission est un autre thème récurrent, qui concerne les gardes champêtres mais aussi les maires, régulièrement accusés de privilégier les intérêts locaux au détriment de la loi. En décembre 1817, le préfet du Rhône leur reproche de compromettre son arrêté contre la mendicité en

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délivrant des certificats d’indigence, véritables permis de circuler130. G. Haudebourg signalait, lui, les plaintes des autorités bretonnes contre les maires visant les passeports ou accordant des secours avec trop de facilité131. En réponse, ces derniers font valoir les nécessités locales : faiblesse des forces de police, insuffisance des ressources de la bienfaisance, etc. On devine qu’ils cherchent également à éloigner des individus dont la présence inquiète. En 1835, le maire de Condrieu avoue qu’il a préféré faire raccompagner trois mendiants étrangers plutôt que de les inculper, sa commune ayant assez de pauvres132. Loin de s’imposer uniformément, le code et la loi doivent encore composer avec les exigences de l’ordre local.

26 Enfin, l’identification reste incertaine. Sur les passeports et les procès-verbaux, le signalement est très générique, peu attentif aux marques particulières, et les populations continuent de recourir à la dissimulation et aux fausses identités133. 27 A. Lièvre, arrêté pour vagabondage en 1825, l’a été en 1823 sous le nom de P. Beluze134. Les papiers alimentent de même trafics et transactions. À propos des cartes de sûreté attribuées aux ouvriers des fortifications jusqu’en 1831, le maire de Lyon note qu’elles étaient de peu valeur, sans signalement ni désignation, et que les ouvriers se les échangeaient volontiers135. De leur côté, vagabonds et surveillés tentent de tromper les autorités pour obtenir passeports et secours de route. Au sujet de P. Planchon, qui dit avoir perdu ses papiers en 1836, le commissaire note qu’il « voulait sans doute s’en procurer d’autres en feignant l’ingénuité », et qu’il les a probablement vendus ou abandonnés136. Enfin, l’identité des prévenus est souvent difficile sinon impossible à établir. En 1826, les autorités renoncent à vérifier celle d’A. Charpentier, qui n’a pu indiquer ni sa paroisse de naissance, ni l’âge ou le prénom de son père137. L’orthographe elle-même n’est pas encore fixée, ce qui ajoute à l’incertitude : J.-M. Bernard, arrêté en 1822, est libéré car on suppose qu’il s’agit de J.-M. Reynard, connu favorablement dans sa commune138. 28 Au-delà de continuités manifestes avec les périodes précédentes, dans la définition du délit, dans son intrication avec l’effort d’encadrement des circulations et des populations pauvres, l’histoire du vagabondage en ce premier XIXe siècle éclaire la complexité de cette police des existences irrégulières, incertaines, qui en constitue le cœur. À travers l’incrimination d’un état d’incertitude sociale, d’une incapacité à produire des garanties d’affiliation, le délit ouvre la voie à des usages multiples, différenciés : à l’interpellation des étrangers de passage, que leur apparence ou leur comportement rendaient suspects, répondait celle des mauvais sujets, inquiétant l’ordre local. En ville, l’arrestation prenait un tour plus routinier, jetant dans les filets de la police tous ceux qui, saisis en des lieux ou à des heures indus, appartenait à « l’infrasociété des misérables »139. Écho de cette diversité d’usages, le délit recouvre des situations sociales tout aussi variées, qu’éclairent les archives judiciaires : journaliers en quête d’activité, petits travailleurs itinérants, malfaiteurs en fuite, vieillards ou idiots livrés à eux-mêmes, enfants en rupture avec leur famille… Si l’historiographie a souligné la pluralité des situations professionnelles et des réalités économiques rassemblées sous ce terme générique de vagabonds, en particulier au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles140, ce travail d’appréhension de la « variété des situations sociales objectives » peut encore être prolongé, approfondi141 : l’horizon familial, les stigmates attachés à certains groupes (prostituées, repris de justice), l’importance de certaines expériences (armée, migrations) doivent également être appréciées. De façon symétrique, la complexité de cette police qui, aux prises avec une

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réalité sociale protéiforme, souvent opaque, est sommée d’en assumer la gestion et le tri, mérite d’être éclairée, au-delà des seules procédures pénales et de l’activité des tribunaux, dont l’importance s’affirme surtout entre la fin de la monarchie de Juillet et le début du Second Empire142. Il importe ainsi de faire toute sa place à un ensemble de pratiques, infra et extrajudiciaires, qui définissent les contours d’une gestion policière et administrative des vagabonds, dont la part fut longtemps essentielle143. Dans cette perspective, l’action des différents agents (forces de l’ordre, autorités administratives, magistrats), et leurs manières d’interpréter la loi à travers leur activité quotidienne, peuvent encore être précisées, dans le sillage d’études consacrées à la police ou aux procureurs144. Sans occulter la part de routine, à travers les tournées et les rondes pour les forces de l’ordre, lors d’interrogatoires ou de certaines audiences pour les magistrats (petit parquet, flagrants délits), les témoignages sont nombreux, qui attestent de l’embarras et des difficultés des agents confrontés à la gestion quotidienne de ces populations. En 1863, le procureur de Lyon voyait dans ces affaires de vagabondage l’une des tâches « les plus difficiles » du substitut présidant le petit parquet145. En fin de siècle, de nombreux magistrats réclamaient une clarification de la jurisprudence sur cette matière, jugée bien trop confuse, source d’injustice et de conflits146.

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NOTES

1. Archives départementales du Rhône (AD 69), 3K 09, circulaire du préfet du Rhône (circ. P69), 20 février 1821.

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2. Le terme d’« étrangers » renvoie ici aux individus extérieurs à la communauté locale, « horsains » ou « forains » évoluant hors de la sphère habituelle d’interconnaissance des populations. 3. Outre Castel (1995) ; Geremek (1987) ; Gutton (1974), citons : Depauw (1974) ; Gueslin (2013) ; Schnapper (1985). Pour les études récentes consacrées à la question des mobilités et des procédures de surveillance, cf. Blanc-Chaléard, Douki, Dyonet, Milliot (Eds.) (2001) ; Denis (2008) ; Denis, Milliot (2004) ; Milliot (2006) ; Noiriel (Dir.) (2007, p. 79-96) ; Roche (Dir.) (2000) ; Roche (2003). 4. Davis (1991) ; De Koster & Reinke (2016) ; Lawrence (2004) ; Merriman (2006). Concernant la maréchaussée et la gendarmerie, cf. Dyonet, N. et Houte, A., in Blanc-Chaléard, Douki, Dyonet, Milliot (Eds.) (2001, p. 51-62, 235-249) ; Wagniart (2002). 5. Sur cette caractéristique du délit de vagabondage, mise en évidence par des juristes américains dès les années 1950, cf. Beier (1985) ; Beier, Ocobock (Eds.) (2008) ; Chassaing, J.-P., in Avon-Soletti (Dir.) (2002, p. 15-21). 6. Ibidem ; Derasse, Dubois, Durand, Jean & Royer (2010, p. 554-556) ; Lawrence (2016). 7. Pour le début du XIXe siècle, la Gazette des tribunaux (GDT) offre de nombreux exemples de ces audiences « à la chaîne » : cf. GDT, N° 122, 19 mars 1826, N° 454, 7 mars 1827, N° 1284, 20 sept. 1829. 8. Lévy (1985). 9. Althammer, B., in Althammer, Gestrich & Gründler (Eds.) (2014, p. 103-125) ; Gaboriau (1998) ; Gueslin (2013) ; Smith (1999, 2000) ; Wagniart (1999). Voir également, dans une perspective compa- ratiste concernant cette période : Aranguiz (2000) ; Black (2010) ; Depastino (2005) ; Higbie (2003) ; Kusmer (2002) ; Mansfield, Salais & Whiteside (Eds.) (1994, p. 41-62) ; Monkkonen (1984) ; Rin- genbach (1973) ; Rose (1988) ; Wadauer (2011) ; Wadauer, S., in Buchner, Mejstrik & Wadauer (Eds.) (2015, p. 286-334). 10. Buchner, Mejstrik & Wadauer (Eds.) (2015) ; Jung (2012) ; Mansfield, Salais & Whiteside (Eds.) (1994) ; Smith (1999, 2000) ; Topalov (1994) ; Wagniart (1999). 11. Les dossiers du tribunal de Lyon, non conservés, n’ont pu être consultés. 12. Gaume (2009). 13. La première expression est de Morin, A., Répertoire général et raisonné du droit criminel, Paris, Durand, 1851, tome 2, p. 393. Pour la seconde, cf. Golliard (2014). 14. Le caractère essentiellement « conventionnel » du délit de vagabondage, visant un genre de vie plus qu’un fait réellement délictueux, est signalé par la plupart des juristes du XIXe siècle. Cf. Bonnin, P., Commentaire du Code pénal et des lois de la presse, Paris, Cotillon, 1845, p. 228-237 ; Chauveau, A., Hélie, F., Théorie du Code pénal, Paris, Cosse, 1852, tome 3, p. 267-317 ; Bonne, H., La répression du vagabondage et de la mendicité, Paris, Millot frères et Cie, 1900. Concernant l’historiographie, cf. Beier, Ocobock (2008, p. 134) ; Chassaing, J.-P., in Avon-Soletti (Dir.) (2002, p. 15-21). 15. Ibid., p. 19. Selon l’art. 270 sont reconnus « vagabonds ou gens sans aveu » « ceux qui n’ont ni domi- cile certain, ni moyen de subsistance, et qui n’exercent habituellement ni métier ni profession ». 16. AD 69, 4M 189 (1826), dossier M. Raymond, lettre du directeur général de la police (DGP), 11 fé- vrier 1826. 17. Id., tribunal correctionnel de Villefranche-sur-Saône (TCV), UV 1208 (1832), dossier de procédure (dP) de P. Trouillé. 18. Id., 4M 190 (1831), dossier F. Massot ; id., 4M 185 (1822), dossiers M. Auclair, J. Vercker. 19. Valentin-Smith, J.-E., De la mendicité et du travail, Clermont, Thibaud-Landriot frères, 1848, p. 7677.

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20. Dès 1835, elles sont prononcées dans plus de 25 pour cent des cas. En 1845, la proportion dépasse 60 %. Voir le Compte général de l’administration de la justice criminelle en France (CGAJC) pour ces deux années. 21. Art. 277 du Code pénal. 22. Art. 115 du Code d’instruction criminelle. 23. Art. 271 du Code pénal. 24. Cf. Carnot, M., Commentaire sur le Code pénal, Paris, Nêve, 1836, p. 732. 25. Chauveau, A., Hélie, F., op. cit., tome 3, p. 279. 26. Duvergier, J.-B., Code pénal annoté. Édition de 1832 […], Paris, Guyot et Scribe, 1833, p. 45-46. 27. Bonnin, P., op. cit., p. 228 ; Chauveau, A., Hélie, F., op. cit., tome 3, p. 254. 28. Chevalier (1984) ; Emsley (2007) ; Kalifa (2005, 2013) ; Lawrence (2010). 29. Chauveau, A., Hélie, F., op. cit., tome 3, p. 268. 30. Foucault (1975, p. 296-299). 31. Sur 209 dossiers, 16 font référence à ce type d’activités. 32. CARAN, BB17a/17/11, circulaire (circ.) du ministre de la Justice (MJ), 12 juin 1822. 33. Sur 34 femmes arrêtées comme vagabondes, 15 sont accusées de se livrer à la prostitution. Voir aussi Peccoud, P., in Avon-Soletti (2002, p. 213-230) ; Merriman (2006). 34. Par exemple : AD 69, 4M 185 (1823), dossier J.-B. Cotte ; id., TCV, UV 1207 (1831), P de J. Trouvé. 35. AD 69, TCV, UV 1197 (1825), dP de C. Jarry ; id., UV 1220 (1836), dP d’A. Dupont, A. Malisson, F. Malisson, P. Malisson. 36. Id., 4M 189 (1826), dossier J. Dufour. 37. Id., 4M 185 (1822), dossiers P. Bailly, I. Rossfelder. 38. Cette présomption, liée au défaut de passeport, est prévue par la loi du 2 octobre 1795. Pour une synthèse et une bibliographie récentes sur ces questions, cf. About, Denis (2010). 39. CARAN, F19/940, circulaire du ministre de la Police générale (circ. min. PGle), 27 août 1817 ; circ. P69, 15 novembre 1817, in Pionin, C., Code de police municipale de la ville de Lyon, Lyon, Dumou- lin, Ronet et Sibuet, 1840, p. 42. 40. Pour un parallèle avec l’Empire, cf. Denis, V., in Blanc-Chaléard, Douki, Dyonet, Milliot (Dirs.) (2001, p. 8283). 41. AD 69, 4M 17, circ. du ministre de l’Intérieur (MI), 20 juin 1822. 42. Le fait est attesté en Seine-Inférieure et dans le Rhône : cf. Marec (2006, p. 83-84) ; AD 69, 4M 191, circ. P69, 16 mars 1831. 43. Id., 3K 37, circ. P69, 9 octobre 1848, 13 novembre 1848. 44. CARAN, BB18/1467A/6314, circ. MJ, 29 novembre 1848. Le nombre de prévenus jugés passe de 6099 (1848) à 7546 (1849), puis à 8427 (1850). Cf. CGAJC 1849 et 1851. 45. AD 69, 3K6, circ. P69, 19/08/1817 ; id., 4M 17, circ. MI, 27 juin 1822. 46. Haudebourg (1998, p. 301-305). 47. Sur cette territorialisation des secours, cf. Aubin & Gallinato (Dirs.) (2004) ; Brodiez-Dolino (2013) ; Castel (1995) ; Gueslin (1998) ; Marec & Petit (Dirs.) (1996) ; Merrien (1994) ; Roman (2002). 48. Ces expressions sont employées de façon assez usuelle dans les textes officiels : cf. AD 69, 3K 6, circ. P69, 24 décembre 1817 ; AD 71, M. 7191, rapport du préfet devant le conseil général de Saône-et- Loire (CG71), session de 1842. 49. Cf. AD 69, 3K 6, circ. P69, 8 mars 1817 ; Haudebourg (1998, p. 283-284) ; Thuillier (2002, p. 267- 269, 292305). 50. Ibid., p. 305. 51. CARAN, F16/940, circ. MI, 28 juin /1817 ; circ. min. PGle, 27 août 1817, doc. cit. La plupart des arrêtés et circulaires sont conservés dans la série F19/940 des Archives nationales. Concernant le Rhône, cf. AD 69, 3K 6, circ. P69, 12 juillet 1817 ; circ. P69, 24 décembre 1817, doc. cit. 52. Lacoste, J.-J., Aperçu sur la question de l’extinction de la mendicité, Agen, P. Noubel, 1841, p. 18.

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53. CARAN, F15/3961, rapport du préfet devant le CG71, 25 novembre 1840 ; AD 71, M. 1791, circulaire du préfet de Saône-et-Loire (P71), 3 février 1841 ; id., circ. P71, 13/10/1841 ; rapport du préfet devant le CG71, session de 1842, doc. cit. 54. Blanc-Chaléard, Douki, Dyonet & Milliot (Dirs.) (2001) ; Davis (1991) ; De Koster & Reinke (2016) ; Denis (2001, p. 211-332) ; Denis, Milliot (2004) ; Merriman (2006, p. 118-140) ; Milliot (2006) ; Wagniart (2002). 55. AD 71, tribunal correctionnel d’Autun (TCA), 3U 709, lettre du juge de paix de Lucenay, 05/08/1822. 56. AD 69, TCV, UV 1248 (1846), dP d’I. Rostaing. 57. Dossier P. Bailly, doc. cit. ; AD 71, TCA, 3U 710 (1823), dP de P. Garnier. 58. Sur ce point, cf. Denis (2008, p. 225-242) ; Dyonet, N., et Houte, A.-D., in Blanc-Chaléard, Douki, Dyonet, Milliot (Dirs.) (2001, p. 51-62, 235-249). 59. AD 69, TCV, UV 1280 (1850), dP de C. Brenner. 60. Id., UV 1210 (1832), dP de J. et M. Ferrare. 61. Concernant la prostitution et les petits métiers ambulants : cf. supra : notes 31 à 33. Les soupçons de désertion apparaissent dans dix dossiers. 62. Sur 209 arrestations, 78 ont lieu dans ces circonstances (37,3 %). 63. AD 69, TCV, UV 1220 (1836), dP de X. Bouillot. 64. Id., UV 1191 (1822), dP d’I. Fingal, C. Mallet, J.-B. et C. Perraud ; id., UV 1197 (1825), dP de C. Demure, C. Jarry ; dP d’A. Dupont, A. Malisson, F. Malisson, P. Malisson, doc. cit. 65. Par exemple : dP de P. Trouillé, doc. cit. ; AD 69, TCV, UV 1220 (1836), dP de P. Planchon. 66. Merriman (2006, p. 118-140). 67. AD 69, 4M 183 (1821), état des individus détenus dans la prison de Roanne […]. Bien qu’élevée, la proportion est moindre dans les départements ruraux, cf. Haudebourg (1998, p. 306-312) ; Houte, A.-D., in Blanc Chaléard, Douki, Dyonet et Milliot (Eds.) (2001, p. 235-249). 68. Delattre (2000, p. 334-337). 69. CGAJC 1825, 1835 et 1845. 70. Haudebourg (1998, p. 331). 71. CARAN, BB18/972, circ. du procureur général (PG) de Rennes, 15/06/1817. 72. Davis (1991) ; De Koster, Reinke (2016) ; Lawrence (2004, 2010) ; Merriman (2006). 73. Cité par Yvorel (2008, p. 74). 74. GDT, n° 72 (21 janvier /1826). 75. Id., n° 4043 (26 août 1838). 76. C’est le cas, en particulier, des infirmes ou des vieillards : cf. GDT, n° 938 (09/08/1828, Dufresne), n° 2436 (5 juin 1833, veuve Croquelard), n° 3797 (10 novembre 1837, J. Mazire). 77. AD 69, 4M 185 (1822), dossier « femme Henriette ». 78. Id., dossiers L. Duval, C. Ray. Sur l’importance des passeports d’indigents et des secours de route, cf. Marec (2006, p. 75-86) ; Merriman (2006, p. 118-140). 79. AD 69, 4M 189 (1826), dossiers T. Baron, J. Boni, note du P69, 24 juin 1826. 80. Id., 4M 190 (1831), dossier G. Alvazy. 81. Par exemple : id., 4M 185 (1822), dossiers A. Bonnard, F. Goisque ; id., TCV, UV 1230 (1840), dPde J. Favel. Voir aussi Yvorel (2008). 82. AD 69, TCV, UV 1240 (1844), dP d’A. Malamonette. 83. GDT, n° 973, 20 septembre 1828 (femme Bautier). 84. Par exemple : AD 69, 4M 185 (1822), dossiers J.-B. Cotte, G. Michaud, J. Müller, A. Pierre. 85. CARAN, BB18/112/392, lettre du MI, 4/09/1824. 86. AD 69, 4M 189 (1826), dossier J.-F. Jansens. 87. Id., 4M 405, lettre du DGP, 21 juin 1833. 88. Dossier J. Dufour, doc. cit. 89. AD 69, 4M 185 (1822), dossiers M. Auclair, M. Pinot.

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90. Par exemple : id., 4M 189 (1826-1827), dossier M. L’Herbette (prostituée) ; id., 4M 185 (1822), dossier J. Matthieu (« idiot »). 91. Id., 4M 192 (1834), dossier M. Vallon. 92. DP de P. Trouillé, X. Bouillot, doc. cit. ; AD 69, TCV, UV 1210 (1832), dP de C. Mercier. 93. GDT, n° 872 (24 mai 1828), n° 885 (8 juin 1828), n° 908 (5 juillet 1828), n° 914 (12 juillet 1828), n° 921 (19 juillet /1828), n° 976 (24 septembre 1828). 94. AD 69, TCV, UV 1220 (1836), dP de J. Drevet. 95. Id., UV 1265 (1849), dP de M. Tory. 96. Id., UV 1206 (1831), dP de J.-B. Monsu. 97. DP de J. Trouvé, doc. cit. Sur l’importance de la mémoire policière dans la reconnaissance des récidivistes, cf. Berlière, Lévy (2013, p. 139-144). 98. AD 69, TCV, UV 1220 (1836), dP d’A. Troubadier. 99. Cf. dossiers J.-B. Cotte, J.-F. Jansens, G. Michaud, J. Muller,̈ A. Pierre, doc. cit. 100. Par exemple : circ. min. PGle, 27 août 1817, doc. cit. ; AD 69, 3K 08, circ. P69, 14 novembre 1820 ; circ. P69, 20 février 1821, doc. cit. 101. CARAN, BB18/1467A/6314, lettres du MJ, 12 décembre 1848, 28 décembre 1848. 102. AD 69, 4M 193, lettre du maire de Condrieu, 17 février 1835. 103. CARAN, BB18/1467A/6314, rapport du PG Riom, 6/03/1849. 104. AD 69, 3K 10, arrêté du P69, 1 février 1822 ; id., 3K 17, arrêté interdisant la mendicité, 26 janvier 1829. 105. CARAN, BB18/1467A/6314, lettre du MI au MJ, 11 février 1849. 106. Id., lettre du MI au MJ, 24 janvier 1849. 107. Id., BB18/1171/2014, lettre du procureur de Mortagne, 27 avril 1829. 108. Id., BB18/1467A/6314, rapport du PG Paris, 27 novembre 1848. 109. Id., rapport du PG Fontainebleau, 20 février 1849. 110. Paris totalise ainsi 27,7 % (1830), 34,8 % (1835), 41,95 % (1840) et 35,8 % (1845) des affaires jugées dans le pays. Concernant Colmar, les chiffres sont les suivants : 7,43 % (1830), 7,7 % (1835), 5,66 % (1840) et 7,94 % (1845). Pour Lyon : 5,43 % (1830), 4,9 % (1835), 6,5 % (1840) et 6,86 % (1845). 111. Rennes compte 6,8 % des affaires jugées en 1830 et 7,96 % en 1835. Sa part tombe ensuite à 2,8 % (1840) et 4,75 % (1845). 112. Sur 110 dossiers correctionnels, 81 arrestations ont lieu sur l’axe de la Saône (Paris-Lyon). 113. 38 arrestations, soit 18,2 % du total. Voir aussi Haudebourg (1998, p. 314-319). 114. AD 69, TCV, UV 1185 (1820), dP de F. Revenant ; dP de C. Demure, C. Jarry, doc. cit. 115. Bourguignat (2000). 116. Ibid., p. 143 ; AD 69, 3K 5, circ. P69, 3 juin 1817. 117. Circ. min. PGle, 27 août 1817, doc. cit. 118. AD 69, 4M 17, circ. min. PGle, 9 mars 1816 ; CARAN, BB18/972/3204, circ. MJ, 25 juin 1817. 119. Cf. supra : notes 49 à 51 ; CARAN, BB18/1019/416, lettre du PG Lyon, 18 avril 1817 ; circ. PG Rennes, 15/06/1817, doc. cit. 120. Cf. supra : notes 43-44. 121. AD 69, 3K 10, circ. P69, 31 janvier 1822 ; id., circ. P69, 8 juillet 1822 ; arrêté du P69, 1 février 1822, doc. cit. 122. AD 69, 4M 184, lettres du P69, 14 décembre 1822, 17 décembre 1822. 123. Pour la seule année 1822, 40 dossiers ont été retrouvés dans les séries 4M 184 et 185 (AD 69). Plusieurs comportent des références explicites à la politique d’expulsion des vagabonds : cf. AD 69, 4M 185 (1822), dossiers P. et E. Colombat, F. Tauny, J. Vercker.

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124. Outre Bourguignat (2002), cf. CARAN, BB18/1019/416 et 495 (1817) ; id., BB18/1171/2014 et 2051 (1829). 125. Lettre du PG Lyon, 18 avril 1817, doc. cit. ; lettre du procureur de Mortagne, 27 avril 1829, doc. cit. 126. AD 69, 4M 155, lettre du P69, 9 mai 1834. 127. Cf. Berlière & Lévy (2013). 128. Lettre du PG Lyon, 18 avril 1817, doc. cit. 129. CARAN, BB18/1171/2014, lettre du procureur de Mortagne, 4 mai 1829 ; id., BB18/1171/2051, lettre du procureur de Mantes, 26 mai 1829. 130. Circ. P69, 24 décembre 1817, doc. cit. 131. Haudebourg (1998, p. 301-302). 132. Lettre du maire de Condrieu, 17 février 1835, doc. cit. 133. Pour une perspective historique, cf. Denis (2008, p. 383-443). 134. AD 69, TCV, UV 1197 (1825), dP d’A. Lièvre. 135. Id., 4M 209, lettre du maire de Lyon, 27 décembre 1831. 136. DP de P. Planchon, doc. cit., lettre du commissaire de police de Villefranche-sur-Saône, 15 novembre 1836. 137. AD 69, 4M 189 (1826), dossier A. Charpentier. 138. Id., 4M 185 (1822), dossier J.-M. Bernard. 139. Delattre (2000, p. 337). 140. Althammer, Gestrich& Grundler̈ (Eds.) (2014) ; Black (2010) ; Buchner, Mejstrik & Wadauer (Eds.) (2015) ; Jung (2012) ; Monkkonen (1984) ; Ringenbach (1973) ; Smith (1999, 2000) ; Topalov (1994) ; Wadauer (2011) ; Wagniart (1998, 1999). 141. Yvorel (2008, p. 75). 142. CGAJC 1880. 143. Sur l’importance de ces mesures policières et administratives dans la deuxième moitié du siècle, cf.Davis (1991) ; De Koster & Reinke (2016) ; Lawrence (2004, 2010) ; Saillard (2015) ; Smith (1999, 2000) ; Wagniart (1999). 144. Concernant l’action des procureurs, voir par exemple : Farcy (2005). 145. AD 69, 1Y 5, lettre du procureur impérial de Lyon, 7/01/1863. 146. Exprimant un sentiment assez général, P. Pasteau, substitut du procureur à Bordeaux, écrivait en 1899 : « Le délit de vagabondage sera ou non puni, ou bien plus ou moins puni, selon les sentiments plus ou moins humanitaires des magistrats […] ; plus d’harmonie serait à souhaiter et il semblerait désirable que le législateur donnât une définition plus précise », Pasteau, P., Considérations sur les délits de vagabondage et de mendicité. […], Bordeaux, G. Gounouilhou, 1899, p. 17.

ABSTRACTS

In nineteenth-century France, vagrancy constituted a significant aspect of public order maintenance that was written into the Penal Code of 1810. The purpose of this article is to identify the meaning and application of the law between 1815 and 1850, during the first decades when vagrancy was first included in the Penal Code. The legislation on vagrancy, which criminalised the inability to prove stable attachment to a local community and failure to register as required by law, served above all as a matrix of regulations to keep track of moving

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populations and the poor in order to identify those who remained unregistered. Furthermore, when vagrancy became a misdemeanour, this created great scope for policing individuals who lived in irregular and precarious conditions by intervening against a broad spectrum of behaviours and social situations. Policing the vagrant proved to be highly complex. It included an evaluation of the degree to which an individual should be regarded as suspicious as well as assessment of the general political and economic context. Policing was also shaped by the internal logic of each of the agencies (police, public authorities, and courts) who determined the individualised treatment, sometimes on the basis of the law, but very often also operating according to extra-judicial practices.

Inscrit dans le Code pénal de 1810, le vagabondage fut un élément important du maintien de l’ordre en France au XIXe siècle. Cet article se propose d’en préciser le sens et les usages entre 1815 et 1850, au lendemain de sa codification. Incriminant l’incapacité à répondre d’un ancrage positif dans la société et l’ordre légal, il fut d’abord le contrepoint de l’effort d’encadrement réglementaire des circulations et des populations pauvres, permettant d’en ressaisir les échappés. Au-delà, le délit ouvrait aussi la voie à une police des existences irrégulières, incertaines, recouvrant un large spectre de comportements et de situations sociales. Cette police devait s’avérer complexe : le degré de suspicion, le contexte politique ou économique, les logiques propres à chaque appareil (police, administration, justice) déterminaient des traitements différenciés, relevant encore très largement de pratiques infra et extrajudiciaires.

AUTHOR

PIERRE GAUME

Pierre Gaume est professeur agrégé d’Histoire. Doctorant à l’IRIS (EHESS), il réalise une thèse consacrée au vagabondage et à la mendicité au XIXe siècle (France, années 1820-1912), sous la direction de G. Noiriel. Principale communication : « Police administrative, justice préventive ? Sens et usages du délit de vagabondage en France (1815-1850) », communication au colloque international Police et justice : le nœud gordien (1750-1850), Université de Genève, 21 novembre 2014 - [email protected]

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An Awful and Impressive Spectacle : Crime Scene Executions in Scotland, 1801-1841

Rachel Bennett

Introduction

1 When John Watt was convicted before the Perth Circuit Court for housebreaking and theft in 1801, the judges ordered that his execution would take place at the scene of his crime in Dundee. The Caledonian Mercury stated that “a scene like this, at all times and all places awful and impressive, must be particularly so in Dundee which has not witnessed anything of a similar nature for perhaps a century”. The article continued “we understand it is the determination of the Lords of Justiciary that all criminals who are sentenced to die shall be executed in the places where they committed the crimes for which their life is forfeited. This is certainly a wise and salutary measure and we have no doubt will be followed by the most beneficial consequences”.1 Despite this slight editorial exaggeration, there were thirty-seven offenders sentenced to be executed at, or very near, the scene of their crime between 1801 and 1841, presenting the highest use of this punishment since the mid-eighteenth century. This study will examine the motivations of the Scottish courts in utilising this penal option and explore the multifaceted responses it provoked.

2 Within the rich historiography dedicated to the study of capital punishment in the nineteenth century, studies of the Scottish experience have remained limited. There have been quantitative surveys of Scottish crime using the parliamentary returns, which are more regularly available for the period after 1836, that have highlighted an increase in recorded and prosecuted crime.2 In addition, a more recent study provided the first extensive analysis of capital punishment in Scotland across the period between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.3 In furthering this body of work, this article will demonstrate that Scotland was distinct in its use of crime scene executions, especially when compared to England. There was no single reason for this

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difference and instead there were multiple explanations. It is important to note that, in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union (6 Ann c.11), Scotland and England each maintained their own distinct legal systems. There were also marked differences in their use of capital punishment, including crime scene executions. Poole has shown that there were at least 211 people hanged at the scene of their crimes between 1720 and 1830 in England. When breaking down the chronology, he demonstrated that there was a decline in their use after 1790, but sporadic cases persisted into the first third of the nineteenth century.4 Comparatively, despite being a penal option in Scotland, these executions were exercised infrequently in the eighteenth century and there were only twenty-one offenders hanged at the scene of their crimes between 1740 and 1799. Twelve of the cases were concentrated between 1746 and 1755 and correlated with a peak in execution levels in the wake of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, particularly in northern Scotland. This pattern suggests that they were predominantly used at times of an increase in the sheer number of executions, but crucially also at times when there were evident concerns over the believed prevalence of serious crime as was the case in the early nineteenth century. 3 This study will argue that the use of crime scene executions in early nineteenth- century Scotland was explicitly linked to trends in capital punishment more widely and the debates over the merits of public punishment. In short, they were a distinct Scottish response to a very British problem. In the eighteenth century, Scotland sent far fewer offenders to the gallows than their southern neighbours and, apart from the mid-eighteenth-century peak in executions, the Scottish newspapers had not dedicated the same extensive space to crime reporting. However, by the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, the proportion of capitally convicted offenders who were executed fell in England but remained relatively consistent in Scotland. Although the sheer number of executions remained lower, this proportional difference resulted in unprecedented numbers of offenders being sent to the scaffold.5 This fact was noted, and lamented, by contemporaries. Therefore, this study will provide some reinforcement to the argument briefly made by Crowther, namely that in Scotland, rather than keeping the number of executions to a socially acceptable level, as appeared to be the case in England, unprecedented numbers of capital convictions led to a belief that it was necessary to maintain, or in the case of crime scene executions increase, levels of exemplary punishment.6 4 The article will be structured into four key sections. The first will examine the drivers behind the courts’ sentencing of crime scene executions. It will question if the age of offenders, the crimes they had committed and the locations at which they were judicially tried impacted upon the decisions. It will explore the role of public discourse and the judges in justifying these spectacles. It is important to note that it is not the intention to question if crime scene hangings, or indeed any executions, were a successful deterrent from crime. The fact that the public execution spectacle had been a long standing focal part of the British criminal justice system demonstrates that they were not. Instead, this study explores the importance of the motivations of deterrence and the infliction of some harsher form of punishment to the death sentence in the minds of the contemporary legal authorities when justifying the use of crime scene executions. 5 The methodology adopted to construct this analysis involved an extensive exploration of the minute books of the High Court in Edinburgh and those of the three circuit

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courts to catalogue the details of every offender sentenced to death between 1800 and 1841. This analysis was then bolstered by sources rich in qualitative detail, including the previously neglected Home Office papers related to Scottish crime that offer invaluable information about the motivations of the authorities in sentencing offenders to be executed at the scene of their crime. Prior to the late eighteenth century, Scottish crime reporting was minimal and offered limited journalistic opinion.7 However, by the early nineteenth century crime reporting occupied an increased space and cases of a capital nature warranted more in-depth discussion as they were believed to be reaching unprecedented levels. Kilday argues that this alarming representation of the frequency of crime played a key part in the “burgeoning misconception surrounding Scottish crime” as criminal indictments remained lower than in other countries.8 However, what is clear is that the sheer number of offenders suffering the death sentence had reached new heights by the second decade of the nineteenth century and, for the purposes of this article, a reading of the “panic” over crime in the newspapers offers the potential to understand why the authorities turned to crime scene executions which, prior to this period, had been used on an infrequent basis. 6 The second section of this study will investigate how the executions were shaped in practice. It will include a discussion of key elements of the scaffold ritual such as the need for lengthy processions from the places of confinement that were contrary to modern execution practices but were also focal parts of the spectacle. The decision to execute an offender at the scene of their crime lay in the hands of the central court judges who specified the date, time and location at which the sentence would be carried out. However, they stipulated that it was the responsibility of the local legal authorities, namely the sheriffs, to carry it out and thus this section will also explore how they too shaped the executions in practice. The third part of this study will examine the multitude of public reactions these events could generate. Several of the locations chosen to conduct the proceedings had not witnessed a similar event in living memory and its prospect caused varied responses from curiosity to outright disdain. There was correspondence sent to Home Office officials, who were responsible for decision-making in the pardoning process, petitioning against the executions. A reading of these sources reveals a certain level of contempt on the part of the authors at the prospect of their local areas being sullied by association with the public execution. Again, it is not the argument here that these events served as a successful deterrent from the commission of crime. However, these negative reactions to them added to their propensity to disrupt the localities and to serve as a reminder of the long arm of the law. 7 The final section of the study will provide an in-depth exploration of the final crime scene execution in Scotland in 1841. Railway labourers Patrick Redding and Dennis Doolan were sentenced to be executed at Crosshill, near Glasgow, for the murder of fellow railwayman John Green. The case attracted wide-spread public attention and their execution was replete with the hallmarks of the spectacle including the lengthy procession to the gallows and an immense execution crowd. However, their case was the final example of an execution at the scene of the crime in Scotland, and thus this section will end by offering some potential explanations for the decline and cessation of the punishment. It will also seek to contextualise the disappearance of crime scene executions in Scotland within the wider public debates in Britain over the implementation of the death sentence and the merits of public punishment.

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Examining the Drivers behind Crime Scene Executions

8 Between 1801 and 1841 there were thirty-seven offenders hanged at the scene of their crime. Overall this averaged at less than one case per year, but these cases accounted for 16 percent of the total 238 executions in Scotland in this period, and were an important and distinct Scottish response to the rising number of capital convictions in Britain in the early nineteenth century. The opening section of this study will question the drivers that prompted the judicial decision to utilise this penal option that had not been used in Scotland to a similar extent since the mid-eighteenth century. In terms of the method of analysis adopted here, it is important to note that there was no one factor that led to these executions. Instead they were prompted by numerous drivers. There were discernible similarities dwelled upon in some cases such as the youth of the offenders or the believed prevalence of the crime they had committed and thus there is some scope for a more statistical causal analysis. However, the study weaves its examination of factors such as age, gender, location and offence committed into a closer reading, and more qualitative analysis, of certain cases that reflected wider judicial and public concerns over crime to offer potential explanations for the use of crime scene executions.

9 Following the New Year festivities in Edinburgh in 1811 it was reported that “a gang of ferocious banditti armed with bludgeons [had] infested some of the leading streets of this metropolis”, beating and robbing people and murdering one man. Those involved were described as “idle apprentice boys” all of whom were between 13 and 18 years of age. Three of their number, Hugh MacDonald, Neil Sutherland and Hugh Mackintosh, were tried before the High Court and capitally convicted for several counts of robbery with Mackintosh additionally found guilty of murder. They were sentenced to be executed on Edinburgh’s High Street opposite Stamp Office Close, the scene of the murder.9 The case attracted the attention of senior legal authorities in Scotland and England with the Lord Justice Clerk, David Boyle, reporting to the Secretary of State, Richard Ryder, that the alarming nature of the crimes meant that the full weight of the law should take its course.10 It is important to acknowledge here that this case occurred at a time when fears over collective crowds committing crime had long been established and in some ways became even more pronounced in the early nineteenth century.11 The Aberdeen Journal reported at length upon the execution but reminded its readers that the death of these young men was intended as a dreadful example to be remembered for years to come and stated that this was the only justification for such a strong measure.12 However, the above case marked a watershed in Scotland’s use of crime scene hangings in the early nineteenth century. 10 Table one demonstrates that, of the total thirty-seven cases, sixteen occurred between 1810 and 1819 and a further nine in the 1820s. This concentrated use of the penal option coincided with a marked increase in capital convictions more generally, as the figure rose from 59 offenders sentenced to death between 1800 and 1809 to 117 between 1810 and 1819 and to 174 in the 1820s. In turn the number of offenders executed between 1810 and 1819 doubled from 37 to 73 compared to the previous decade and rose to 81 in the 1820s. Despite the rise in capital convictions, these figures demonstrate that the proportion of offenders subsequently executed remained stable and slightly declined in the 1820s. However, within the increasing space dedicated to

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crime reporting in the newspapers, there were calls for some further severity to quell the unprecedented numbers facing the hangman’s noose. At least three quarters of the malefactors executed at the scene of their crimes were under the age of thirty with the highest number concentrated between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. While the prevalence of this age group is reflective of their dominance in the wider crime statistics in this period, the youth of the offenders was a key theme dwelled upon in the courts and in the press, as demonstrated in the above case.13

Table One : Crime Scene Executions in Scotland 1801-1841.

Type of Offence Date Total Murder Property Rape

1801-1809 2 1 0 3

1810-1819 5 11 0 16

1820-1829 6 3 0 9

1830-1839 5 1 1 7

1840-1841 2 0 0 2

Total 20 16 1 37

Source : Figures compiled using the Justiciary Court minute books.

11 An additional area to examine when questioning the concentrated use of crime scene executions is the judicial voice, as it was the judges who passed the death sentence. Following the 1672 Courts Act in Scotland, the High Court would sit in Edinburgh and twice a year, in Spring and in Autumn, two of the five Lords of Justiciary would travel to preside over the cases brought before the Northern, Western and Southern circuits. The published memoirs of Lord Henry Cockburn provide a rare insight into the experiences of a nineteenth-century Justiciary Court judge. He remarked that, when passing the death sentence, it was their duty to offer a practical exposition of the immediate and worldly effects of crime.14 In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Scottish writers had provided several legal commentaries expounding the distinction of Scots law and highlighted the country’s lesser recourse to the death sentence, especially when compared to its English counterpart.15 However, acknowledgements of Scotland’s previous lesser recourse to the death sentence turned to lamentations of its increased use by the second decade of the nineteenth century which, in some cases, justified the judges’ decision to execute the condemned at the scene of their crime.

12 This study has found that over the four decades under examination here, there were sixteen different judges involved in sentencing a crime scene execution. Around half of them were involved in only a single case. However, there were others who had sat upon the bench in up to six separate cases and employed similar rhetoric when ordering offenders to be executed at the scene of their crime. In the 1834 case of Mannes Swinney, Lord Meadowbank, who had been involved in four previous cases, proposed

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the measure to his fellow judges due to the aggravating nature of the offence.16 In addition, Lord David Boyle, who served as the Lord Justice Clerk, the most senior criminal judge, between 1811 and 1841, sat upon the bench in at least thirteen of the cases. He often offered scathing lamentations over the nature of the crimes that he claimed had prompted his decision to order that offenders be executed at the scene of their crime. His prominence in these figures can also be explained by the fact that he predominantly sat at the High Court, where the sheer volume of business was greater. In addition, in Scotland criminals could be sent from areas that would ordinarily be covered by the circuit courts to be tried in Edinburgh in particularly heinous cases, including some of those examined here, which would also account for the Lord Justice Clerk being present on the bench. It is important to note here that, although individual judges were involved in multiple cases, in over two thirds of the total thirty-seven cases, these offenders were not the only malefactors capitally convicted at that court sitting. In turn, crime scene executions accounted for only a small proportion of the total death sentences these judges would pass over the course of their judicial career. Therefore, while there were some judges perhaps more inclined to use the penal option, there were aggravating circumstances in the cases that prompted them to sentence a crime scene execution. 13 Within the black catalogue of offences that carried a capital charge, the crime of murder had long since been chosen for exemplary punishment. Historically murderers could be subjected to sanguine execution spectacles involving both the pre-mortem and post-mortem evisceration of the body.17 Crime scene executions could be used in heinous cases and in 1832 Sir Archibald Alison remarked that these executions were one of the only peculiarities available in modern practice.18 Thus their increased use in the early nineteenth century marked a re-introduction, as opposed to an introduction, into Scottish penal policy. Between 1801 and 1841 86 criminals were executed for murder. When questioning why twenty of their number suffered their fate at the scene of their crime, this study can offer some potential explanations. In the case of John McDonald and James Williamson Black, who were executed for the murder and robbery of William Muirhead on a highway in Coltbridge near Edinburgh in 1813, it was their chosen location of a public highway for the perpetration of the crime that had sealed their fate. The judges expressed astonishment at numerous recent cases of similar depravity in a country previously “distinguished for virtuous conduct”. They added that it was their duty to “recur to those more striking and awful punishments which our law enjoins” and thus stipulated that Black and Muirhead would be hanged upon the spot where the body had been discovered.19 A similar universal feeling of revulsion coupled with a desire to calm public anxiety led the Jedburgh Circuit Court to sentence Robert Scott to be executed upon the public road in Greenlaw where he had murdered two men in 1823.20 The judges in these cases were not necessarily motivated by the need for deterrence but rather a desire to be seen to punish offences of this nature more harshly through the use of crime scene executions. 14 In addition, to murders perpetrated upon the highways against strangers, there were also cases where the condemned had murdered someone close to them such as a spouse or a colleague. Again, while there were other similar cases where those convicted were executed at the “common place”, certain circumstances in the following cases, coupled with the increased use of crime scene executions more widely, sealed their fate. In turn the locations chosen for their executions had the potential to have an even greater effect upon both the condemned and the crowd due to their spatial significance to the

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offender’s previous life. In 1830 John Henderson was convicted of the murder of his employer James Millie, a handloom weaver in Cupar, by beating him to death with a hammer. He concealed the body for a time and forged deposits and bank receipts in his name. Lord Mackenzie labelled the murder as cruel and contrary to the relationship of trust between an employer and his apprentice. Henderson’s execution outside the nearby Cupar jail was a novelty in the area which had not witnessed a similar spectacle since 1743.21 Although the judges stipulated the locations at which public hangings would occur, it was often the local authorities, namely the sheriffs, who decided upon the spatially specific spots to erect the gibbet. Following his conviction for the murder of his wife in 1804, Duncan MacArthur was sentenced to be executed upon the banks of Crinan Canal and the Sheriff Depute of Argyle ordered that he be hanged opposite his own home where the murder had occurred.22 Similarly, when John Gibson was executed for murder in Hawick in 1814 the gibbet was purposefully constructed on a green opposite his house where he had stabbed his wife to death.23 15 The remaining offenders chosen for exemplary marking out were comprised of people who had committed serious property offences. Donnachie demonstrated that, within the overall number of criminal investigations, property crimes rose from making up slightly more than half the total number in 1810 to 75 percent by 1830.24 The parliamentary returns for Scotland available for this period also reinforced how the overwhelming majority of those committed for trials had committed property offences. 25 Of the sixteen cases where property offenders were ordered to be executed at the scene of their crime, eleven occurred between 1810 and 1819. A potential explanation for this concentration in cases is discernible if we link them to the wider patterns of capital punishment. Capital convictions for property crimes more than doubled from 41 between 1801 and 1809 to 98 between 1810 and 1819. The decade between 1810 and 1819 saw 59 offenders executed – 60 percent of those capitally convicted – compared to 53 percent in the previous decade and 44 percent in the 1820s. Most of these malefactors, including fifteen of the sixteen property offenders executed at the scene of their crime, had been tried and convicted in Scotland’s central belt before the High Court in Edinburgh or the Western Circuit, which included the rapidly-developing Glasgow. This reinforces the centre-periphery dichotomy highlighted by King and Ward in their recent study of the regional variations in the implementation of capital punishment for property offences.26 In turn, it supports the argument here that crime scene hangings were used to mark out certain malefactors for exemplary punishment at a peak time of executions more generally. 16 Although nineteenth-century Scottish crime has not received the same level of historical attention as experiences south of the border, Kilday has highlighted that fears over a robbery epidemic were similarly evident in Scotland as in England, despite much lower numbers of prosecuted cases.27 The current study explores this argument in relation to its causal analysis of the increase in crime scene executions. Of the total sixteen crime scene executions for property offences, thirteen of the criminals had been convicted of robbery. The public discourse surrounding the case of Thomas Kelly and Henry O’Neil, who were executed in the parish of St Cuthbert’s in December 1814 for three acts of highway robbery, embodied the contemporary concern over the believed prevalence of the crime. During their trial the Lord Justice Clerk lamented that the offence was being perpetrated to an extent “unknown formerly in this part of the United Kingdom”.28 In England, robbery had previously been used as an indicator of the prevalence of crime.29 Comparatively, in Scotland, it was not until the increase in

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capital convictions for the crime in the early nineteenth century that the offence began to permeate Scottish crime reporting. When detailing the case of Kelly and O’Neil, the Caledonian Mercury stated that, to enact the most vigorous justice possible, the High Court sentenced them to be executed on the spot where they had committed the final robbery.30 The location chosen for the perpetration of the crime in several cases was public roads and thus the carrying out of executions on the same spots was intended to demonstrate the wide reach of the law. In turn, they often required lengthy processions and could take a whole day which serves to further demonstrate the willingness of the authorities to deviate from more modern execution practices to correct what the Scots Magazine called the “loose manners of the time” regarding the crime of robbery.31 17 Alongside the public anxiety over robberies perpetrated upon roads, there was also a contemporary concern about violent property offences committed in more domestic spaces. Of the total thirteen offenders executed at the scene of their crime for robbery, in five of the cases the condemned had been additionally charged with the crime of stouthrief. In the early nineteenth century, the crime could be charged synonymously with robberies that involved the use of violence in a dwelling place. In October 1817 three men were executed in Greenock following their conviction for breaking into the house of Robert Morris. They bound him, stole a quantity of money and clothes and raped his sister-in-law and a female servant.32 The execution of three offenders at the same time for the same crime was unprecedented in eighteenth-century Scotland. However, this case, and the previously discussed case of MacDonald, Mackintosh and Sutherland, was one of a few examples in the first third of the nineteenth century where the measure was deemed to be necessary due to the nature of their crimes. From a legal perspective, crime scene executions were utilised, and justified, as a means of stemming the unprecedented number of Scottish criminals facing a death sentence. However, to further explore their capacity to act as a stark reminder of the long arm of the law, this study will now examine how these events were shaped in practice and will explore the multitude of reactions they had the power to generate.

Shaping the Spectacle

18 The theatre of the gallows involved numerous actors from the authorities responsible for carrying out the death sentence to the condemned criminals and the crowd who attended to see the spectacle unfold. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been the subject of particularly rich analyses of the use of capital punishment in Western Europe and studies have demonstrated that the period was one of debate and development in the carrying out of the death sentence.33 Within this, the practicalities of public executions, such as their locations, were gradually amended and changes were made to traditional elements of the scaffold ritual, including the procession to the gallows. In addition, historians including Gatrell and McGowen have respectively traced a discernible shift in responses to the spectacle on the part of the authorities and the crowd.34 It is the intention here to contextualise Scotland’s use of crime scene executions within this wider narrative of the changing nature of capital punishment in the early nineteenth century.

19 By the turn of the nineteenth century, public executions in Scotland, as in England, were predominantly carried out at an established “common place”. Prior to 1785 in Edinburgh this had been the Grassmarket, a busy area of the city’s Old Town, but was

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moved closer to the Old Tolbooth to avoid what the Caledonian Mercury called “the disagreeable ceremony of walking from the prison to the former place of execution”.35 Similarly, executions at Tyburn were abolished in favour of staging London’s hangings outside of Newgate prison in 1783. In Scotland’s circuit towns and cities executions had been conducted at locations which were outside of urban centres, such as the Gallows Hill in Aberdeen or the Burgh Muir of Perth, but they gradually moved closer to the jails by the late eighteenth century. Devereaux charted similar moves from urban peripheries to more central locations in some English towns in the same period.36 A key element of public executions in this period was the procession to the gallows, to quote Dr Samuel Johnson, “the public was gratified by a procession, the criminal supported by it”.37 However, it was criticisms of this part of the spectacle that had factored into decisions to move the location of the “common place”.38 Despite this, in both countries this shift was a gradual one and this, coupled with the re-introduction of crime scene executions in early nineteenth-century Scotland, meant that the eventual disappearance of the procession was not a pattern of uniform or uninterrupted decline. 20 Poole demonstrated that the standardisation of execution practices in England after 1783 was not driven by one central policy and that the processional culture persisted for some time thereafter, even on the doorstep of the capital.39 This was similarly the case in Scotland, but particularly so in executions at the scene of the crime where it was evident that, rather than solely being logistically necessary, the procession was a focal part of the whole spectacle. For example, Moses McDonald’s procession to the gallows in Greenock took four hours and involved the criminal and his family as well as officials including the sheriff, the magistrates, the town council and the local clergy, and was made more stark as the town had not witnessed a similar event in living memory.40 The importance of the procession was not only evident during executions in areas that were unaccustomed to the execution spectacle, it also proved to be a focal attraction in larger cities such as Edinburgh. McDonald and Black’s two-mile procession from the Tolbooth to the scene of their crime in Coltbridge took three hours. They were placed in a cart and taken through the Lawnmarket and the city’s Old Town before passing Princes Street, which was at the heart of the more cosmopolitan New Town, before arriving at the scene of the murder. The whole journey was guarded by 200 men from the 7th Dragoon. It was reported that the concourse of spectators was immense along the entire route with every possible view taken. Furthermore, as per the stipulations of the 1752 Murder Act, they had been sentenced to the post-mortem punishment of dissection. When their bodies were cut down they were put back onto the cart and “with the view of impressing the minds of the spectators with more awe” they were conveyed, uncovered, to Edinburgh University for dissection by Dr Alexander Monro, the Professor of Anatomy.41 21 When an offender was ordered to be executed at the scene of their crime the judges would stipulate the various steps of their journey from the place of sentencing to the place of execution. It was often the case that these locations were in different areas of jurisdiction and thus the procession to the scaffold involved the legal procedure of handing over the criminal, and the responsibility for seeing their sentence enacted, from one set of local authorities to another and this served to add further ceremony to the event. John Worthington had been condemned in Edinburgh in 1815 for three robberies he had committed upon a road leading out of Kilmarnock. He was sentenced to be transmitted to Glasgow, then to Lanark and finally to Ayr to be detained then taken to a convenient place near Symington Tollbar, situated on the highway between

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Kilmarnock and Monkton, and hanged.42 On the day of his execution Worthington was handcuffed to a cart and accompanied by the Sheriff of Ayr who travelled as part of the procession in a coach drawn by four horses as far as Flockbridge where he handed him over to the Sheriff of Renfrew who then escorted him to the place of execution. The whole proceedings were heavily guarded by a troop of cavalry and proved to be a lengthy procedure rich in the symbolism of both local and national justice.43 22 Due to the gradual shift of the “common place” of execution to more central locations that were closer to the places of confinement, and the reduced need for lengthy scaffold processions, the times at which executions were to be carried out began to change in the early nineteenth century. In Edinburgh in 1819 the time specified changed from between two and four in the afternoon to between eight and ten in the morning. The same alteration occurred in Glasgow in the 1820s and in this sense Scottish execution practices were comparable to those in England.44 In conducting the executions earlier, the authorities were attempting to prevent them taking up a whole day and were limiting the opportunity for excessive drinking prior to the crowd’s arrival at the foot of the gallows, which had previously been facilitated by the later time, the closure of local businesses, and people having the day off work for the occasion.45 However, due to the need for a procession to the scaffold, crime scene executions were sentenced to take place between two and four in the afternoon and often required a whole day, thus disrupting the areas in which they were held. When Mark Devlin was executed in Dundee in 1835, the High Street was completely shut down due to the volume of people lining the streets from an early hour.46 Similarly, a crowd of up to 15,000 had gathered from all over the county of Fife for the execution of John Henderson in Cupar in 1830 which meant that shops were closed, businesses disrupted and the collection of the harvest was at a complete standstill for miles around.47 The execution of William Perrie in Paisley in 1837 prompted a whole day of festivities. There were reports that the roads leading in and out of the town were “thronged till night fall with crowds.” An article in the Morning Advertiser remarked with cynicism that the people spent the day “drunk from the contemplation of the melancholy spectacle.”48 The implication being that the execution had been an occasion for drunken revelry, a criticism that had been levelled at the public execution spectacle since the eighteenth century. 23 Another important element of the execution ritual was the construction of the scaffold. By the 1830s there were no permanent gallows at Edinburgh’s “common place” of execution at the Lawnmarket. Instead they were usually constructed the night before a scheduled execution and then quickly removed thereafter as was the case in other circuit cities. Devereaux argues that, following the move of executions in London to outside Newgate, the gallows were intended to be a short and sharp intrusion upon the urban space and upon people’s psyche. The swift introduction and removal of the gallows on an execution day was intended to make the whole display more shocking to the observer.49 Logistically crime scene executions were similar in that they involved the construction of temporary gallows. However, in some cases this served to add more intrigue in areas not accustomed to the spectacle and could attract a considerable crowd. For example, a large concourse of spectators gathered at one o’clock in the morning to watch the construction of the scaffold in Dundee for the execution of Mark Devlin, who had been condemned for raping a child, in 1835.50

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Responses to Crime Scene Executions

24 A key component of the ability of crime scene executions to act as an effective penal option was the behaviour of the criminal and the watching crowd. It had long been a hallmark of British gallows culture to allow malefactors to address the crowd in their last dying speech. In the cases examined here, some criminals spoke only briefly to confess to their crimes. The Caledonian Mercury stated that the suitable display of contrition shown by John Westwater in 1806 ideally met the object of his execution at the scene of his crime.51 In other cases the criminals did not confess to their crimes but they claimed to accept their fate and asked that the crowd join them in praying for God’s mercy. Due to the familiarity of some crime scene execution locations to an offender’s previous life, some criminals were overcome with more shame that their relatives should witness their execution than the death sentence itself. For example, in 1828 Francis Cockburn asked that the blinds of the chaise conveying him to his execution in Camelon be drawn so he could not see his old acquaintances.52 In terms of the reactions of the crowds gathered at the gallows foot, Laqueur wrote of a “carnivalesque” crowd “unconcerned with serious state theatre and unaffected by its efforts”.53 An often-cited criticism of execution spectacles in this period was the concern that they encouraged drunken revelry which undermined the solemn carrying out of justice.54 This was certainly a criticism levelled at the execution of William Perrie due to the drunken behaviour of the crowd in Paisley. However, Gatrell argued that by the early nineteenth century, while older curiosities surrounding scaffold horrors were still evident, they came to be justified as a “valued element in the sympathetic sensibility”.55 An exploration of the contrasting responses to the intrusion of the public execution into local areas unaccustomed to the spectacle is crucial to our understanding of their capacity to act an effective penal option.

25 One of the prevalent motivations in sentencing offenders to be executed at the scene of their crime was to send out a stark reminder of the long arm of the law, especially in the more remote areas of Scotland. In the early nineteenth century, the main central belt cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow accounted for a large proportion of the total number of capital convictions. While executions may not have occurred as regularly as they did in some of the bigger English cities, there could be up to five or six in a year making them a semi-regular spectacle. Within this, although twenty-six of the total thirty-seven cases examined here occurred following trials in Edinburgh or before the Western Circuit, they had national ramifications due to the locations at which they were carried out, which could be miles away from the place of sentencing. In several cases the executions were the first to occur in the area in decades or even beyond living memory or record and they had the potential to produce a range of reactions from the local inhabitants in the weeks between sentencing and the date of execution.56 In some cases, such as that of Ralph Woodness in Linlithgow in 1819, the crowd’s attendance was driven by curiosity due to the rarity of the event.57 In others the close proximity of the executions to the places where the condemned had lived and worked could evoke a sympathetic reaction from the crowd. Alternatively, there was evidence that in some areas the prospect of a public execution produced feelings of anxiety due to a belief that the spectacle would bring shame to an area previously unsullied by the last punishment of the law.

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26 The public feeling in Greenlaw at the time of the execution of Mannes Swinney in 1834 was one of “great and unpleasant agitation” due to the fact that the town was proud of its having no tradition as an execution location.58 When Thomas McNair was convicted of robbing a man on a road in Falkirk in 1811 many of the town’s respectable inhabitants signed a petition for mercy to prevent the hosting of the execution there.59 However, it was evident that in this petition, as in others that were sent to the Home Office regarding crime scene executions, it was not necessarily the fate of the condemned person that the writers were concerned about. Instead they argued that the executions would be detrimental to the local area and asked for mercy for the community. Following the conviction of Moses McDonald for housebreaking and theft in 1812, he was sentenced to be hanged near the scene of the crime in Greenock. The magistrates of the town sent a petition to London stating their firm conviction that “every beneficial consequence to that community [Greenock] which could be contemplated by the result of a public execution...will be equally, nay preferably, prompted by a commutation of his punishment from death to transportation”.60 A similar sentiment was echoed in petitions regarding the case of Margaret Shuttleworth in 1821. In the weeks between her sentencing and execution for the murder of her husband, respectable gentlemen from the town of Montrose petitioned for a commutation of the sentence to spare the inhabitants from the horrid exhibition of a public hanging, especially that of a female. The execution of a woman was a rare event in Scotland, especially by the early nineteenth century.61 In turn, there were only two women executed at the scene of their crime in this period, both for murder. Due to their relative rarity, the executions of women created great public interest.62 However, newspaper reports of Shuttleworth’s execution observed that many of the town’s respectable citizens had left for the occasion.63 Again her case demonstrated that people were not necessarily sympathetic to her plight as she was a known drunk who often quarrelled with her late husband. Instead they were more concerned with the potential shame of the town hosting a public execution. 27 Early on the morning of William Thomson’s execution on the road leading into Dalkeith, where he had robbed George Dickson in 1827, a large crowd had assembled. However, it was remarked that most had travelled from outside of the town. In Edinburgh, a crowd had gathered at the jail to see him brought out and followed in procession. In contrast the inhabitants of Dalkeith “regarding the exhibition with feelings of horror and detestation, a similar scene not having been witnessed there for centuries, shut their places of business and manifested every indication of regret at their respectable town having been subjected to such degradation.”64 In this case the question of whether the motivation of making a deep impression upon the town was achieved is more complex. In one sense the inhabitants were so disgusted as to openly protest it, however it is unclear how many of them still attended the execution. In contrast, the crowd in Edinburgh, perhaps more accustomed to public executions, showed a keen interest in the whole spectacle, particularly the novelty of a lengthy scaffold procession. What is clear is that Thomson’s execution clearly impacted negatively upon the daily lives of Dalkeith’s inhabitants and acted as a stark presentation of the criminal justice system and thus made some impression upon them, even if this was annoyance. 28 When faced with the prospect of a public execution, some areas took the precaution of arranging additional security to guard the proceedings. John Westwater’s execution in

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Kinghorn in 1806 was guarded by the Kirkcudbright militia who had been transported in from Leith for the occasion.65 Extra guards were also brought in for the hanging of Arthur Wood in Dundee in 1839 due to a suspicion of unrest. However, reports of the execution described a sympathetic yet solemn scene.66 Similarly, due to a suspicion that a rescue attempt would be made when Thomas McNair was sentenced to hang in Falkirk, 500 infantrymen and three troops of cavalry were on standby. However, it was reported that they were not all required as the town’s principal inhabitants had formed themselves into a guard and patrolled the streets. They had taken this action due to the feelings of unease caused by the large influx of outsiders for the event.67 Although there were no reported instances of serious unrest or attempts to prevent the executions taking place among the cases examined in this article, the contemporary fear that there would be serves to reinforce the argument that the courts were willing to risk this unrest in their pursuit of inflicting some further severity to the death sentence. 29 Despite the varied responses to the prospect of a crime scene hanging, reports of the executions themselves often described a more solemn atmosphere when it came to the point in the spectacle when the offender mounted the scaffold. The newspapers may have been more inclined to report a scene of contrition on the part of the condemned and repeatedly used words such as solemn and orderly to describe the behaviour of the crowd meaning we must be cautious when taking their reports entirely at face value. However, they do offer some valuable insight into the execution scene. Details of the crowd’s behaviour offered in the following cases serve to support the argument made by historians that, despite a continued curiosity over the execution ritual, the prevailing feelings reported in the newspapers were those of sympathy and solemnity rather than the taking of pleasure at the suffering of others.68 In the case of Robert Scott, despite a universal feeling of disgust towards the brutal murders he had committed, when he mounted the scaffold the crowd joined him in singing psalms.69 It was reported that the calm resignation of David Balfour to his fate in Dundee in 1826 rendered the large crowd almost silent.70 A similar “death-like stillness” among the spectators was described at the execution of Margaret Wishart in Forfar in 1827 and continued until her body was cut down 45 minutes later.71 In addition to a solemn atmosphere among the execution crowds, there was also evidence of sympathy for the criminal. When Ralph Woodness was hanged in Linlithgow “his boyish aspect and the weakness of his bodily frame meant a deep commiseration was expressed by the spectators”. The article added that his career of crime was forgotten and only the feeling of sympathy persisted for the trembling youth.72 These reports demonstrate that crime scene executions, as with public executions more generally in this period, had the potential to strike a chord with many in the watching crowd and served as a stark reminder to the crowd of the reward for crime whether they had initially attended through excitement, curiosity or even with some reservation.

The Disappearance of Crime Scene Executions

30 Patrick Redding, Dennis Doolan and James Hickie were tried before the Glasgow Circuit Court in April 1841 for the murder of John Green the previous December and their case was to be the final example of a crime scene execution in Scotland. Green was a ganger, the leader of the railway labourers, on the building of the Edinburgh to Glasgow railway line and two days after he had taken charge of the gang, which included the accused

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men, he sacked Doolan. The court heard how they were angered and how Doolan had threatened “I’ll leave him [Green] so that he will not sack any-body again”. The three men waited for Green on the railway at Crosshill and assaulted him with an iron poker, which fractured his skull, before they beat him to death.73 Prior to the commencing of their trial the greatest exertions had been made by their fellow Irish labourers and others in their Glasgow neighbourhood to obtain first-rate defence counsel for them. During the trial, each of the accused blamed the others but the jury unanimously found Doolan and Redding guilty of murder, and by a plurality of voices found Hickie guilty only “art and part” of the murder but recommended him to mercy.74 He was later pardoned on condition of transportation. In passing sentence, the judges Boyle and Moncrieff stated that, to make an example of the offenders, they were sentenced to be carried back to Glasgow jail to remain until 14 May 1841 when they were to be taken to Crosshill and hanged at the scene of the murder.75

31 What is clear from the trial proceedings and the detailed newspaper coverage of the case is that the criminals were suitably admonished, as were other murderers, for the heinous nature of their offence. However, in this case the criminals had received some local support and there was a believed need to make a stark statement to the large number of railway labourers in the area. These labourers included Irish migrants who had travelled to Glasgow to work on the construction of the railways and, as the 1840s progressed, the concerns raised over the influx of Irish migrants during the Potato Famine intensified.76 These factors combined likely prompted the decision to execute Doolan and Redding at this spatially significant location. Similarity can be found here with the final crime scene execution in England in the Somerset village of Kenn in 1830, when three men were convicted for the crime of incendiarism, the burning of property. Poole demonstrated that the execution came at a time of social protest and was conducted at the scene of the crime to protect the judicial necessity of informing in the rural community and thus the judicial cavalcade that accompanied the criminals to the scaffold was particularly extravagant.77 The execution of Doolan and Redding was intended as a similar demonstration of the power of the criminal justice system. It was thoroughly planned to ensure that as many people as possible witnessed the spectacle between Glasgow and Crosshill and it had required many more guards than would have been necessary if the execution had occurred at Glasgow’s “common place” of execution in Jail Square. Many crime scene executions were justified due to their spatial significance but in the case of Doolan and Redding, as in the 1830 English case, it was also targeted towards a specific audience and thus the authorities were clearly willing to forgo concerns for cost and security to make a bold statement. 32 On the day before the execution the gallows were partly constructed outside of the prison in Glasgow which caused a considerable degree of interest. A large crowd then followed as they were taken in procession through the city to the place of execution. They were then guarded overnight by an infantry guard.78 The following day the prisoners emerged from the prison at eight in the morning to begin the three-mile procession to Crosshill. They were purposefully seated high up in a carriage so they could be seen by the crowd as they passed through Glasgow’s busy city centre. The procession included the executioner, the sheriff, the City Marshall, the Lord Provost and the magistrates and, as the authorities went to great lengths to ensure the whole passed without incident, it was guarded by a troop of 200 cavalrymen and 700 infantrymen.79 The crowd gathered to witness the execution was described as being

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greater in size than any other congregation in the Glasgow area in living memory. However, there were no reported incidents of unrest. Instead the multitude gathered was described as being “awe-struck and compelled to acquiesce to the justice of the sentence”.80 Furthermore, in reference to the railway labourers, one article stated that this “dreadful but so imperiously required” example was intended to have a profound effect upon the “most lawless and obdurate dispositions”.81 Whether this aim was achieved is more complex as a broadside detailing the execution observed that none of the railway labourers were at work that day, nor did many of them attend the spectacle. It added that “they had resolved to stay away to show their contempt for the insult which they conceived had been offered to them in bringing the execution to Crosshill.”82 Therefore, similar to previous cases where the local inhabitants had refused to attend crime scene executions to show their feelings against them, it is clear that the spectacle had an effect upon the area, and to some extent the railway labourers, as desired by the authorities whether this was disruption, anxiety or disdain. 33 Following the case of Doolan and Redding there were no more offenders executed at the scene of their crime in Scotland and thus the final part of this article will offer some potential explanations for the disappearance of the practice. The study has demonstrated that the early nineteenth century was a period of discussion and debate over the merits of public punishment and that crime scene executions marked a distinct Scottish response to this British problem. Despite the contemporary justification that these executions were a necessary addition to the death sentence in the face of an increase in capital convictions overall, it is the argument here that the cessation of crime scene executions cannot be separated from the broader British movement to marginalise public punishments, which eventually culminated in the move of executions behind the prison walls in 1868. 34 When investigating capital convictions in London and Middlesex, Emsley shows that they markedly increased following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but the number of executions did not drastically increase. He argued that this widening gap between capital convictions and executions, while coming at a time when the Bloody Code faced increasing criticism by reformers, may also have been recognition, on the part of the authorities, that it would not be acceptable to execute so many individuals.83 In a similar vein, Gatrell highlights that in 1785, during the crime wave of the 1780s, 56 percent of capitally convicted offenders were executed but argued that this proportion could not be sustained in the 1820s.84 Thus he cited the rising death sentences of the early nineteenth century as a primary reason why “the system unravelled itself and became unworkable”.85 Comparatively, in Scotland in the first four decades of the nineteenth century, the proportion of capitally convicted offenders who were executed was consistently around 60 percent.86 Despite this proportional consistency, an examination of the disappearance of crime scene executions does demonstrate that the Scottish experience of capital punishment in this period can provide some reinforcement to the wider British narrative. 35 One of the arguments made in this article is that the increase in the number of offenders executed in Scotland, which had doubled between the first and second decades of the nineteenth century and had risen further in the 1820s, coincided with the increased and concentrated use of crime scene executions. However, the total number of executions in the 1830s almost halved compared to the figure for the 1820s, which may help to explain why crime scene executions also began to diminish.

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Furthermore, by the 1830s murder was the predominant crime sending offenders to the scaffold as property offenders increasingly received the non-capital punishments of transportation and prison sentences, a fact noted by Riggs in his investigation of prosecution decisions and the restriction of the charges in cases of property crime.87 Compared to the figure for murder, which had remained steady in the three decades between the 1810s and the 1830s, following the peak decade of crime scene executions for property offences between 1810 and 1819, death sentences for this type of crime notably declined in the 1820s. By 1841, the end of the period under investigation here, Lord Cockburn noted that in cases of rape and robbery recently brought before the Glasgow Circuit Court, despite the fact that the crimes were clearly proven, “such is the prevailing aversion to capital punishment…these horrid culprits were only transported”.88 Furthermore, while there were still discussions over the believed prevalence of certain crimes within the newspapers, their attention increasingly turned towards debates over the reform of the capital code which was contrary to the previous calls for more severity which had justified the use of crime scene executions. 36 In addition to the developments in the implementation of capital punishment, we must also consider the importance of the changes that occurred to the carrying out of the death sentence in practice when questioning the disappearance of crime scene executions. As noted above, the period between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century witnessed focal changes to the public execution spectacle in Britain, notably the locations at which they were carried out. By their very nature, crime scene executions deviated from the “common place” and were the exception rather than the rule. Although they were contrary to more modern concerns for efficiency, they had previously been justified in Scotland due to a contemporary belief that some further severity was required to the punishment of death. However, by the 1830s and early 1840s the sheer number of executions in Scotland had notably decreased, despite the relative consistency in the proportion of capitally convicted offenders sent to the gallows. In this sense, Pratt’s observation that the main body of opposition to public executions in the early nineteenth century was due to their potential to cause a distasteful scene, rather than the actual execution of offenders, is particularly relevant to the disappearance of crime scene executions in Scotland.89 37 Crime scene executions provided a spike in an otherwise long term decline in certain elements of gallows culture. In terms of their logistics, Poole argues that their cost was one reason for their decline more generally.90 In addition, the management of public executions had attracted unfavourable comment in eighteenth-century England and Scotland.91 Specific criticism had been levelled at lengthy crowd processions to the gallows which were increasingly viewed as being contrary to the solemn carrying out of justice.92 When discussing the eventual removal of executions to behind the prison walls in 1868, Gatrell placed the move within the longer-term context of the changes that had occurred to capital punishment more widely in the previous three decades. He argued that the key reason for the change had been to exclude the crowd from the practice.93 Therefore, while concerns over crowd behaviour at public executions were not new, in the early nineteenth century they occurred at the same time as wider debates over the merits of public punishment and even the implementation of the death sentence which offers a further explanation for the disappearance of crime scene executions.

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Conclusion

38 Crime scene executions had been a penal option in Scotland prior to the early nineteenth century but had been used on an infrequent basis following a concentration of cases in the mid-eighteenth century. However, there were thirty-seven criminals executed at the scene of their crime in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Although this averaged at less than one per year and perhaps would not constitute a “panic” at face value, the contextualisation of these executions in this study demonstrated that their re-introduction in early nineteenth-century Scotland was explicitly linked to wider patterns in capital punishment. In addition, it presented a reverse trend to that found in England where this type of execution was an eighteenth- century feature that survived sporadically in the nineteenth century.94 While capital convictions increased north and south of the border, this study has identified a distinct Scottish response to this British problem. The proportion of capitally convicted offenders who were subsequently executed remained relatively stable in the first third of the nineteenth century in Scotland, as opposed to the widening of the gap between the numbers convicted and executed in England.95 Therefore, despite the sheer number of executions remaining lower than in England, this led to an unprecedented number of criminals suffering the death sentence in Scotland and, within this, a development in the newspapers from lamenting the situation to calling for a solution to stem the problem.

39 A reading of judicial opinion when passing the death sentence and the contemporary public discourse that followed demonstrates that these calls were met by, and used to justify, the use of crime scene hangings. This study has not argued that these executions acted as a successful deterrent from crime. Instead it has explored throughout the importance of the desire of the authorities to inflict some greater form of punishment to the death sentence and has shown that, as the more sanguine spectacles of previous centuries had disappeared, crime scene executions remained one of the only surviving penal options. Within this, these executions were often targeted towards a specific crime or location. For example, robbery was very much a public concern in this period and executions for the crime accounted for thirteen of the total sixteen crime scene hangings for property offences. In the case studies discussed above, the locations chosen for the commission of the crimes, namely public roads, were crucial in the judge’s decision to execute offenders at the scene of the crime to assuage public anxieties. 40 The locations chosen for crime scene executions were crucial to their ability to impact upon the areas at which they were carried out. In some cases, offenders went “home” to die, quite literally when the gallows were put up outside their houses, and marked a stark juxtaposition of their previous life and their lamentable fate. In others, the executions intruded into localities previously unsullied by association with the last punishment of the law and prompted a range of reactions from curiosity and a desire to participate in the whole spectacle to outright disdain and a refusal on the part of the locals to attend. Again, an important point made by this study was not that these executions served as the successful deterrent sought by the authorities in the face of rising numbers of capital convictions. Instead, the study has shown that they were a pervasive prospect whether they were revered or reviled and they certainly served as an exemplary demonstration of national justice being seen to be done at a local level. In

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turn, while their re-introduction and eventual decline were explicitly linked to wider trends in capital punishment, they present something of a spike in the wider long term dismantling of older forms of public punishment in Britain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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NOTES

1. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 15 June 1801, p.3. 2. King (2011, pp.231-259); Donnachie (1995, pp.5-24). 3. Bennett (2016). An additional useful, but incomplete, survey is Young’s Encyclopaedia of Scottish Executions. See Young (1998). 4. Poole (2015, p.76). 5. For studies of England see Emsley (2013, pp.265-267); (Gatrell, 1994, p.544). For a study of Scotland see Bennett (2016, p.64). 6. Crowther (1999, p.233). 7. Lemmings (2012, p.128). 8. Kilday (2012, p.159). 9. National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh [hereafter NAS] JC8/8/266. 10. The National Archives, Kew [hereafter TNA] HO102/55/66. 11. Linebaugh (1991, pp.333-370); Chase (2013); Knox (2015, p.60). 12. Aberdeen Journal, Wednesday 29 April 1812, p.3. 13. See Donnachie (1995, p.20); Bennett (2016, pp.68-69). 14. Cockburn (1889, p.6). 15. See Louthian (1732); Home (1757); Hume (1819); Alison (1832). 16. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 14 April 1834, p.3. 17. For example, there were a handful of cases in the mid-eighteenth century of male murderers being sentenced to have a hand served from their bodies immediately prior to their execution. However, these cases were rare and disappeared after one sporadic case in 1765. See Bennett (2016, Ch.3). The 1752 Murder Act (25 Geo. II c.37) formally legislated for the post-mortem punishment of executed murderers but the penal option of dissection was removed by the 1832 Anatomy Act (2 & 3 Will. IV c. 75). Hanging in chains remained a penal option until it was repealed by an act in 1834 (4 & 5 Will. IV c. 26) but in practice the punishment had disappeared in Scotland by the late 1770s, apart from one isolated case in 1810. 18. Hume (1819, p.279); Alison (1832, p.90). 19. NAS JC8/9/232; Scots Magazine, Monday 7 June 1813, pp.36-39. 20. NAS JC12/36/2. 21. NAS JC11/77/71; Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 2 October 1830, p.3.

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22. NAS JC13/33/78. 23. Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 14 May 1814, p.3. 24. Donnachie (1995, pp.9-10). 25. Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XI (163) 1814-1815; Parliamentary Papers, Vol. XXXV (499) 1831-1832. 26. King & Ward (2015). 27. Kilday (2013). 28. NAS JC8/11/10; Scots Magazine, Sunday 1 January 1815, p.31. 29. For a study of the London newspapers in the 1740s see Ward (2012, pp.5-24). 30. Caledonian Mercury, Thursday 26 January 1815, p.3. 31. Scots Magazine, Sunday 1 January 1815, p.31. 32. NAS JC8/12/301. 33. Gatrell (1994); Evans (1996); Spierenburg (1984); Friedland (2014). 34. Gatrell (1994, p.250); McGowen (1994, pp.259-265); id. (2005, p.202). 35. Caledonian Mercury, Wednesday 20 April 1785, p.3. 36. Devereaux (2009, p.140). 37. Gatrell (1994, p.37). 38. For a widely-cited contemporary criticism see Fielding (1751, p.124). 39. Poole (2015, p.96). 40. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 8 June 1812, p.3. 41. Scots Magazine, Thursday 1 July 1813, pp.43-44. 42. NAS JC8/11/35. 43. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 20 February 1815, p.3. 44. Devereaux (2009, p.156). 45. For a discussion of the “carnivalesque” execution crowd, see Laqueur (1989). 46. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 1 June 1835, p.3. 47. Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 2 October 1830, p.3. 48. Morning Advertiser, Thursday 3 May 1838, p.1. 49. Devereaux (2009, p.156). 50. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 1 June 1835, p.3. 51. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 23 June 1806, p.3. 52. Aberdeen Journal, Wednesday 14 May 1828, p.4. 53. Laqueur (1989, p.332). 54. Fielding (1751, pp.121-127). 55. Gatrell (1994, p.250). 56. Note that the 1725 Disarming Act (11 Geo I c.26) stipulated that executions in Scotland could not be carried out within less than thirty days if the sentence was pronounced south of the River Forth and within less than forty days if pronounced north of the Forth. The 1752 Murder Act did not repeal this clause therefore all capitally convicted Scottish criminals had time to send petitions to London. 57. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 30 August 1819, p.3. 58. London Standard, Tuesday 8 April 1834, p.1. 59. TNA HO102/54/513. 60. TNA HO102/55/232. 61. Women made up a similarly low proportion of capitally convicted offenders in England. See King (2000, p.280). 62. Flanders (2011, p.166). 63. Morning Post, Wednesday 12 December 1821, p.3. 64. Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 3 March 1827, p.3. 65. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 23 June 1806, p.3. 66. Caledonian Mercury, Thursday 28 March 1839, p.3.

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67. Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 28 December 1811, p.3. 68. See Gatrell (1994, p.250). Similarly, Friedland explored the correlation between a fascination with executions in France but a revolution in sensibilities which meant that taking pleasure from the event was deemed to be inhuman. See Friedland (2014, p.143). 69. Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 1 November 1823, p.4. 70. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 5 June 1826, p.3. 71. Caledonian Mercury, Saturday 23 June 1827, p.3. 72. Caledonian Mercury, Monday 30 August 1819, p.3. 73. NAS JC13/82/60. 74. Scottish juries consisted of fifteen members and a verdict could be returned with a majority decision. In addition, those accused of murder could be found guilty only of “art and part” and, while these cases were relatively rare, they still carried a capital punishment, but those convicted were often subsequently pardoned. 75. NAS JC13/82/80. 76. Boyle (2011, pp.44-a45). 77. Poole (2008, p.172). 78. Fife Herald, Thursday 20 May 1841, p.4. 79. John O’Groat Journal, Friday 21 May 1841, p.2. 80. Fife Herald, Thursday 20 May 1841, p.4. 81. John O’Groat Journal, Friday 21 May 1841, p.2. 82. National Library of Scotland, Broadside entitled Execution shelf mark L.C.Fol. 74 (359a). 83. Emsley (2013, pp.265-267). 84. Gatrell (1994, p.544). 85. Ibid., p.103. 86. Note that the figure for the 1820s was 52 percent. 87. Riggs (2012). 88. Cockburn (1889, p.92). 89. Pratt (2002, p.19). 90. Poole (2015, p.98). 91. McGowen (1994, p.259); Bennett (2016, Ch.3). 92. Devereaux (2009, pp.145 &152). 93. Gatrell (1994, pp.589-591). 94. Poole (2015, p.76). 95. Emsley (2013, pp.265-267); Gatrell (1994, p.544); Bennett (2016, p.64).

ABSTRACTS

Early nineteenth-century Britain witnessed rising numbers of offenders facing capital punishment and a plethora of legal and public discourse debating the criminal justice system. This article will examine a distinct Scottish response to the problem in the form of crime scene executions. By the turn of the nineteenth century, it had long been the established practice of the Scottish courts to order that capitally convicted offenders would be executed at an established “common place”. However, between 1801 and 1841, the decision was taken to execute thirty-seven offenders at the scene of their crimes. This article argues that, in the face of an

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unprecedented number of offenders facing the hangman’s noose, the Scottish judges chose to exercise this penal option which had not been used to a similar extent since the mid-eighteenth century. In turn these events had a multiplicity of impact and provoked responses ranging from a morbid curiosity to witness the spectacle to anxiety and outright disdain at its intrusion into areas previously unsullied by the last punishment of the law.

La Grande-Bretagne du début du 19e siècle connut un nombre croissant de condamnés à mort et un débat public et juridique massif concernant le système pénal. Le présent article examine une réaction à cette question spécifique à l’Écosse, sous la forme de l’exécution sur les lieux du crime. Au tournant du 19e siècle, les tribunaux écossais avait établi de longue date la pratique selon laquelle les condamnés capitaux seraient exécutés dans un « lieu public » désigné. Cependant , entre 1801 et 1841, il fut décidé d’exécuter 37 condamnés sur les lieux de leurs crimes. Le présent article argue que, face à ce nombre sans précédent de criminels promis au gibet, les juges écossais décidèrent d’utiliser ce moyen, qui n’avait plus été employé à cette échelle depuis le milieu du 18e siècle. En retour, ces évènements eurent de multiples effets et provoquèrent des réactions allant de la curiosité morbide à l’observation de ce spectacle jusqu’à l’anxiété et le mépris affiché vis-à-vis de cette intrusion dans des lieux qui, jusqu’alors, avaient échappé à la souillure de l’ultime peine légale.

AUTHOR

RACHEL BENNETT

Rachel Bennett earned her PhD from The University of Leicester in 2016 with a thesis entitled “Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland 1740 to 1834”. It was part of a major research initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust entitled, Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. She is the author of the book chapter: “A Candidate for Immortality: Martyrdom, Memory and the Marquis of Montrose” in Shane McCorristine (ed), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and its Timings: When is Death? Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL - [email protected]

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Comptes rendus

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Interactions et relations d’interdépendance dans la formation de l’État moderne

Quentin Verreycken

RÉFÉRENCE

Antoine Follain, Blaison Barisel, le pire officier du duc de Lorraine, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2014, 288 pp. , ISBN : 978-2-343-04430-9. Marie Houllemare, Diane Roussel (Eds.), Les justices locales et les justiciables. La proximité judiciaire en France du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015, 278 pp. , ISBN : 978-2-7535-3995-2. Bruno Lemesle (Eds.), La dilapidation de l’Antiquité au XIXe siècle, Dijon, Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2014, 188 pp. , ISBN : 978-2-36441-084-8.

1 Depuis la seconde moitié du 20e siècle, l’historiographie s’est considérablement enrichie de travaux portant sur la genèse de l’État moderne. Les deux programmes de recherche menés de 1984 à 1993 au CNRS et à l’European Science Foundation (ESF) par Jean- Philippe Genet et Wim Blockmans ont contribué à éclairer les principaux auteurs ainsi que les différentes traditions ayant marqué l’historiographie de l’État moderne1. La plus connue d’entre elles est sans doute celle basée sur les travaux du sociologue allemand Max Weber. Les historiens qui s’inscrivent dans ce courant interprètent la genèse de l’État moderne comme le résultat d’un processus de monopolisation de la violence légitime par le pouvoir central et de bureaucratisation de ses institutions2. Une autre tradition, essentiellement suivie par des historiens de l’économie, met davantage l’accent sur la capacité de l’État moderne à imposer un monopole fiscal et un système de taxation régulier à l’ensemble de ses sujets3. Loin d’être incompatibles, ces deux courants historiographiques ont toujours été relativement proches, comme en témoigne la parution, en 1975, d’un monumental volume d’études dirigé par Charles Tilly, mêlant des approches historiques, sociologiques et économiques4. Dans la lignée

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de la pensée de l’historien allemand du début du 20e siècle Otto Hintze, l’élaboration par Michael Roberts et Geoffrey Parker du paradigme historique de la révolution militaire, ainsi que les travaux sociologiques du même Tilly, ont amené de plus en plus d’historiens à insister sur le rôle joué par la guerre et la compétition entre États dans le développement de structures bureaucratiques, la monopolisation de la fiscalité et de la violence légitime, ainsi que la création d’armées performantes (d’où l’émergence du concept de « fiscal-military State»)5.

2 Ces différentes traditions témoignent d’une certaine cohérence de l’historiographie dans la façon de caractériser la formation de l’État moderne : il s’agit avant tout d’insister sur un processus descendant (top-down) de centralisation des institutions et de renforcement de l’autorité de l’État central, au détriment des pouvoirs subalternes et locaux. Riche de problématiques issues à la fois des domaines de l’histoire, des sciences économiques et des sciences sociales (comme en témoigne un usage fréquent, dans les travaux, de définitions sociologiques des concepts d’institution ou d’agent6), cette vision « classique » de la modernisation de l’État fait pourtant, depuis quelques années, l’objet d’une réévaluation. Afin de nuancer l’idée de la formation de l’État moderne comme étant un processus purement descendant, se propageant du centre du pouvoir vers les bases, une série de recherches récentes insistent davantage sur le rôle joué par les pouvoirs locaux. Ainsi, le colloque intitulé Statebuilding from below : Europe 13001900, qui s’est déroulé à Ascona (Suisse) en septembre 2005, a dernièrement donné lieu à la publication d’un volume d’études important, dirigé par Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein et Jon Mathieu. Les auteurs y attirent l’attention sur le rôle joué par les assemblées d’états et les communautés dans ce qu’ils identifient comme une dynamique ascendante (bottum-up) d’« interactions d’émancipation » (empowering interactions) qui permettent à la société locale de recourir aux institutions et aux agents de l’État pour requérir l’un ou l’autre service ou imposer ses exigences. En retour, le pouvoir central se trouvait légitimé par cet appel fait à son autorité7. On retrouve finalement ici la notion d’« interdépendance » chère à la sociologie de Norbert Elias8. Cette interdépendance entre le pouvoir central et la base a été particulièrement bien mise en avant dans le domaine de la prise de décision législative ; les requêtes adressées au souverain et à ses institutions centrales jouant un rôle important dans l’élaboration de la législation9. En matière d’histoire de la justice, également, l’interprétation des relations entre centre et périphéries retient depuis plusieurs années l’attention de l’historiographie. Comment expliquer que, à la fin du moyen âge, une justice « taxatoire » privilégiant les arbitrages, les compositions et les peines d’amende, se soit progressivement transformée en une justice répressive, infligeant davantage des peines corporelles ?10 Pour certains auteurs, le renforcement concomitant du pouvoir central et de ses relais est une première explication : en se réservant le monopole de la grâce, le souverain moderne devient le seul à même d’octroyer le pardon et est ainsi en mesure de modérer la sévérité de ses officiers locaux. Se construirait dès lors l’image du roi miséricordieux opposée à celle d’une justice ordinaire plus répressive11. D’autres chercheurs soutiennent à l’inverse que, dans des sociétés particulièrement urbanisées, où les villes jouissent encore d’une certaine indépendance politique et judiciaire, à l’instar des anciens Pays-Bas, la priorité du pouvoir central aura plutôt été d’étendre au maximum sa juridiction, l’initiative de la répression judiciaire revenant aux autorités urbaines12.

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3 Au travers de la lecture de trois ouvrages récents, l’objectif du présent review essay est de mieux saisir cette relation d’interdépendance qui unit les différents niveaux de pouvoir et prend place au sein d’un certain nombre d’interactions entre individus, agents du pouvoir et institutions. Dirigé par Marie Houllemare et Diane Roussel, Les justices locales et les justiciables s’inscrit dans la continuité d’une historiographie qui tend à considérer les cours de justice comme des espaces d’interaction entre institutions et société, en se concentrant ici exclusivement sur le contexte français. Comme le soulignent les éditeurs en introduction, la distance entre justice et justiciable est un enjeu qui influence directement les pratiques sociales au sein des tribunaux, de même que la « distance institutionnelle » a directement un impact sur le recours à la justice. Par exemple, faire appel à la justice retenue du souverain, au travers d’une demande de grâce, s’avère beaucoup plus aisé quand le demandeur réside lui-même à proximité de l’institution chargée de recueillir la requête de pardon13. À l’inverse, la justice locale joue un rôle important sur le plan de la régulation sociale, tant les justiciables ont le plus souvent recours à celle-ci afin de régler des contentieux et des litiges privés14. En même temps, les justices locales souffrent généralement d’une mauvaise réputation, réelle ou fabriquée, auprès des institutions centrales : les abus nombreux, l’absence de personnel compétent, de même que leur trop grand complexité hiérarchique et juridictionnelle, justifient un certain nombre de réformes judiciaires au début des temps modernes. 4 La quinzaine de contributions que compte cet ouvrage collectif souligne cet équilibre fragile de la distance institutionnelle. D’un côté, les justiciables sont d’abord à la recherche d’une plus grande proximité judiciaire, puisqu’ils veulent avant tout bénéficier d’une justice locale à même de régler leurs conflits. De l’autre, cette complexité de l’organigramme judiciaire fait que le niveau local est très souvent le terrain d’une concurrence entre juridictions, qu’il s’agisse de la justice royale, seigneuriale ou urbaine. Cette concurrence ne se joue pas qu’au niveau local, mais également au plan des tensions entre centre et périphéries : les tentatives de réforme et de centralisation judiciaire au début des temps modernes occasionnent un certain nombre de tensions entre les justices locales et les institutions centrales, à commencer par la Chancellerie royale et le Parlement de Paris. Le choix de traiter de la justice locale au travers d’un ouvrage collectif rend bien entendu difficile le travail de synthèse, tant ce sont les particularismes locaux qui semblent d’abord apparaître au gré des différentes contributions. Aussi retiendra-t-on ici les conclusions fournies par Olivier Descamps en fin de livre. Elles soulignent que la question de la proximité judiciaire est, dans la France médiévale et moderne, une nécessité en même temps qu’un instrument de pouvoir. D’une part, réduire la distance entre le justiciable et les institutions royales est un devoir du souverain afin de garantir le droit des personnes lésées et préserver la paix. D’autre part, l’ascendance prise par la justice royale sur celle des villes et des seigneurs démontre le rôle fondamental des officiers royaux du prince, les baillis. Grâce au renforcement de la juridiction des baillages, la monarchie administrative parvint finalement à renforcer le lien entre les justiciables et le pouvoir royal. 5 La défaillance des institutions judiciaires fait l’objet du second ouvrage analysé ici. L’affaire de Blaison Barisel, le pire officier du duc de Lorraine, étudiée par Antoine Follain, présente un dossier exceptionnel. Une trentaine de documents décrivent, dans le détail, les investigations et la procédure judiciaire menée en 1573-1574 à Plombière, dans le

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duché de Lorraine, par Nicolas Rémy, lieutenant général au baillage de Vosges, contre Blaison Barisel, lieutenant du prévôt d’Arches et gouverneur de la localité. Commissionné par le duc de Lorraine Charles III pour enquêter sur une série de désordres survenus sur les lieux, Nicolas Rémy ne tarde pas à mettre au jour une véritable entreprise criminelle menée par Blaison Barisel : menaces, abus de pouvoir, racket, crimes sexuels, homicides, tels sont les crimes qui mèneront le petit officier local à être condamné à mort par décapitation, puis écartelé. Comme le souligne Antoine Follain, au-delà de l’intérêt micro-historique de cette procédure judiciaire particulièrement bien conservée, la richesse du procès Barisel réside également dans le contexte politique et institutionnel dans lequel il s’inscrit, celui de la Lorraine de la fin du 16e siècle. Sous le règne de Charles III, l’autorité de l’État princier se renforce considérablement, tandis que l’administration ducale se développe15. Parmi les agents du pouvoir ayant joué un rôle dans cette consolidations des institutions centrales, l’une des figures emblématiques de l’époque est précisément Nicolas Rémy, devenu procureur général de Lorraine en 1599. L’affaire Barisel servira véritablement de tremplin à la carrière de cet officier de justice ambitieux. En mettant fin aux malversations d’un lieutenant de prévôt corrompu et en lui infligeant des peines particulièrement lourdes, précisément parce que celui-ci a fait montre d’un comportement indigne de son office, Nicolas Rémy fait de ce cas une démonstration de procédure et de justice dont l’enjeu est l’affirmation d’une certaine éthique des agents de l’État, qui se doivent de montrer l’exemple à l’ensemble des sujets16. Le livre lui- même est le résultat d’un séminaire de master en histoire donné par Antoine Follain à l’Université de Strasbourg. On notera à cet égard quelques changements dans le style d’écriture ainsi que l’une ou l’autre formulation maladroite, scories probables de travaux d’étudiants. Malgré une enquête bibliographique poussée sur les institutions lorraines, rajoutons cette petite imprécision : l’auteur déplore, page 42, l’absence totale d’informations sur le prévôt des maréchaux lorrains pour le XVIe siècle. Deux ouvrages, certes anciens, y font pourtant clairement référence17. Malgré ces critiques, l’un des principaux intérêts du livre est qu’il ne se contente pas d’étudier dans le détail l’affaire Barisel et son contexte ; il en offre en effet, dans une annexe d’une centaine de pages, la transcription complète. 6 Si le contrôle renforcé des institutions locales par le pouvoir central paraît aller de pair avec la construction de l’État moderne, que se passait-t-il quand les institutions centrales, voire le souverain lui-même, se rendaient coupables de malversations ? Telle est la question abordée dans La dilapidation de l’Antiquité au XIXe siècle, ouvrage dirigé par Bruno Lemesle qui a pour mérite de combler un vide historiographique. Si la gestion des finances de l’État ainsi que les institutions chargées de contrôler les dépenses et les recettes intéressent les historiens depuis de nombreuses années18, l’histoire du concept-même de dépenses excessives n’avait jusqu’alors guère retenu l’attention des chercheurs. Il s’agit pourtant d’une notion fondamentale pour comprendre une certaine forme de rationalité interne à l’État. Saisir le sens donné à une certaine époque à la dilapidation permet de comprendre la logique qui sous-tend la gestion des ressources et des biens de l’État, car elle est le produit d’une certaine forme de gouvernement et de représentation du pouvoir. Ainsi les contributions de Sabine Lefebvre, Herman Kamp et Philippe Haugeard, démontrent comment, de l’Antiquité tardive jusqu’au XIIe siècle, les textes littéraires soulignent le besoin, pour les gouvernants et les élites aristocratiques, de se mettre en scène au travers de représentations fastueuses et de libéralités. Donner, et se donner à voir, au travers de

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cérémonies couteuses, apparaissent alors comme des moyens essentiels de se distinguer (au sens où l’entendait Pierre Bourdieu) et d’affermir son pouvoir. La « prodigalité du Prince » est alors bien considérée comme un moyen de gouvernement. 7 C’est principalement du monde ecclésiastique que seront formulées les premières critiques à l’égard du gaspillage. Dans le clergé régulier, d’une part, la culture monastique des Ve aux XIe siècles va valoriser l’administration collective des biens du monastère dans un but d’accroissement des ressources, au mépris des désirs individuels. Et, d’autre part, dans le clergé séculier, l’aliénation illicite des biens patrimoniaux de l’Église, dénoncée dès la fin de l’Antiquité, commencera à être fermement condamnée sous les pontificats d’Alexandre III (1159-1181) et Innocent III (1198-1216), soit à l’époque de l’affirmation de la souveraineté pontificale. Chez les laïcs, le besoin de mettre en place une bonne administration des biens publics apparaît dès le XIIe siècle dans le régime communal italien, tandis que des institutions de contrôle des finances sont progressivement mises en place à la fin du moyen âge. D’où l’apparition d’un certain nombre de tensions entre le chef de l’État et les membres de son administration. Les textes de Dominique Le Page et Sylvie Daubresse soulignent ainsi comment, dans le royaume de France au XVIe siècle, la Chambre des comptes et le Parlement de Paris doivent composer avec la personne du roi pour limiter l’aliénation du domaine royal à des fins financières et pour éviter la mise en place d’impôts extraordinaires excessifs. Les auteurs insistent aussi sur le développement, au sein des débats, de deux types de rhétorique : d’un côté, la « nécessité » royale d’obtenir rapidement des fonds en temps de crise et, de l’autre, l’argument juridique du bon respect des règles de droit, défendu par les officiers et les magistrats. La fin de l’Ancien Régime entraîne une séparation grandissante des pouvoirs et l’affirmation de l’autorité du Parlement. Sous la Restauration, ce dernier devient le lieu de débats visant à instaurer une meilleure administration de l’État. Mais les réformes mises en place trouvent rapidement leurs limites, tant les institutions s’avèrent réticentes à s’approprier l’outil comptable, tandis que, au sein du Parlement, la question budgétaire est rapidement instrumentalisée à des fins politiques. 8 En lisant entre les lignes (les auteurs n’insistent guère sur cette dimension), il apparaît donc que la bonne gestion financière est au cœur de la dynamique de bureaucratisation qui accompagne la formation de l’État moderne, tant les différentes institutions y trouvent un moyen de s’affirmer, en contradiction avec l’ancien modèle de gouvernement basé sur la prodigalité publique du Prince. Pour citer le titre de l’introduction de Bruno Lemesle, l’évolution du concept de dilapidation témoigne des « transformation d’une normativité » à la fois juridique, morale et politique. À cet égard, on pourra regretter que toutes les contributions n’insistent pas davantage sur la définition in casu à donner à la « dilapidation ». À partir de quand la dépense excessive devient-elle vraiment de la dilapidation ? Puisque ce concept semble véhiculer l’idée d’une certaine forme de transgression morale, peut-on dès lors parler véritablement de dilapidation en analysant, par exemple, des textes médiévaux qui érigent la manifestation sans limite de richesses en principe de gouvernement ? Ces questions auraient sans doute mérité des développements supplémentaires, d’autant que l’ouvrage pêche par l’absence d’une conclusion générale. 9 En définitive, bien que les trois ouvrages examinés ici abordent des objets de recherche différents, leur lecture nous semble apporter des éclairages pertinents sur le processus de formation de l’État moderne et bureaucratique. Ce processus ne saurait en effet se

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résumer à l’affirmation du pouvoir d’une autorité centrale. D’une part, en s’intéressant aux interactions entre individus, agents et institutions, ces livres invitent à sortir d’une interprétation purement top-down ou bottom-up de la construction de l’État, en insistant plutôt sur les liens d’interdépendance qui unissent centre et périphéries, institutions locales et institutions centrales. D’autre part, ils soulignent également que, au sein de ces cadres institutionnels, le contrôle ne s’exerçait pas que dans un sens. En effet, un meilleur contrôle des agents du pouvoir, particulièrement au niveau local, était une nécessité et, au niveau central, certaines institutions tentaient, sinon de limiter, au moins d’encadrer, le pouvoir du souverain.

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Blockmans, W., « Les origines des États modernes en Europe, XIIIe-XVIIIe siècles : état de la question et perspectives », in Visions sur le développement des États européens. Théories et historiographies de l’État moderne. Actes du colloque de Rome (18-31 mars 1990), Rome, École française de Rome, 1993, pp. 114.

Bonney, R. (Ed.), The rise of the fiscal State in Europe, c.1200-1815, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Bourguignon, M.-A., Dauven, B., et Rousseaux, X. (Eds.), Amender, sanctionner et punir. Histoire de la peine du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaire de Louvain, 2012.

Contamine, Ph. (Ed.), L’impôt au Moyen Âge. L’impôt public et le prélèvement seigneurial, fin XIIe – début XVIe siècle, 3 volumes, Paris, Ministère de l’économie et des finances. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2002.

Contamine, Ph., Mattéoni, O (Ed.), La France des principautés. Les Chambres des comptes 14e et 15e siècles : colloque tenu aux Archives départementales de l’Allier, à Moulins-Yzeure, les 6, 7 et 8 avril 1995, Paris, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1996.

Dean, D., Law-making and society in late Elizabethan England. The Parliament of England, 1584-1601, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Delmotte, F., « La sociologie de Norbert Elias », Cahiers philosophiques, 128, 1, 2012, pp. 42-58.

Downing, B. M., The military revolution and political change : origins of democracy and autocracy in early modern Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992.

Emirbayer, M., et Mische, A., « What is agency ? », The American Journal of Sociology, 103, 4, 1998, pp. 962-1023.

Follain, A. (Ed.), Contrôler et punir. Les agents du pouvoir, XVe-XVIIIe siècles, Dijon, Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2015.

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Gauvard, C., « Le roi de France et le gouvernement par la grâce à la fin du Moyen Âge : genèse et développement d’une politique judiciaire », in Millet, H. (Ed.), Suppliques et requêtes : le gouvernement par la grâce en Occident (XIIe-XVe siècle), Rome, École française de Rome, 2003, pp. 371-404.

Genet, J.-Ph., « La genèse de l’État moderne. Les enjeux d’un programme de recherche », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 118, 1997, pp. 3-18.

Glete, J., War and the state in early modern Europe. Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as fiscal-military states, 1500-1660, Londres, Routledge, 2002.

Holenstein, A., « Introduction : Empowering interactions : looking at statebuilding from below », in W. Blockmans, A. Holenstein, et J. Mathieu, (Eds.), Empowering interactions. Political cultures and the emergence of the State in Europe, 1300-1900, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 1-31.

Mathieu, I., Les justices seigneuriales en Anjou et dans le Maine à la fin du Moyen Âge, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011.

Lepage, H., « Les offices des duchés de Lorraine et de Bar », Mémoires de la Société d’archéologie lorraine, 19, 1869, pp. 289-291.

Lepage, H., Sur l’organisation et les institutions militaires de la Lorraine, Paris, Berger-Levrault, 1894, pp. 177-179.

Monter, W., A bewitched duchy : Lorraine and Its Dukes 1477-1736, Genève, Droz, 2007.

Nassiet, M., Musin, A., « L’exercice de la rémission et la construction étatique (France, Pays- Bas) », Revue historique, 661, 1, 2012, pp. 3-26.

Parker, G., La révolution militaire. La guerre et l’essor de l’Occident, 1500-1800, Paris, Gallimard, 1993.

Rauzier, J., Finances et gestion d’une principauté. Le duché de Bourgogne de Philippe le Hardi, 1364-1384, Paris, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1996.

Rousseaux, X., « Politiques judiciaires et résolution des conflits dans les villes de l’Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge. Quelques hypothèses de recherche », in Chiffoleau, J., Gauvard, C. et Zorzi, A. (Eds.), Pratiques sociales et politiques judiciaires dans les villes d’Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge, Rome, École française de Rome, 2007, pp. 497-526.

Rogers, C. J. (Ed.), The military revolution debate : readings on the military transformations of early modern Europe, Boulder, Westview, 1995.

Searle, J., « What is an institution ? », Journal of Institutional Economics, 2005, 1, 1, pp. 1-22.

Storrs, C. (Ed.), The fiscal-military state in eighteenth-century Europe. Essays in honour of P.G.M. Dickson, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009.

Tilly, C. (Ed.), The formation of national States in Western Europe, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975.

Tilly, C., Coercion, capital, and European States, AD 990-1992, Cambridge, Blackwell, 1992.

Van Dijck, M., « Towards an economic interpretation of justice ? Conflict settlement, social control and civil society in urban Brabant and Mechelen during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period », in van der Heijden, M., et al. (Eds.), Serving the urban community. The rise of public facilities in the Low Countries, Amsterdan, Aksant, 2009, pp. 62-88.

Van Krieken, R., « Social discipline and State formation : Weber and Oestreich on the historical sociology of subjectivity », Amsterdam Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 17, 1, 1990, pp. 3-28.

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NOTES

1. Blockmans (1993); Genet (1997). 2. Van Krieken (1990). 3. Bonney (1999). 4. Tilly (1975). 5. Downing (1992); Glete (2002); Parker (1993); Rogers (1995); Tilly (1992); Storrs (2009). 6. Sur ces concepts, voir Emirbayer et Mische (1998); Searle (2005). 7. Holenstein (2009, p.26): « There was a strong, empowering reciprocity between the use of state power embodied in officeholders and incorporated in state authorities by groups and members of local society, on the one hand, and the increased authority and legitimized power of the state, on the other hand ». 8. Delmotte (2012). 9. Dean (2002). 10. Bourguignon, Dauven et Rousseaux (2012). 11. Gauvard (2003). 12. Van Dijk (2009). 13. Nassiet et Musin (2012). 14. Rousseaux (2007); Mathieu (2011). 15. Pour plus de détails sur ce contexte institutionnel: Monter (2007). 16. Sur ces questions, on consultera également Follain (2015). L’ouvrage contient en outre un article du même auteur faisant la synthèse de l’affaire Barisel. 17. Lepage (1869, pp.189-291); Lepage (1894, pp.177-179). 18. Voir par exemple Contamine (2002) et Contamine et Mattéoni (1996). Pour les principautés bourguignonnes, on pourra également consulter Bartier (1955) et Rauzier (1996).

AUTEUR

QUENTIN VERREYCKEN

Aspirant F.R.S.-FNRS , Université catholique de Louvain/Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles - [email protected]

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Claude Gauvard, Andrea Zorzi (Eds), La vengeance en Europe XIIIe-XVIIIe siè cle, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015, 384 pp. , ISBN : 978-2-85944-891-2

James Sharpe

REFERENCES

Claude Gauvard, Andrea Zorzi (Eds), La vengeance en Europe XIIIe-XVIIIe siècles, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015, 384 pp. , ISBN : 978-2-85944-891-2

1 The theme of vengeance is one which runs through the history of crime, and of social relations in Europe more generally, from antiquity to the present day, and is one which is of special relevance to historians of violence. As well as the sometimes fascinating findings of research into individual case studies, the historical phenomenon of vengeance is enmeshed to in two broad themes. The first of these is the role of the state, and of how (to use Weberian terminology) the monopoly of physical violence achieved by the state has overcome old-style violence, a theme obviously also of relevance to Norbert Elias’s Civilizing Process, focussing as it does on the interplay between state formation and the internalization of more pacific norms, initially at least, among the elite. And it is this internalization of behavioural patterns that leads us to the second theme, pioneered by anthropologists working on the feud, that of the cultural significance of vengeance both to its practitioners and to the society in which they lived more generally.

2 The volume under review here makes an important contribution to our understanding of the history of vengeance, although, as its editors are aware, we are still a long way from a comprehensive history of the phenomenon. Gauvard and Zorzi’s collection arose

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from conferences at held between 2007 and 2009 at Paris, Pescara and Porquerolles, and the project was supported by L’Institut Universitaire de France, the Laboratoire de Médiévistique de Paris and the Department of Historical and Geographical Studies at the University of Florence. This support, and the imaginative approaches of the various authors, has brought together a collection of strong essays which open up a number of approaches to the study of the history of vengeance. There are sixteen essays and these are preceded by a brief introduction be Claude Gauvard and Andrea Zorzi, and rounded off by a suitable reflective conclusion by Aude Musin and Xavier Rousseaux. The essays come in a variety of languages (eleven in French, three in Italian, two in Spanish and one in English) and cover a variety of territories – Germany, the Low Countries, Spain and France – and draw on a wide range of sources – court records, notarial records, law treatises, and religious and other normative texts. 3 The net product of this is to produce a fascinating and thought-provoking collection, but the chronological, thematic and geographical range of the various essays taken together does make it a rather difficult work to review. Perhaps the most consistent of the themes is the degree to which traditions of vengeance were gradually brought under control, and ultimately eradicated by the processes of state formation, and the slow and usually imperfect replacement of traditions of private vengeance by the state legal systems. Early in the seventeenth century the English statesman, scientist and jurist Sir Francis Bacon described revenge as “a kind of wild justice”, a theme touched on by a number of contributors to this volume (perhaps most explicitly by Daniel Lord Smail), something which was seen as an essential mechanism for the righting of wrongs before the justice of the state evolved to a sufficient level to provide an equivalent level. What a number of the essays touch on is the way in which the state regulated vengeance as a means towards containing it – Aude Musin’s essay on developments in Namur between 1360-1555 mobilises some fascinating materials in an examination of this issue, while another angle is explored by Jörg Wettlaufer’s essay on the Urfehde, an oath of reconciliation or truce involving a renunciation of vengeance on the part of the oath-taker which lasted in Germany into the eighteenth century. This essay is also interesting in touching on broader cultural and social changes which might be interpreted as evidence of a “civilising process”. Another force for a softening of the recourse to vengeance was, of course, Christianity. Romans 12 :19 exhorted its readers to eschew revenge and put away wrath, reminding them that “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”, a text which could easily be mobilised in hopes of dissuading individual mortals from pursing vengeance. Two of the essays in this collection, from different ends of its chronological range, concern themselves with the impact of Christianity. Anna Benvenuti uses a number of devotional texts, including saints’ lives, to examine how the Christian message may have come across in the late middle ages, while Anne Bonson provides a close account of how Lazarists attempted to spread that message in rural France over the early modern period. And, for the eighteenth century, we encounter another ideological perspective with Michel Porret’s analysis of the interplay of ideas about vengeance between proponents of Enlightenment values and conservative judges. 4 A number of themes stand out as inviting further research. One of these is how acts of violence posited on vengeance were distinct from other violent acts. Smail, for example, argues that vengeance-directed violence had a rhythm very different from that of everyday brawls, while the contributions of other contributors address or signal the problem of how vengeance was connected to feuding, or to the duel. As Paulo

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Broggio makes clear, peace-making and reconciliations operated on both a private and official level, and the attempt by the state and the Roman Catholic Church to suppress duelling and other revenge practices in the face of a noble culture heavily dependent on a code of honour sometimes led to very interesting compromise solutions. And, ratchetting the scale of violence up a notch or two, Hervé Drévillon provides an excellent reminder that the theme of vengeance could run through warfare, one suspects in any period. 5 Overall, then, this is an excellent collection of essays which, despite the diversity of its subject matter, is very successful in raising, and illustrating, some important general issues of the history of vengeance. One hopes that it will encourage further research into the subject, not least in territories (Scotland would prove fruitful in this respect) whose experiences of vengeance and related matters are not touched upon in this volume.

AUTHORS

JAMES SHARPE

Department of History, University of York, UK - [email protected]

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Aline Helg, Plus jamais esclaves ! de l’insoumission à la révolte, le grand récit d’une émancipation (1492-1838), Paris, La Découverte, 2016, 422 pp. , ISBN : 9782707188656

Emmanuel Blanchard

RÉFÉRENCE

Aline Helg, Plus jamais esclaves ! de l’insoumission à la révolte, le grand récit d’une émancipation (1492-1838), Paris, La Découverte, 2016, 422 pp. , ISBN : 9782707188656

1 L’historiographie des abolitions de l’esclavage dans les Amériques est passée depuis deux décennies de l’accent placé sur les affranchissements (donc d’une focale mise sur les sociétés esclavagistes et les mouvements abolitionnistes en Europe et aux Etats- Unis) à celui posé sur l’émancipation, avec un regard porté sur les contributions des esclaves à leur propre libération. Ces capacités d’agir et cette histoire des esclaves, et non plus seulement de l’esclavage et de la traite, ont particulièrement été rendus accessibles à un large public par les travaux de Marcus Rediker, récemment traduits en français1 et non mentionnés dans la riche bibliographie (26 p.) du nouvel ouvrage de l’historienne suisse Aline Helg.

2 Cette omission n’est vraisemblablement pas un oubli mais tient sans doute au projet historiographique de l’auteure. Elle affirme en effet sa volonté de rompre avec « l’idéalisation de l’esclave révolté, voire révolutionnaire, tendant à privilégier le combat des hommes au dépens de celui des femmes et à sous-estimer les formes de lutte et de résistance moins manifestes grâce auxquelles l’immense majorité des esclaves avaient survécu et une minorité d’entre eux, dont de nombreuses femmes, s’étaient libérées » (p.23). La professeure à l’Université de Genève consacre certes deux

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chapitre sur dix à la révolution haïtienne et à ses « ondes de choc » (restituant au passage toute l’ambiguïté de l’action et des positions de Toussaint Louverture) et en propose un troisième, très éclairant, sur quelques révoltes majeures (Saint-John en 1733, Veracruz en 1735, la Jamaïque et Berbice au début des années 1760). Elle souhaite cependant avant tout insister sur le fait que la conspiration et la révolte furent « des stratégies exceptionnelles » (p.416), avant tout parce que la structure des opportunités et le coût du passage à l’acte les rendaient hautement improbables (voir infra). « Dans les faits » précise Aline Helg « “l’insolence des esclaves” se concrétisa rarement par des actes violents, au contraire de ce que laissaient supposer les craintes des esclavagistes » (p.147). Ainsi, une histoire mettant l’accent mis sur les révoltes violentes prolongerait la véritable crainte obsidionale d’un soulèvement des esclaves qui était au cœur de la culture politique des colons. Cette peur contribua à faire exister le mythe de l’avènement d’un « royaume noir » – récit colporté par nombre d’esclaves – qui adviendrait aux termes du massacre généralisé des populations blanches. Cette angoisse se matérialisa notamment dans des textes de droit : ainsi, « en 1686, l’Assemblée de la Jamaïque approuva un décret stipulant que, pour un ou des esclaves, « imaginer la mort d’une personne blanche était un crime passible de la peine de mort » ; dans les colonies britanniques, les codes noirs interprétèrent les crimes de « petite trahison » (désignant en Grande-Bretagne, par exemple, le meurtre d’un mari par sa femme ou celui d’un maître par son domestique) comme le meurtre de tout blanc par un noir, crime devant toujours être puni de la peine de mort (pp. 114-115). Au-delà de l’application de ces textes, l’historien et ardent défenseur de la traite Bryan Edwards notait dès 1793 que « dans les pays où l’esclavage est établi, le principe fondamental sur lequel le gouvernement se maintient est la peur : c’est-à-dire un sentiment de cette nécessité absolue de coercition, ne laissant aucun choix d’action, qui remplace et annule toutes les questions de droit » (cité p. 256). Aline Helg montre dans des pages très documentées comment ce gouvernement par la peur fut mis en œuvre dans une « orgie de feu, de sang et de tortures » qui s’abattait sur les esclaves osant défier collectivement l’ordre « plantocratique ». Ainsi, alors que l’abolition de la traite avait été proclamée par la Grande-Bretagne (1807) puis la France (1831), en une époque où les châtiments corporels tendaient à s’effacer en Europe, la rébellion baptiste de 1831-1832 à la Jamaïque fut encore réprimée par plus de 300 exécutions « légales » (et plusieurs centaines « extra-légales »), des expositions corporelles de pendus et de décapités, plus de 600 condamnations (hommes et femmes confondus) à des peines de 50 à 500 coups de fouet (p.359). Un siècle auparavant, ce type de peines et de châtiments pouvait même être appliqué pour de simples suspicions de soulèvement n’ayant pas connu le moindre début de mise en œuvre. Lors de la « conspiration d’Antigua » (1736), la justice s’incarna dans des décapitations, écartèlements, crémations, expositions des corps des leaders supposés. Au moins une soixantaine furent ainsi exécutés alors même que l’assemblée locale « devait indemniser les pertes imposées aux propriétaires » et dut pour ce faire contracter un emprunt » (p.134). 3 Les « coûts » d’une répression si féroce limitèrent parfois l’hybris des colons mais le prix à payer pour les esclaves insoumis était tel que les voies de la révolte ne furent généralement pas celles poursuivies par celles et ceux voulant améliorer leur condition personnelle. Aline Helg restitue ainsi différentes stratégies, en particulier le marronnage, l’achat de la liberté (avec de très belles pages sur les luttes pour le droit à un travail « pour soi » permettant d’obtenir au bout de très nombreuses années une manumission parfois étendue aux descendants) et l’engagement militaire. Ce dernier

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notamment était lié à des conditions historiques de division au sein du monde des colons. Ce dernier était scruté par des esclaves attentifs non seulement aux rapports de force locaux mais aussi aux évolutions politiques et législatives dans les métropoles ainsi qu’aux équilibres entre puissances. Cette circulation des informations et les manières dont elles purent être saisies firent de centaines de milliers d’esclaves d’authentiques acteurs du processus d’indépendances des États-Unis (chap. 5) ou des guerres d’indépendance de l’Amérique ibérique. Au-delà de la participation aux combats, ces situations de belligérance multipliaient les possibilités de prise de parole afin de négocier ou faire valoir un engagement. Plus jamais esclaves ! restitue un très riche répertoire d’action allant des pétitions individuelles ou collectives aux rassemblements, en passant par l’arrêt de travail ou le dépôt de plainte. Au tournant des 18e puis 19e siècles, les délégations d’« esclaves royaux » de Cuba envoyés à Madrid pour rappeler le roi d’Espagne à ses devoirs sont les exemples les plus frappants de ces capacités d’organisation fondés sur une ténacité et une pugnacité particulièrement remarquables (p.97). 4 L’ensemble de l’ouvrage relève de la synthèse (quelques sources imprimées sont cependant citées) de grande envergure d’une bibliographie en quatre langues (anglais, français, espagnol, portugais). Cet « inventaire analytique et critique » (p.363) se lit agréablement et enrichira considérablement les connaissances des non-spécialistes (tel l’auteur de ce compte rendu) intéressés par ces questions. En fonction de leurs centres d’intérêts, ils relèveront cependant des absences surprenantes : ainsi, pour la bibliographie en langue français, celles, par exemple, de Marcel Dorigny (sur l’abolitionnisme dans les colonies françaises et la révolution haïtienne) ou Jean- François Niort (sur le Code noir et son application) ne manqueront pas d’être relevées. Il ne s’agit pas de faire preuve de pointillisme mais de mettre en évidence que si l’ouvrage est particulièrement clair dans l’exposition de sa thèse centrale, il ne permet pas au lecteur de pleinement situer le cadre des controverses historiographiques et mémorielles qui traversent ce domaine d’étude. Pour ne citer qu’un exemple, l’auteure rappelle à plusieurs reprises que les esclaves étaient considérés comme des « biens meubles » ou des « choses meubles » (p.103). Elle suggère bien que leur « humanité » (notamment au travers du baptême, du mariage ou de l’affranchissement) pouvait aussi être prise en compte dans textes de droit et des pratiques coutumières, mais sans jamais insister sur ce paradoxe ni l’éclairer par les débats historiographiques actuels autour de la « commodification » des esclaves2. Ces limites à la déshumanisation juridique, aussi ténues furent-elles en certains contextes, ouvrirent pourtant un riche répertoire d’actions juridictionnelles et politiques qui est justement au cœur des capacités d’agir qu’Aligne Helg parvient à faire partager à ses lecteurs.

NOTES

1. Marcus Rediker, Les révoltés de l’Amistad. Une odyssée atlantique (1839-1842), Paris, Seuil, 2015 [2012]; id., À bord du négrier. Une histoire atlantique de la traite, Paris, Seuil, 2013 [2007].

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2. Pour une mise au point récente, voir par exemple Nicholas T. Rinehart, « The Man That Was a Thing: Reconsidering Human Commodification in Slavery », Journal of Social History, 2016, 50, 1, pp.28-50.

AUTEURS

EMMANUEL BLANCHARD

Centre d’histoire sociale du XXe siècle (CNRS-Université Panthéon Sorbonne) - [email protected]

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Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Jean- Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde ; de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris, PUPS, 2016, 414 p., ISBN : 979-10-231-0520-9

Clive Emsley

REFERENCES

Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde ; de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris, PUPS, 2016, 414 p., ISBN : 979-10-231-0520-9

1 Most people in the Anglo-Saxon world appear to believe that every French policeman is a gendarme in spite of the efforts that some of us have made to disabuse them of this. In England in particular, politicians, political commentators and many senior police officers since the end of the nineteenth century have continued to boast about having “the best police in the world” – a view that seems part of a sense of national superiority, or at best separateness, and has little regard for serious academic research into the history of British policing. So little regard in fact that there is no official policy on preserving any documents older than the last quarter of the twentieth century. The assumption appears to be that all British policing remains modelled on “the first modern police in the world”, namely London’s Metropolitan Police, and that the history is well-known and incontrovertible. The Metropolitan Police deposit with the National Archives many of their records, especially correspondence with the Home Office and papers dealing with what the weeders (themselves mainly ex-police) consider to be major crimes or “important”. In constrast, surviving Occurrence Books, Charge Books and other records from police stations are now difficult to access, having been deposited in “deep storage”. The archives of other forces – and there were more

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than 200 on the eve of the First World War – depend on the whims of chief constables and other senior officers. Relatively recently one provincial police superintendent had over 100 years of the records of a local police destroyed so as to “modernise” his office.

2 It might equally have been said that the history of the Gendarmerie nationale was well- known and incontrovertible, and that there was little point in preserving old bits of paper unless they had important signatures. But the corps has a pride in its history and, over the last fifteen years or so senior officers have been keen to link with academics to explore critically this history. Jean-Noël Luc has managed the purely academic side of this, organising international conferences, a major seminar at the Sorbonne and fostering the publication of two dozen books on different aspects of gendarmerie history. Les gendarmeries dans le monde, which he has co-edited with one of the earliest members of his academic team, extends the work to provide an awareness of over 100 different institutions across the world that can be considered, and consider themselves, as a form of gendarmerie. 3 This is not to say that the definition of a gendarmerie is simple. Luc is wary of the simple Anglo-Saxon usage of “paramilitary police” not least because it avoids the specific military nature of, at least, the Gendarmerie nationale. Rather he lists a string of elements that need to be considered for understanding forms of gendarmerie and police institutions, though this does not entirely resolve the issue of “this is a gendarmerie because I say it is.” 4 Houte and Luc provide a long introductory chapter surveying the international spread of institutions that can be considered, and considered themselves, as gendarmeries from the period of the French Revolution through to the early twenty-first century. Luc himself is responsible for a four-part appendix advising on future research and providing brief details of 122 gendarmeries, or gendarmerie-type institutions, with a slightly closer focus on 72 of these. In between the long and illuminating introduction and the useful and thought provoking appendices the book is divided into three sections. The first of these contains nine essays beginning with the Napoleonic gendarmerie itself and the shift from the Napoleonic corps in Italy to the Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali, both by acknowledged experts in the field – Aurélien Lignereux and Michael Broers – then on to the Hapsburg corps established in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848, and eastwards on to the Ottoman Jandarma. The section concentrates on the nineteenth century ; the geographic spread is impressive and the presentations are generally informative and perceptive, which makes it rather unfair to quibble over the content. It might, however, have been useful to have had something on one or more of the German gendarmeries ; for example, something addressing the kind of relationship that was allowed to develop between industrialists and those who ran the Prussian Gendarmerie in the Ruhr and which was touched on in Ralph Jessen’s book Polizei im Industrierevier, now nearly 20 years old. 5 The middle section focuses on gendarmeries in the wider world from roughly the mid- nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. States commonly looked to see how they might glean something from the institutions of their contemporaries regarding administration and organisation. Even states that had avoided European colonisation looked to European powers to provide men to organise bodies like their armies and gendarmeries. Denmark was not noted for having a significant gendarmerie though it did experiment with such a force on and off during the nineteenth century ; yet Søren Ivarsson shows here how Danish military officers were appointed to lead the Royal

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Gendarmerie of Siam in its various tasks of bringing security to the provinces and establishing the authority and physical presence of the state. Stephanie Cronin describes the authorities in Iran, caught between the imperial machinations of the British and the Russians, seeking Italian carabinieri for similar tasks. The Italians refused, and the Iranian Gendarmerie finished with officers from neutral Sweden. 6 The third section principally explores the roles of different gendarmeries in colonisation and decolonisation. The Francophone experience figures extensively here with chapters on Cameroon, Mauritania, Vietnam and post-independence Algeria. Chapters by François Godicheau and Toshihiko Matsuda on, respectively, Spain’s Guardia Civil and the Japanese Kempeitai are especially interesting for showing how overseas conflict can, through participation, help to reshape the tasks and behaviour of institutions on their home territory. 7 The eleven chapters that constitute the middle and third sections provide much of the most novel content in this collection but overall the book presents a series of valuable and stimulating surveys of recent research on the gendarmerie style of policing and offers a number of pointers towards what might be done in the future. It is a useful addition to the history of police institutions, illustrative of how far their role extends beyond crime fighting and how broad and complex can be the issues of establishing and maintaining order.

AUTHORS

CLIVE EMSLEY

(Professor Emeritus), Open University - [email protected]

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Livres reçus

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Livres reçus Books received

Dyjak Aurélien, Tueurs en série.L’invention d’une catégorie criminelle (Préface de L. Mucchielli, Postface d’A. Bouvier), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016, 313 p., ISBN 978-2-7535-5059-9 Freundschuh Aaron, The courtesan and the gigolo. The murders in the rue Montaigne and the dark side of empire in nineteenth-century Paris, Stanford (Cal.), StanfordU.P., 2017, 258 p., ISBN 978-1-5036-0082-9 Halperin David M. & Hoppe Trevor (ed.), The War on Sex, Duke University Press, 2017, 512 p., ISBN 978-0-8223-6367-5. Lignereux Aurélien, (Dir.), Ordre, sécurité et secours en montagne. Police et territoire (XIX e- XXIe siècles) , Grenoble, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2016, 246 p., ISBN 9-782706-125690 Piazza Pierre, Un oeil sur le crime. Naissance de la police scientifique, Bayeux, OREP Editions, 2016, 80 p., ISBN 978-2-8151-0343-5 Strange Carolyn, Discretionary justice. Pardon and parole in New York from the revolution to the depression, New York, New York University Press, 2016, 323 p., ISBN 978-1-4798-9992-0 Strevens Summer, The Yorkshire witch. The life and trial of Mary Bateman, Barnsley, Pen & Sword History, 2017, 146 p., ISBN 978 1 47386 387 3 Vaughan David J., Mad or bad. crime and insanity in Victorian Britain, Barnsley, Pen & Sword History, 2017, 187 p., ISBN 978 1 47386 413 9

Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, Vol. 21, n°1 | 2017