My youngest said the cover looked "cheezy". Like a romance novel. She's right.

However, in the historical notes, Cornwell offers these facts.

"Thus, between 1816 and 1820, when 518 executions took place in England and Wales (Scotland had different laws) there were actually 5833 sentences of death passed.
What accounts for this enormous discrepency? Mercy? It was not a meciful age. Instead the figures betray a cynical exercise of social control. The friends and relatives of the person condemned to death would invariably petition the crown (which meant the Home Secretary) and they would do thier utmost to secure the signatures of prominent members of society, such as aristocrats, politicians, or senior churchmen...
Thus were bonds of subservient gratitude forged."

Italics mine.

More numbers.....

"...(between 1805 and 1832 there were 102 executions in England and Wales for rape and 50 for sodomy). Most executions were for robbery (938 between 1805 and 1832) with murder the second most common capital offence (395 cases) In all there were 2028 executions in England and Wales between 1805 and 1832, and the victims included women and at least one child as young as fourteen."

And, in the story, a character had this neat assesment of the situation:

" 'The gallows is there, Captain, and we live with it till we die on it, and we won't change it because the bastards don't want it changed. it's thier world not ours, and they fight to keep it the way they want. They kill us, they send us to Australia or else they break us on the treadmill, and you know why? Because they fear us. They fear we'll become like the French mob. They fear a guillotine in Whitehall and to keep it from happening they build a scaffold in Newgate.' "

Newgate being one of the places in London where prisoners were hung.

It's put me to mind, in our system, how much of our laws are related to order and good government and how many are related to keeping the guillotine from Parliament hill.

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

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"Thus, between 1816 and 1820, when 518 executions took place in England and Wales (Scotland had different laws) there were actually 5833 sentences of death passed.
What accounts for this enormous discrepency? Mercy? It was not a meciful age. Instead the figures betray a cynical exercise of social control.

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If this topic and period interest you, I recommend reading the Canadian historian Douglas Hay, who's written a lot about the history of punishment, especially the death penalty. Very readably, too.

I wish I remembered the name of the book, but there was one that detailed what happened to the Rebels after 1837. However, like most of them I transported the book to a friend in Australia, and have forgotten both title and author.

And, any good book on the Tolpuddle Martyr's will give one an overview of 19th century British law.

Edited to add:

Did you know that "privilege" means, literally, "private law"?

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

I also don't know why I insist on adding the letter "d" to privelege.

I've unlearned that habit several times now.

Next time you are in a book store, read the prologue to "Gallows Thief". I think it's something everyone should read.

Oh, forgot a macabre personal annectdote.

London's "Eldon House", a Victorian mansion restored to period authenticity, had for many years the back half of a skull in a box on a side board. It belonged to, if not the last man to be hung in London, one of the condemned. They used to display it to school children paraded through on class trips. You were allowed to handle the skull. It looked and felt to my young hands that it had been given a coat of varnish at one time. Instead of bleached, it had a brownish hue and was shiny. That could have been from so much handling though.

A few years ago, a decendant of the person who supplied the skull asked for it to be returned to the grave with the rest of the body, which it was.

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

In my first highschool year we used to injest a specific ergot-based compound and explore the abandoned Sir Adam Beck house and grounds for hours. The same grey bricked monolith that haunted the earliest memories of my childhood. Now, as you probably know, it's been entirely gutted and sndblasted back to the original yellow and only the rear quarter remains as a showpiece, to which the current condominiums are attached. It lives on as just a shell of its former creepiness. The 'SirAdam Beck' and the tunnels under the forks that extend for a long long ways beneath the city from the forks themselves. Exploration of the latter accompanied by various obligatory spacial and sensory distortions of said ergot-based compounds, provided me with the otherwise absent 'rites of passage' that all growing boys need and naturally are in perpetual search of.

The forks: the former indiginous inhabitants of what is now London refered to the river as 'the antlered river'.

[ December 02, 2002: Message edited by: flotsom ]

As for London nomenclature, I'd love to have it reviewed. "Antlered River" would suit me fine for a name.

So.........

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...including the grave of the infamous "Peg leg Pete." His execution was precident setting, as afterwards hanging a man with a wooden leg became proscribed.

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No one in the least bit curious as to why you can't hang a man with a wooden leg?

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Rob Ramage and Brad Marsh

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Aren't they both hockey players? Their names are really familiar that's fer darned sure. I'm flashing on the time I was hitchhiking over the Malahat and the guy driving turns to me and says "Oh, by the way...my name's Moonrat."

I must have heard that name over a thousand times when I was a young teen: as most Londoners of our overlapping vintage should know, that name is legendary. Like 'Frank Rogue' alias Raymond Roberts is legendary or Bisset. I've been told that more in your time London was still pretty wild.

[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: flotsom ]

Its just that TommyP is such a didact he probably doesn't need any encouragement to tell us about Peg-leg Pete.

Oh I just got the "Slippery" reference. The damn seal.

[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

Did ya hear about the guid Scots wyf who admonished her husband to climb the scaffold and "Do as the laird bid ye"? I read that in Carlyle somewhere. Folks had different ideas about rights and obligations in them days.

And between 1805 and 1840, getting transported to Australia was apparently considered as severe a punishment as hanging, considering peoples' reactions to the idea.

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I always thought the little guy made it much further but apparently he was captured near Sandusky OH.

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He was destined to be caught anyway.

That seal was fated.

Ramage and Marsh, when members of the London Knights, talked about adventures in Byron's underground.

So, how much different is our present system than that of England and Wales circa 1820?

Less barbaric, surely.

But, don't we still go through the forging of subservient gratitude when we know that if we pay the right price to the legal establishment, our sentences will be mitigated?

Gallows humour: A condemned man, being directed by the hangman onto the gallows was said to have paused and asked "Is it safe.....?"

More London esoterica.

Dr. Tomas Cream probably committed his first murder here, an abortion gone wrong in his London office. For some reason, Cream was never charged, but left town.

He went on to become a serial murderer of women. His chosen method was poisoning. For some time, Cream was a suspect in the "Jack the Ripper" murders, but upon closer examination, the evidence would seem to exclude him as a serious candidate.

In Ray Frazakas' book "The Donelly Album" (the best, and perhaps only serious work on "The Black Donellys", there is mention of a meeting between Cream and the Donelly matriarch.

Didact? Me? How dare you sir. Pistols at dawn.

[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: TommyPaineatWork ]

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Its just that TommyP is such a didact he probably doesn't need any encouragement to tell us about Peg-leg Pete.

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And between 1805 and 1840, getting transported to Australia was apparently considered as severe a punishment as hanging, considering peoples' reactions to the idea.

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I even saw a rack! and those things they used to clamp on a limb (or little ones for fingers) and tighten everyday until you gave up whatever they wanted. All kinds of amazing technology all designed to inflict the greatest amount of pain for the longest possible duration...egad.

I also went on a Ghost tour of Edinburgh and heard some ghastly stories of public executions and tortures and stuff.

It's all kinda spooky and strange to think about it now, but if I try to remember that they're not just stories, it's so horrid and gory.