One hundred years ago An Under-Sheriff of London and Middlesex,
writing to • Wednesday's Times, makes the occasional awkward- ness of the hangman, and the conse- quent suffering of the victim, a plea for abolishing capital punishment altoget- her. A plea it may be, but it is a very, very weak one. These sensational scenes, seldom more than a few seconds in dura- tion, are most repulsive, and most un- fortunate in their general effect; but you might just as well determine the rightness or wrongness of war by the in- cidental horrors of a battlefield, and the rightness or wrongness of using wood in housebuilding by the incidental horrors of a great fire, as determine such a ques- tion as capital punishment by arguments of this class. If capital punishment is right, it is right because it alone ex- presses adequately the horror of the community for a special class of crimes, and because it alone inspires a certain exceptional awe and dread in the minds of brutal men.
Spectator, 8 December 1883
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