BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Criminal Law
r. History of English. Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750. By Leon Radzinowicz. With a Foreword by the Rt. Hon. ' I Lord Macmillan. (Stevens. £3 10s.) THIS book compels a kind of 'awed admiration. There has certainly been nothing like it before in the history of the criminal law. It is the-first volume of a work designed to record the development of English criminal law from 1750 down to modern times. The patient And extensive research is apparent on every page, and if the further volumes equal this one in knowledge and interest, it is quite clear that an outstanding contribution of the highest permanent value will have been made to the history of law and the history of thought.
; The book is published under the auspices of the Pilgrim Trust, And never was money more wisely expended. It is not so much a history of criminal law as a social history of the eighteenth century. Thackeray said of Macaulay that " he read twenty books to write a sentence, and travelled a hundred miles to make a line of description." Dr. Radzinowicz must surely outrival Macaulay. Five years ago he announced that he had consulted 1,25o reports of commissions and committees of enquiry, 3,000 accounts and papers, Boo annual reports, and r,roo volumes of Parliamentary reports. He has also read the works of British and foreign authors who have written on criminology, as well as historical and popular literature, contemporary newspapers and periodicals and pamphlets. The extraordinary thing is that with such a wealth of material thd narrative is never over- whelmed. This is due, in some measure, to his complete •mastery of English. He is a Pole by birth and an Englishman by naturalisa- tion, and he pays tribute to his wife's "acute feeling for the idiom of our adopted language," but it must be a very long time since such prose was written on such a theme. But apart from the dii- unction of the writing, the way the material is handled contributes much to the lucidity of the book. To write of capital punishment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to trace the growth of ideas of reform, necessitated the quoting of many statutes, some Of the most technical character, and references to Parliamentary debates, decided cases, the views of judges and historians, pamphlets and periodicals, and the journalism of the day. This is done with great skill. One illustration must suffice.
When discussing that most remarkable Act of Parliament—the Waltham Black Act of 1722—which Dr. Radzinowkz calls the " ideological index " to the large body of laws based on the death penalty which were in force in England at that time, the learned author makes it the occasion for a most erudite and fascinating dis- cussion of the whole policy of penal legislation. No one single Act contained so many offences for which death was the penalty without benefit of clergy. It was enough apparently for a man to appear With his face blacked, or otherwise disguised, in a forest where deer have usually been kept, to receive the punishment of death upon his conviction. But as the narrative proceeds, the eye is taken by a series of footnotes. One deals with the comments of Blackstone and the criminal activities of the famous band of Roberdstnen or followers of Robert, or Robin Hood. Another makes a charming reference to Gilbe.rt White of Selborne, which leads on to a reference to Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals and letters in the Gentleman's Magazine of 18oz dealing with the animated address at Clarissa to Lovelace where she refers to " Waltham disguises." But there is no danger of surfeiting with too much. The eye comes back to the text, and the narrative becomes all the more absorbing.
The administration of the many statutes imposing the death penalty is discussed with a wealth of learning, and it is to be hoped that the members of the Royal Commission on the Death Penalty, recently set up, will have the advantage of the material contained in this book. It is interesting to' observe the methods by which the rigours of the law were mitigated before the reform of the law took place—the commutation of the death sentence by the Crown, the habit of juries to understate the value of stolen property, and, most interesting of all, the insistence on the strict observance of all formalk- ties. The remarkable cases cited by Dr. Radzinowicz make curious reading today. John Taylor, for example, was convicted by the jury of uttering a forged note in the name of Bartholomew Browne. Baron Hotham was about to put on his black cap and to pass sentence of death when a barrister in Court happened to pick up the note and saw that it was signed Bartw. Browne. He pointed this out to the prisoner's counsel, who stood up and submitted that the variation was fatal to the indictment. Baron Hotham concurred, and the prisoner was discharged.
The publication of this work could not be more opportune. On December 27th last, large sections of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 came into operation, after debates in both Houses of Parliament which showed how deep was the public interest in all matters affect- ing the administration of the criminal law.: Dr. Radzinowicz dis- cusses the problems of punishment, and traces the currents of thought which prevailed, while the work of the great reformers—:, Eden, Romilly, Bentham, Peel and many others—is set out with great understanding. The case of Dr. Dodd, in which Dr. Johnson took so prominent a part, is given a chapter to itself. It greatly: stirred the public conscience, and in the most sensational way raised the question of the justice of the death/ penalty for all the offences
for which it .was then appointed. • - A particularly grim section of the book deals with the execution of capital sentences, the scenes at Tyburn, the burning of women convicted of treason, the dreadful punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering, and the grimness of the task does not deter Dr, Radzinowicz from his accustomed thoroughness. It is impossible to do justice to this vast and learned work within the compass of a short review, but Dr. Radzinowicz may be well assured that his great labours will not fail of their reward. This book is not only scholarly and learned • it is more interesting than any novel ; and it will be read by all who are concerned with the history of their country.
NORMA/,,I Bnutyrr.
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