Abstract
Death by execution was the standard punishment for treasonable and felonious crime in eighteenth-century Ireland. Women who were guilty either of petit treason, of which viricide and murdering one’s master were prime examples, or ‘barbarous murder’ (a serious felony, which embraced infanticide) were liable to be sentenced to death by burning.1 Persons of either gender who refused to plea (‘standing mute’ in contemporary parlance) in cases of felony could be subjected to the sanction of peine forte et dure, or pressing to death. But the usual mode of administering a capital sentence was by hanging. In this respect Ireland conformed to the pattern of early modern Europe, where, in the words of Pieter Spierenburg, hanging was ‘the standard non-honourable form of the death penalty’.2 Moreover, there was no acknowledged alternative since, unlike jurisdictions that practised decapitation or, as in revolutionary France, where decapitation (by guillotine) was normative, deprivation of life by decapitation was not available to the judges who handed down the punishments administered to those found guilty of a capital offence in Ireland.3 This is not to imply that the decapitation of offenders (and the time-honoured practice of displaying heads) was no more: judges were authorised to direct that heads should be struck off postmortem and publicly displayed in respect of offenders deemed guilty of ‘barbarous murder’, and this sanction was appealed to across the century in cases of this kind.4
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Notes
See James Kelly, ‘Responding to Infanticide in Ireland, 1680–1820’, in Elaine Farrell (ed.), ‘She said she was in the Family Way’: Pregnancy and Infancy in Modern Ireland (London, 2012), pp. 189–204, for a consideration of the application of the sanction of death by burning to women responsible for infanticide; Everyman his own Lawyer, or a Summary of the Laws now in Force in Ireland (Dublin, 1755), pp. 346–7; Taylor to Perceval, 20 January 1731, Egmont papers, British Library (BL), Add. MS 46982 f. 1. It is pertinent also to mention that it was confidently maintained in England that it was the practice in Ireland to strangle female offenders before burning. There is evidence in the contemporary Irish record from the 1770s and 1780s to support this claim, but not the additional assertion that it was only clothing that was burned since the bodies of female offenders were spirited away for burial ‘before the blaze touches the body’: Finn’s Leinster Journal, 18 September 1773; Hibernian Journal, 23 October 1776, 23 August 1784; Dublin Evening Post, 22 March 1783; Freeman’s Journal, 22 March 1783; Simon Devereaux, ‘The Abolition of the Burning of Women in England Reconsidered’, Crime, History and Societies 9 (2005), 73.
Pieter Spierenburg, ‘The Body and the State: Early Modern Europe’, in Norval Morris and D. J. Rothman (eds), The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (Oxford, 1995), p. 54.
James Kelly, ‘Capital Punishment in Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland’, in Serge Soupel (ed.), Crime et Chatiment dans les Isles Britanniques au Dix-Huitieme Siecle (Moscow and Paris, 2001), pp. 155–72.
James Kelly, Gallows Speeches from Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 2001). It must be added that the practice of delivering last speeches was not abandoned. Some of those sentenced to die at the gallows continued to deliver formal speeches, and that a handful were published in the press: see Ennis Chronicle, 27 September 1792, 8 October 1792, and Cork Advertiser, 24 March 1812 for examples.
Neal Garnham, The Courts, Crime and the Criminal Law in Ireland, 1692–1760 (Dublin, 1996), p. 25.
For London, see Simon Devereaux, ‘Recasting the Theatre of Execution: The Abolition of the Tyburn Ritual’, Past and Present 202 (2009), 128–74.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London, 1977); Devereaux, ‘Recasting the Theatre of Execution’, 31; Brian Henry, The Dublin Hanged: Crime, Law Enforcement and Punishment in Late Eighteenth-Century Dublin (Dublin, 1994); Devereaux, ‘The Abolition of the Burning of Women in England Reconsidered’, fn. 20.
See James Kelly, ‘Irish Protestants and the Irish Language in the Eighteenth Century’, in James Kelly and Ciarán MacMurchaidh (eds), Irish and English: Essays on the Irish Linguistic and Cultural Frontier, 1600–1900 (Dublin, 2012), pp. 189–217.
For the most recent, and comprehensive, engagement with the latter subject see Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, ‘The Legal System in Ireland and the Irish Language, 1700-c.1843’, in Michael Brown and S. P. Donlon (eds), The Laws and other Legalities of Ireland, 1689–1850 (Farnham, 2011), pp. 325–58.
This observation, proffered by Revd John Milner in 1808—An Inquiry into Certain Vulgar Opinions concerning the Catholic Inhabitants of Ireland (London, 1808), p. 74—receives modern corroboration from V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1994), p. 8; and S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660#–1760 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 224–5; S. J. Connolly, ‘Albion’s Fatal Twigs: Justice and Law in the Eighteenth Century’, in Rosalind Mitchison and Peter Roebuck (eds), Economy and Society in Ireland and Scotland 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 118–19. See also J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 410–11, and Garnham, Crime, Courts and the Law, pp. 158–64.
D. W. Hayton and James Kelly, ‘The Irish Parliament in European Context: A Representative Institution in a Composite State’, in D. W. Hayton, James Kelly and John Bergin (eds), The Eighteenth-Century Composite State: Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689–1800 (Basingstoke, 2010), pp. 3–20.
James Kelly, Poynings’ Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin, 2007), offers a detailed examination of the role of the British Privy Council in the making of Irish law.
Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishment (Dublin, 1777). The original work was published in Italian in 1764.
James Kelly, ‘Infanticide in Eighteenth Century Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, 18 (1992), 5–26; idem, ‘The Abduction of Women of Fortune in Eighteenth-century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 9 (1994), 7–43; idem, ‘A Most Inhuman and Barbarous Piece of Villainy’: An Exploration of the Crime of Rape in Eighteenth-century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 10 (1995), 78–107; idem, ‘Suicide in Eighteenth-century Ireland’, in James Kelly and Mary Ann Lyons (eds), Death and Dying in Ireland, Britain and Europe (Dublin, 2013), pp. 95–142.
See J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland, 1686–91 (London, 1969);.
Colm Ó Conaill, ‘The Irish Regiments in France: An Overview of the Presence of Irish Soldiers in French Service, 1716–91’, in Eamon Maher and Grace Neville (eds), France and Ireland: Anatomy of a Relationship (Frankfurt, 2004), pp. 327–42; Eamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685–1766 (Dublin, 2000), Ch. 2.
James Kelly, ‘Disappointing the Boundless Ambitions of France’: Irish Protestants and the Fear of Invasion, 1661–1815’, Studia Hibernica 37 (2011), 39–50.
John Ainsworth (ed.), Inchiquin MSS (Dublin, 1963), pp. 39–40.
Connolly, ‘Albion’s Fatal Twigs’, 118; S. J. Connolly, ‘Law, Order and Popular Protest in Early Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Case of the Houghers’, in P. J. Corish (ed.), Radicals, Rebels and Establishments (Belfast, 1985), pp. 51–68.
Arch Elias (ed.), Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington (London, 1997), p. 716; Universal Advertiser, 12 May, 2 June, 11 September 1753, 2, 5, 19 April 1757; Pue’s Occurrences, 26 March, 19 April 1757.
See Patrick Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience: A Historical Survey (Dublin, 1985);.
J. S. Donnelly, ‘The Whiteboy Movement, 1761–5’, Irish Historical Studies 22 (1978–9), 20–55.
Donnelly, ‘The Whiteboy Movement’, 20–55; James Kelly (ed.), ‘The Whiteboys in 1762: A Contemporary Account’, Journal of the Cork Archaeological and Historical Society 94 (1989), 19–26.
See T. M. Devine, ‘Unrest and Stability in Rural Ireland and Scotland, 1760–1840’, in Peter Roebuck and Rosalind Mitchison (eds), Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland, 1500–1939 (Edinburgh, [1988]), pp. 126–39; J. S. Donnelly, ‘The Whiteboys of 1769–76’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 83 (1983), 293–331; J. S. Donnelly, ‘The Whiteboy Movement, 1785–88’, Studia Hibernica 17 and 18 (1977–8), 120–202.
Henry, Dublin Hanged, pp. 16, 23–5; John Carr, The Stranger in Ireland (London, 1806), pp. 116–19. For the same process, which was pursued with the same purpose shortly afterwards in London, see Devereaux, ‘Recasting the Theatre of Execution’, 128–74.
J. D. H. Widdess, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland 1654–1963 (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 38–9; A. C. B. Hooper, ‘Dublin Anatomy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Dublin Historical Record 40 (1987), 126, 130–1.
Vincent Morley, Irish Opinion and the American Revolution 1760–83 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 90–5, 127–9, 181–3, 252–7; M. J. Powell, ‘Ireland’s Urban Houghers: Moral Economy and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Michael Brown and S. P. Donlon (eds), The Laws and other Legalities of Ireland, 1689–1850 (Farnham, 2011), pp. 231–53.
Ennis Chronicle, 12 July 1790.
Kyla Madden, Forkhill Protestants, Forkhill Catholics (Liverpool, 2005), pp. 1–3.
MacDonagh, The Inspector General: Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, pp. 42–148; Kelly, ‘Transportation from Eighteenth-Century Ireland’, p. 125; Bob Reece, The Origins of Irish Convict Transportation to New South Wales (Basingstoke, 2001).
David Miller, Peep O’Day Boys and Defenders: Selected Documents on the Disturbances in County Armagh, 1784–1796 (Belfast, 1990); Thomas Bartlett, ‘Defenders and Defenderism in 1795’, Irish Historical Studies 24 (1984–5), 373–81; Jim Smyth, The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth Century (London, 1992).
Liam Chambers, Rebellion in Kildare 1790–1803 (Dublin, 1998), p. 37; Walkers Hibernian Magazine 2 (1795), 354. By contrast, Patrick Hart, who was executed in front of Newgate Gaol, Dublin, was interred in the inner yard of the prison: Freeman’s Journal, 22 March 1796.
Thomas Bartlett, The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 (Dublin, 1992), p. 226.
Nancy Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791–98 (Oxford, 1994), p. 147.
A. T. Q. Stewart, The Summer Soldier: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down (Belfast, 1998), pp. 39–43; Walkers Hibernian Magazine 4 (1787), 467; P. Power, ‘A Carrickman’s Diary, 1787–1809’, Journal of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society 15 (1912), 127–8.
R. B. McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution, 1760–1801 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 675–7; Michael Duffy, ‘War, Revolution and the Crisis of the British Empire’, in Mark Philip (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991), p. 140; McCabe, ‘A Small Expense of Blood’, pp. 67–9, 74, 319.
Daniel Gahan, The People’s Rising: Wexford 1798 (Dublin, 1995), pp. 241–2.
R. R. Madden, Revelations of Ireland in the Past Generation (Dublin, 1848), p. 126.
E. Gillet (ed.), Elizabeth Ham by Herself, 1783–1820 (London, 1945), p. 75.
Terry Dooley, The Murders at Wildgoose Lodge: Agrarian Crime and Punishment in Pre-Famine Ireland (Dublin, 2008). According to William Carleton, the landscape of county Louth was ‘studded with gibbets’: see D. J. O’Donoghue (ed.), The Life of William Carleton, being his Autobiography and Letters (Dublin, 1894), p. 134. I wish to thank Professor Sarah Tarlow for the latter reference.
Sir Thomas Bond, Hints tending to Increase the Wealth and Promote the Peace and Welfare of the Irish Nation (Dublin, 1803), p. 19.
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Kelly, J. (2015). Punishing the Dead: Execution and the Executed Body in Eighteenth-Century Ireland. In: Ward, R. (eds) A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse. Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444011_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137444011_2
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