The Legacy of World War I Court Martial in Interwar Death Penalty Writing

Ebury, Katherine

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-52750-1_7

Katherine Ebury³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights ((PSLCHR))

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the trauma of the death penalty alongside war trauma, building on Christie Davies’s suggestion that the reform and repeal of military and civilian capital punishment ought to be studied together. The 1920s and 1930s saw a cultural processing of the effect of the uniquely widespread use of the military death penalty by British forces during World War I, spurred in particular by A. P. Herbert’s novel The Secret Battle (1919); throughout the interwar years, forms of death sentence were gradually removed, after parliamentary debates which frequently also questioned the value of the civilian death penalty. The first full parliamentary debate on the civilian death penalty did not take place until 1929, and it is shown how these debates about the military death penalty thus had a huge influence on interwar writing in texts by Herbert, Patrick Hamilton and Dorothy L. Sayers.

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Notes

1.
Christie Davies, ‘The British State and the Power of Life and Death’ in The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain ed. by S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 341–375 (342).
2.
W. H. R. Rivers, ‘Freud’s Psychology of the Unconscious’, The Lancet Vol. 189 (16th Jun 1917): 912–914 (912).
3.
Teresa Iacobelli, Death or Deliverance: Canadian Courts Martial in the Great War, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013, 24.
4.
Iacobelli, Death or Deliverance, 24.
5.
Gerard Oram, Military Executions During World War I, Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2003, 130.
6.
Executions that were perceived to be unjust could lower morale, instead of maintaining discipline, and might even lead to further military crimes (Oram, Military Executions, 92–93).
7.
Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, ‘Citizen Soldiers: Discipline, Morale and the Experience of War’, The British Army and the First World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017: 135–169 (156–157).
8.
Beckett et al., ‘Citizen Soldiers’, 156–157.
9.
See Table 1.2 and discussion in Oram, Military Executions, 30–32.
10.
Mr. Thurtle, Speech on CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.) House of Commons Debate 03 April 1930 Vol. 237 cc1564-6271564 (1309).
11.
Davies suggests 278 men were executed (Davies, ‘The British State’, 342); Hugh McManners gives the total of 312 executions and 3080 commutations (Hugh McManners, The Scars of War, London: Harper Collins, 1994); Anthony Babington claims 346 executions (Anthony Babington, For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts-Martial 1914–1920, London: Leo Cooper, 1983); while Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson give the figure of 351 executed (Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson, Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War, London: Cassell, 2001). Iacobelli gives a broader figure, including the wider Empire, of 361 executions and 2719 commuted sentences (Iacobelli , Death or Deliverance, 4). Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly give a broader figure of 438 executions during World War I and its immediate aftermath and including the execution of civilians and POWs (Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The British Army and the First World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Oram’s figures also refer to the whole Empire and go up to 1924, including treason and espionage charges: he claims 455 executions and 3362 commutations (Gerard Oram, Death sentences passed by military courts of the British Army 1914–1924, London: Francis Boutle, 1998). Beyond the difficulties identified above, there is considerable anecdotal evidence of summary execution that is not captured in these figures.
12.
Iacobelli, Death or Deliverance, 32.
13.
Oram, Military Executions, 100–101.
14.
Oram, Military Executions, 32–34.
15.
Jacques Derrida, The Death Penalty: Volume II ed. by Geoffrey Bennington and Marc Crépon/trans. by Elizabeth Rottenberg, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017, 19–20.
16.
Derrida, The Death Penalty Volume II, 19–20.
17.
Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, trans. by Libby Meintjes, Public Culture, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2003): 11–40 (12).
18.
Oram, Military Executions, 62.
19.
Caroline Cox, ‘Invisible Wounds: The American Legion, Shell-Shocked Veterans, and American Society, 1919–1924’, Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870–1930, ed. by Mark S. Micale and Paul Lerner, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 280–306 (291).
20.
Ted Bogacz, ‘War Neuroses and Cultural Change in England, 1914–1922: The Work of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock’, Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989): 227–256 (250).
21.
See, for example, newspaper articles from during World War I including ‘The Death Penalty in the Army’, The Times, 1st October 1917, 8; Frederick Milner, ‘Letter to the Editor: Insanity and the War’, The Times, 19 September 1917, 7; ‘Shellshock and Desertion’, The Times, 20th February 1918, 8; ‘Procedure in Courts-Martial’, The Times, 15th March 1918, 12.
22.
A. P. Herbert, The Secret Battle, London: Methuen, 1936, 71.
23.
Marzena Sokołowska-Paryě, Reimagining the War Memorial, Reinterpreting the Great War: The Formats of British Commemorative Fiction, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, 60–61.
24.
Edwin Dyett Court Martial File, The National Archives, WO339/87122.
25.
Ernest Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn: The Army Death Penalty at Work, London: Victoria House Printing Co. 1924, 3.
26.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 4.
27.
A. D. Gristwood, The Coward (1927), in The Somme including also The Coward, Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2006: 117–189.
28.
Gristwood, The Coward, 152.
29.
Gristwood, The Coward, 153.
30.
Gristwood, The Coward, 152.
31.
Gristwood, The Coward, 186.
32.
Gristwood, The Coward, 188.
33.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 5–7.
34.
Oram, Military Executions, 91.
35.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 4.
36.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 5.
37.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 6.
38.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 8.
39.
Thurtle, Shootings at Dawn, 8.
40.
Edwin Dyett Court Martial File, The National Archives, WO339/87122.
41.
A. P. Roberts Diary Documents 4616, Imperial War Museum.
42.
See, for example, in the Imperial War Museum, Private Papers of E. Beer 695; Private Papers of A. Smith Box 15/10/01; W. Kimberley papers, Documents 7017.
43.
Herbert, The Secret Battle, 215.
44.
Herbert, The Secret Battle, 215–216. Many of the testimonies in Thurtle’s pamphlet also see the executed soldier as brave: ‘a braver man at that moment wasn’t to be found in France’ (4) or ‘a braver man never went on active service’ (6).
45.
Herbert, The Secret Battle, 205–213.
46.
CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.) House of Commons Debate 03 April 1930 Vol. 237 cc1564-1627 (1572).
47.
CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.), 1618–1619.
48.
CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.), 1619.
49.
CLAUSE 4.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.) House of Commons Debate 17 April 1928 Vol. 216 cc31-83 (47).
50.
CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.), 1613.
51.
CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.) cc1564-1627.
52.
Anon. ‘THE SECRET BATTLE’, The Observer, 27th July 1919, 5.
53.
R. O. Morris, ‘Book Review: The Secret Battle’, The Times Literary Supplement Issue 911, 3rd July 1919, 356.
54.
Morris, ‘Book Review’, 356.
55.
Morris, ‘Book Review’, 356.
56.
Hugh Cecil, Flowers of Battle: How Britain Wrote the Great War, South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 1996: 89–106 (106).
57.
Cecil, Flowers of Battle, 106.
58.
Falls, War Books, 276.
59.
Oram, Military Executions, 15.
60.
On True and M’Naghten see Samantha Walton, Guilty But Insane: Mind and Law in Golden Age Detective Fiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015: 94–134.
61.
Donald Carswell (ed.), Ronald True: Notable British Trials Series, London: William Hodge and Company, 1925.
62.
Anon. ‘Eltham Murder Arrest’, The Daily Telegraph, 15th February 1918, 5.
63.
Anon. ‘Athlete’s Unhappy Married Life’, The Times, 17th May 1919, 9.
64.
Anon. ‘The Hyde Murder Appeal’, The Observer, 15th November 1919 and ‘Conviction Quashed: Rex v. Beard’, The Times, 25th November 1919.
65.
Anon. ‘Women Jurors in Tears’, The Daily Telegraph, 11th February 1921, 7.
66.
Anon. ‘Doctor’s Insanity’, The Times, 24th January 1920, 14.
67.
Anon. ‘Sandhills Murder’, The Daily Telegraph, 30th March 1920, 7.
68.
Anon. ‘Liverpool Nurse’s Death’, The Times, 7th August 1919, 12.
69.
Anon. ‘Paddington Hotel Tragedy: Committal for Trial’, The Daily Telegraph, 9th July 1920, 15.
70.
Clive Emsley, ‘Violent crime in England in 1919: post-war anxieties and press narratives’, Continuity and Change, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2008): 173–195.
71.
Emsley, ‘Violent crime’, 188.
72.
A. P. Herbert, The House by the River, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921, 12.
73.
Herbert, The House by the River, 21–25.
74.
Herbert, The House by the River, 26.
75.
Herbert, The House by the River, 39.
76.
Arthur Beard file, The National Archives, HO 144/20991.
77.
Arthur Beard file, The National Archives, HO 144/20991.
78.
Herbert, The House by the River, 46.
79.
Herbert, The House by the River, 85.
80.
Herbert, The House by the River, 257–258.
81.
Herbert, The Secret Battle, 216.
82.
Herbert, The House by the River, 292.
83.
‘MESSRS. METHUEN’S NEW BOOKS: The HOUSE by the RIVER’, The Times Literary Supplement, September 23rd, 1920, 613.
84.
Anon. ‘Latest Works of Fiction: The House by the River’, The New York Times, 11th January 1920, 69.
85.
Anon. ‘Humour and Thrills: The House by the River’, The Observer, 12th September 1920, 4.
86.
A.D. ‘Flood Tide at The Phoenix’, The Manchester Guardian, 24th March 1938, 10.
87.
While it is certainly true that Hamilton responds to the Leopold and Loeb case, Hitchcock’s 1948 adaptation of the play has deformed its critical legacy by amplifying this element. In Hitchcock’s film, Cadell has served and been injured in the war, but speeches identifying his embittered, disillusioned attitudes to crime and punishment as sourced in war experience are removed.
88.
Patrick Hamilton, Rope, Act II, London and New York: Samuel French, 61–62.
89.
Hamilton, Rope, 87–88.
90.
Hamilton, Rope, 88.
91.
Hamilton, Rope, 89.
92.
Hamilton, Rope, 90.
93.
I.B. ‘A “SHOCKER” THAT REALLY SHOCKS: Rope at the Ambassadors Theatre’, The Manchester Guardian, April 26, 1929, 6. Other original reviews further support this sense of deliberate omission of the wartime and punishment plots focusing instead on the murder itself: St. J. E. ‘“ROPE ” BY PATRICK HAMILTON’, The Observer, April 28, 1929, 15; Sydney W. Carroll ‘ANOTHER YOUNG DRAMATIST: MOTIVELESS MURDER: Anon. “ROPE ” A REAL TRAGEDY’, The Daily Telegraph, May 9, 1929, 17. All of these reviews allude to Leopold and Loeb.
94.
Kelly C. Connelly, ‘From Detective Fiction to Detective Literature: Psychology in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers and Margaret Millar’, Clues, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2007): 35–47 (38); Ariela Friedman, ‘Dorothy Sayers and the Case of the Shell-Shocked Detective’, Partial Answers, Vol. 8. No. 2 (2010): 365–387; Monica Lott, ‘Dorothy L. Sayers, the Great War, and Shell Shock’, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2013): 103–126; Matthew Levay, Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019; Kathryn Hendrickson, ‘Whose Trauma? Dorothy L. Sayer’s Use of Shell Shock and the Role of Memory in Interwar Detective Fiction’, CLUES: A Journal of Detection, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2019): 51–60.
95.
Lott, ‘The Great War, and Shell Shock’, 104.
96.
Levay, Violent Minds, 57 and Friedman, ‘The Case of the Shell-Shocked Detective’, 380.
97.
While Orczy is not substantially discussed in this book because of her focus on historical fictions, her series featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel (1903–1940) did undoubtedly shape attitudes to the death penalty during this period. Alison Light compares Wimsey with Blakeney, but in the context of post-war masculinity rather than punishment and revolution contexts (‘Agatha Christie and conservative modernity’, Forever England: Femininity, literature and conservatism between the wars, London and New York: Routledge, 1991: 61–113 (72)).
98.
Hendrickson, ‘Whose Trauma? Dorothy L. Sayer’s Use of Shell Shock’, 53 and 56.
99.
See Sayers’s 1945 correspondence about capital punishment with the church organist Herbert Byard (‘Capital Punishment’, DLS 38, Marion E. Wade Centre, Wheaton College), where Sayers argues that capital punishment has a psychological effect slightly different to conventional deterrence: she suggests it creates an inhibition preventing capital crimes. In this exchange of letters, she defends the value of the death penalty to more abolitionist correspondent.
100.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2016, 367.
101.
Dorothy L. Sayers, ‘Biographical Note: Communicated by Paul Austin Delgardie’, Unnatural Death, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2016, 300–307 (305).
102.
The issue of Sayers’s intention to end the novel series on this note is complicated by the fact that Busman’s Honeymoon was originally written as a collaborative play, with her friend Muriel St Clare Byrne. However, even the play itself, which offers a watered-down view of these issues, had a troubling effect on the actor Peter Haddon, who rejected the role of Wimsey, explaining that, in comparison to the previous novels, ‘The Peter of Busman’s Honeymoon rather frightens me’ (Alzina Stone Dale, ‘Introduction’, Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Love All together with Busman’s Honeymoon, Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1985, xxv).
103.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2016, 431.
104.
Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, 343.
105.
Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, 450.
106.
Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, 451.
107.
Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, 439, 449.
108.
Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Love All together with Busman’s Honeymoon, Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1985, xxix, my italics.

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School of English, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Katherine Ebury

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Ebury, K. (2021). The Legacy of World War I Court Martial in Interwar Death Penalty Writing. In: Modern Literature and the Death Penalty, 1890-1950. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52750-1_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52750-1_7
Published: 11 February 2021
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