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Blood money and the bloody code: the impact of financial rewards on criminal justice in eighteenth-century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Mary Clayton  and
Robert Shoemaker
Mary Clayton
Affiliation:
Honorary Fellow, University of Durham, Durham, UK
Robert Shoemaker*
Affiliation:
Professor of Eighteenth-Century British History, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The introduction of rewards for the conviction of serious criminals fundamentally transformed English criminal justice. The prospect of rewards totalling up to £140 encouraged additional prosecutions, more full (as opposed to partial) guilty verdicts, and more death sentences. In the process, in a series of largely unintended consequences, two fundamental pillars of early-modern justice were undermined: reliance on the public to prosecute, and the death penalty to deter crime. Policing agents began to play a much more important role in apprehending criminals, while the high level of executions contributed to growing doubts about the efficacy of capital punishment.

French abstract

French Abstract

L'introduction de récompenses financières pour l'aide à l'arrestation de grands criminels a fondamentalement transformé la justice pénale anglaise. Des mises à prix pouvant atteindre 140 £ ont fait grimper le nombre de poursuites, permis des verdicts de culpabilité plus complets (par opposition aux verdicts partiels) et multiplié les condamnations à mort. Ce processus entraîna une série de conséquences essentiellement involontaires, car deux piliers fondamentaux sur lesquels reposait la justice de l'époque moderne en furent sapés : d'une part le recours à l'action publique pour engager les poursuites et d'autre part l'effet dissuasif de la peine de mort pour décourager le crime. Les policiers commencèrent à jouer un rôle considérablement plus important dans l'arrestation des criminels, tandis que le nombre élevé d'exécutions se mit à accroître les doutes quant à l'efficacité de la peine capitale.

German abstract

German Abstract

Die Einführung von Belohnungen für die Verurteilung von Schwerverbrechern veränderte die englische Strafjustiz in grundlegender Weise. Die Aussicht auf Belohnungen von bis zu 140 Pfund begünstigten zusätzliche Anklagen, mehr Urteile wegen vollständiger (statt nur teilweiser) Schuld, und mehr Todesurteile. Dabei wurden durch eine Reihe unbeabsichtigter Konsequenzen zwei grundlegende Pfeiler der frühneuzeitlichen Justiz unterminiert: die Abhängigkeit von der Öffentlichkeit, um Anklage zu erheben, und die Verhängung der Todesstrafe zur Abschreckung gegen das Verbrechen. Die Polizei begann eine viel wichtigere Rolle bei der Ergreifung von Straftätern zu spielen, während der unvermindert hohe Grad an Hinrichtungen zugleich wachsende Zweifel an der Wirksamkeit der Todesstrafe beförderte.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 2022 , pp. 97 - 125
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

1

The authors would like to thank Pam Cox, Simon Devereaux, Tim Hitchcock, Heather Shore, and Richard Ward for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Some of the underpinning research for the article was undertaken for the Victims’ Access to Justice project (ESRC award ES/R006962/1).

References

Notes

2 For the death penalty, see Hay, Douglas, ‘Property, authority and the criminal law’, in Hay, Douglas et al. , eds., Albion's fatal tree: crime and society in eighteenth-century England (Harmondsworth, 1977), 17–63Google Scholar.

3 For secondary punishments, see Beattie, J. M., Crime and the courts in England, 1660–1800 (Princeton, 1986), chapters 9–10Google Scholar; and Beattie, J. M., Policing and punishment in London, 1660–1750: urban crime and the limits of terror (Oxford, 2001), part IIGoogle Scholar.

4 The National Archives, Kew, UK (TNA), Exchequer of receipt: miscellaneous rolls, books and papers, E 407/27–30 (1649–50); London gazette 418 (November 15–18, 1669).

5 For the development of modern forms of policing in the eighteenth century see Beattie, Policing and punishment; Beattie, J. M., The First English detectives: the Bow Street runners and the policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, Elaine, Before the bobbies: the night watch and police reform in metropolitan London, 1720–1830 (Stanford, 1988)Google Scholar; Paley, Ruth, ‘An imperfect, inadequate and wretched system? Policing London before Peel’, Criminal Justice History 10 (1989)Google Scholar; Harris, Andrew T., Policing the city: crime and legal authority in London, 1780–1840 (Columbus, Ohio, 2004)Google Scholar; Emsley, Clive, The English police: a political and social history (2nd edn, London, 1996)Google Scholar; and the works on thief-taking cited below.

6 Colquhoun, Patrick, A treatise on the police of the metropolis (London, 1796), 27–29Google Scholar, 227, 231–32, chapter xiii; Pamela Cox, Robert Shoemaker, and Heather Shore, Victims: a critical history (forthcoming, Oxford University Press).

7 The ‘Revolution of 1688’ refers to the deposition of James II as King of England, Scotland and Ireland and his replacement by Mary II and William III. With the passing of the Bill of Rights in 1689, parliament was required to hold regular sessions. For further information, see Brooks, Colin, ‘The Revolution of 1688–89’, in Coward, Barry ed., A companion to Stuart Britain (Oxford, 2003), 436–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Robert Shoemaker, ‘Print culture and the creation of public knowledge about crime in eighteenth-century London’, in Paul Knepper, Jonathan Doak and Joanna Shapland eds., Urban crime prevention, surveillance, and restorative justice: effects of social technologies (Boca Raton, Fla., 2009), 1–21; Beattie, Policing and punishment, 1–4, 21–2, 50.

9 Beattie, Policing and punishment, 313–58.

10 4 & 5 Wm & M, c. 8, s.2 (1692) (emphasis added).

11 6 & 7 Wm III, c. 17, s. 9 (coining, 1695); 5 Anne c. 31, s. 1 (burglary, 1706); 14 Geo II c. 6, s. 2 (sheep and cattle theft, 1741); 16 Geo II, c. 16, s. 3 (returning from transportation, 1743). Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English criminal law and its administration from 1750, vol. 2 (London: Stevens, 1956), 58–64 provides a full account of the statutory rewards offered.

12 6 Geo. 1, c. 23 (1720); London gazette, 5818, 19 January 1719/20, https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/5818/page/1 [accessed 19 November 2020]. Further proclamations offering rewards are discussed below.

13 Radzinowicz, History of English criminal law, vol. 2, 101–37. In addition, a 1699 statute offered those responsible for the conviction of burglars, housebreakers and horse thieves a ‘Tyburn Ticket’, which absolved the holders from the responsibility of serving as local officers: 10 & 11 Wm III, c. 23 (1699); Beattie, Policing and punishment, 231, 330. Although these exemptions had a financial value (since they were transferable), it is not possible to determine how many were awarded.

14 Clive Emsley, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, ‘London history – currency, coinage and the cost of living’, Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, March 2018), https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Coinage.jsp#wages.

15 It parallels growing state spending on punishment (transportation): Joanna Innes, Inferior politics: social problems and social policies in eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2009), 59–60.

16 TNA, SP 37/15, f. 498; Parliamentary papers [PP], ‘select committee on state of police of metropolis, and execution of laws for licensing of victuallers, second report, minutes of evidence, appendix (police)’ (House of Commons papers, 484, VII.321 1817), second head, 322–7.

17 John Styles, ‘Print and policing: crime advertising in eighteenth-century provincial England’, in Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder eds., Policing and prosecution in Britain 1750–1850 (Oxford, 1989), 55–111; Kate Smith, ‘Lost things and the making of material cultures in eighteenth-century London’, Journal of Social History (2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shab061.

18 A recent research project, ‘Victims’ access to justice in England, 1675 to the present’ has studied this development. See Cox, et al., Victims: a critical history; Barry Godfrey, ‘Setting the scene: A question of history’, in Sandra Walklate, ed., Handbook of victims and victimology, Second Edition (London, 2018), 13–29.

19 Peter King, Crime, justice and discretion in England, 1740–1820 (Cambridge, 2000), 18–19; Robert Shoemaker, ‘Worrying about crime: experience, moral panics and public opinion in London, 1660–1800’, Past and Present 234/1 (2017), 81–82; Matthew Hale, Historia placitorum coronæ: the history of the pleas of the crown (London, 1736), I, 588 and II, 76.

20 Beattie, Crime and the courts, 38–48; King, Crime, justice and discretion, 30–3; V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1994), 102. That some victims were concerned about their defendants being executed is evident in the number of cases where, following convictions on capital charges, they recommended that the judge exercise mercy. Prosecutors were recorded as making such a request in two hundred and sixty capital cases at the Old Bailey between 1730 and 1800: Capital convictions and pardons at the Old Bailey, 1730–1837, https://hcmc.uvic.ca/project/oldbailey/index.php (4 August 2021).

21 Tim Wales, ‘Thief-takers and their clients in later Stuart London’, in Paul Griffiths and Mark S. R. Jenner eds., Londinopolis: essays in the cultural and social history of early modern London (Manchester, 2000), 77.

22 Gerald Howson, Thief-taker general: The rise and fall of Jonathan Wild (London: Hutchinson, 1970; repr. 1987), Appendix II; Andrea McKenzie, ‘Wild, Jonathan (bap. 1683, d. 1725), thief-taker’, Oxford dictionary of national biography, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-29394 [19 November 2020]; Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, London lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city, 1690–1800 (Cambridge, 2015), 86–90.

23 Wales, ‘Thief-takers and their clients’; Beattie, Policing and punishment; Ruth Paley, ‘Thief-takers in London in the age of the McDaniel Gang, c. 1745–1754’, in Hay and Snyder eds., Policing and prosecution, 301–41; Heather Shore, London's criminal underworlds, c. 1720–c. 1930: a cultural and social history (Basingstoke: 2015), chapter 2. Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, includes the most recent assessment of all the evidence on thief-taking in eighteenth-century London.

24 Paley, ‘Thief-takers’, 312.

25 Beattie, Policing and punishment, 421–2; Beattie, The First English detectives, chapter 2.

26 John H. Langbein, The origins of adversary criminal trial (Oxford, 2003), 148–58. See also Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 89–90, 185–90.

27 TNA, T 53, Entry books of warrants relating to the payment of money.

28 Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, chapter 7.

29 To obtain the best available evidence we modified our original first sample period of 1727–31 to 1728–33. There was no evidence of rewardees for 1727, and we extended our analysis to 1732–33 for the £100 (but not £40) rewards to incorporate the large number of such rewards reported in the Middlesex Gaol Delivery Books and City Sessions Minute Books for 1732–33: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Middlesex Gaol Delivery Books, MJ/GB/B/017, 018; City Sessions Minute Books, CLA/047/LJ/04/115 to 120; certificates for convictions of highway robbery in 1732, CLA/047/LJ/21/002; notebooks documenting the distribution of rewards in 1730–33. CLA/047/LJ/11/013; TNA, Treasury: entry books of warrants relating to the payment of money, T 53/33–36, T 53/43–44, T 53/54–57; E 407/27–30. No certificates or court orders survive for London in 1780–84.

30 Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard and Jamie McLaughlin et al., The Old Bailey proceedings online, 1674–1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, March 2018) (OBPO).

31 TNA, Assizes: western circuit gaol book, 1729–53 ASSI 23/6.

32 Valuable online resources for this additional research were: Eighteenth-century collections online (https://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online); Seventeenth and eighteenth century Burney newspapers collection (https://www.gale.com/intl/c/17th-and-18th-century-burney-newspapers-collection); and UK Parliamentary papers (https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/uk-parliamentary-papers/).

33 TNA, Treasury Warrant Books, T 53/33–36 (1727–1731), 43–44 (1748–1752), 54–57 (1780–1784); Sheriffs’ Cravings, E 197/32–33 (1727–1731), T 64/262 (1748–52), T 90/148 (1748–52); T 90/163–5 (1780–84). Evidence for the counties of Cheshire, Durham, Northumberland, Sussex and Westmorland is missing from the 1727–31 records, and evidence for Durham is missing from 1748–52; in these cases it is not known whether any rewards were awarded.

34 TNA, State Papers, SP 36/153, f. 10 (1754).

35 Parliamentary papers, ‘Select committee on state of police of metropolis’, appendix L1. The committee did not examine the amount of spending on rewards prior to 1775.

36 TNA, Treasury Warrant Books, T 53/43–44, 54–57; Sheriffs’ Cravings, T 64/262, T 90/148,163–165; Assizes gaol books, ASSI 23/6 and 23/8. The figures for the Western Circuit are for the periods 1748–52 and 1780–84 only (251 rewards out of 257 convictions).

37 As indicated by the surviving records of the £40 and £100 rewards at the LMA and TNA. Beattie found that between February 1729 and September 1733 102 £100 rewards were issued, an average of 22.7 per year, which is very close to the average number of £40 rewards for highway robbery over the period 1727–1731 (21): Policing and punishment, 401.

38 For the dates of these proclamations, see Radzinowicz, History of English criminal law, vol. 2, 96–97; TNA, SP 37/15, ff. 491–98, ‘Precedents in the reigns of King William the 3rd, Queen Anne and his late and present majesty of proclamations and orders issued for punishing prophaneness and immorality and for apprehending street robbers, rioters, etc.’ (n.d.).

39 For the panic, see Nicolas Rogers, Mayhem: post-war crime and violence in Britain, 1748–53 (New Haven and London, 2012); Richard M. Ward, Print culture, crime and justice in 18th-century London (London, 2014).

40 TNA, ASSI 23/6.

41 4 & 5 Wm & M, c. 8, s.2 (1692) [emphasis added].

42 For this decision, see David Bentley, English criminal justice in the nineteenth century (London, 1998), 7–8; Radzinowicz, History of English criminal law, vol. 2, 74–82.

43 For examples, see Beattie, First English detectives, 130–31; Paley, ‘Thief-takers’, 338.

44 Beattie, Crime and the courts, 38–39.

45 For prosecutor recommendations to mercy, see above, note 18.

46 OBPO, statistics function.

47 The Times 421, 29 April 1786, 3; OBPO, t17880625-13 (Francis Duffy and John Emmett); The Times 1241, 27 August 1789, 3; OBPO, t17890909-152 (John Beck, John Goulder, and William Reeves).

48 PP, ‘Select committee on state of police of metropolis’, 326.

49 On the prevalence of partial verdicts outside London, see Peter King and Richard Ward, ‘Rethinking the bloody code in eighteenth-century Britain: capital punishment at the centre and on the periphery’, Past and Present 228 (2015), 179–80.

50 Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, chapter 7; Simon Devereaux, ‘Recasting the theatre of execution: the abolition of the Tyburn ritual’, Past and Present 202 (2009), 132–35.

51 Robert Shoemaker, ‘Sparing the noose: death sentences and the pardoning of Old Bailey convicts, 1763–1868’, in Katie Barclay and Amy Milka, eds, Cultural histories of law, media and emotion: public justice (New York, 2022), figure 1; Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 362–63; Annual register… for the year 1782 (London, 1783), 220.

52 Evidence from the Capital convictions database (http://web.uvic.ca/~oldbail/index.php, 19 November 2020).

53 Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 366–67; Simon Devereaux, ‘Execution and pardon at the Old Bailey, 1730–1837’, American Journal of Legal History 57, 4 (2017), 463.

54 TNA T 53/54–57; Capital punishment UK (http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/circuits.html) 23 November 2020.

55 This conclusion is derived from a comparison of the executions data compiled by King and Ward for ‘Rethinking the bloody code’, with the geographical distribution of rewards in Figure 1. We are grateful to Dr Ward for sharing this underlying data with us.

56 Peter King, Punishing the criminal corpse, 1700–1840 (London, 2017), 191; King and Ward, ‘Rethinking the bloody code’, 166–76, 187–94, 200–7.

57 Smith, ‘Lost things’. See also Wales, ‘Thief-takers and their clients’, 69–70; Styles, ‘Print and policing’, 59–61.

58 In the books and pamphlets available in Eighteenth-century collections online, this term was first used in 1751 in a Surrey trial account, and not again until the 1780s: The proceedings at the session of Oyer and Terminer, and general goal delivery for the County of Surrey (London, August 1751), 26 (https://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online, 3 January 2021). In the Seventeenth and eighteenth century Burney newspapers collection, the first mention came in 1782: Public advertiser, 15091, 9 October 1782 (https://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online, 22 December 2020).

59 OBPO, t17740216-20 (Thomas Walsom), t17850112–20 (George Norris et al.); J. M. Beattie, ‘Scales of justice: defense counsel and the English criminal trial in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Law and History 9, 2 (1991), 239–44. For Garrow's effectiveness as a defence lawyer, see also Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 359–60.

60 Francis Grose, A classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue (London, [1785]), ‘Thief taker’.

61 Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 366–67.

62 Shoemaker, ‘Sparing the noose’.

63 Beattie, First English detectives. The following discussion is based on the years 1728–33 and 1748–52, as no records of London rewardees survive for the 1780–84 period.

64 This is the same number Beattie found in his analysis of 56 £100 rewards in Middlesex between 1730 and 1733: Policing and punishment, 402. The distribution of numbers of recipients for £40 and £100 rewards are very similar. Outside London, the median number was slightly lower, at five: TNA, E 407/27–30.

65 Beattie, Policing and punishment, 401, citing TNA, T 1/270/66.

66 John H. Langbein, ‘Shaping the eighteenth-century criminal trial: a view from the Ryder sources’, University of Chicago Law Review 50, 1 (1983), 107.

67 TNA, SP 36/153, ff. 10–11; London gazette, 5818, 19 January 1719/20.

68 Southampton City Archive, SC9/4/489, 24 Aug 1755, R. Maddock to John Godfrey.

69 TNA, SP 36/153, ff. 10–11, Attorney General's ruling in response to complaint from Henry Fielding.

70 Beattie, Policing and punishment, 404.

71 OBPO, t17301204–80 (Joseph Eves et al.); LMA, MJ/GB/B/018 (December 1730); TNA, E 407/27, piece 120.

72 Evidence of the distribution of the £40 rewards in this case does not survive.

73 OBPO, t17290226–35 (Timothy Cotton, William Marple); LMA, MJ/GB/B/017 (February 1729).

74 TNA, Assizes: Oxford circuit: indictment files, ASSI 5/101/16 (Staffs 1781), ASSI 5/102/20 (Worcs 1782).

75 LMA, MJ/GB/B/017, 018; CLA/047/LJ/11/013; TNA E 407/27-29.

76 Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘The Old Bailey Proceedings and the representation of crime and criminal justice in eighteenth-century London’, Journal of British Studies 47 (2008), 559–80.

77 Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Sharon Howard and Jamie McLaughlin et al., London lives, 1690–1800 (www.londonlives.org, version 2.0, March 2018), sets for Robert, Thomas, John and Michael Willis; Shore, London's criminal underworlds, 34–40. For the end of their law enforcement careers, see ibid., chapter 3.

78 OBPO, t17351015–20 (William Blackwell); t17330112–26 (John Ackers, John Welton, William Booth).

79 Beattie, Policing and punishment, 405.

80 The life and infamous actions of that perjur'd villain, John [W]aller… Containing all the villanies, tricks, and devices which he practised in defrauding and cheating people, and in swearing robberies against innocent persons, to take away their lives, for the sake of the rewards granted by act of Parliament (London, 1732), passim. Most of the London cases described in this pamphlet can be traced in the Old Bailey Proceedings. See also Langbein, Origins, 152–54.

81 OBPO, t17320906–67 (William Flemming), t17320906–26 (Charles Patrick, William Meads).

82 OBPO, t17330912–36 (George Sutton and William Simonds); TNA E 407/29.

83 Paley, ‘Thief-takers’, 316.

84 OBPO, t17280605–8 (Thomas Jinkins).

85 OBPO, t17340630–27 (John Wright).

86 Owing to watch acts passed from 1735, watchmen were increasingly paid, and treated the role as a job: Reynolds, Before the bobbies, chapters 2–3; Beattie, Policing and punishment, chapter 4. Similarly, householders increasingly hired deputies to serve in their place: ibid., chapter 3.

87 Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 183–85; Beattie, Policing and punishment, 411–12; Paley, ‘Thief-takers’, 318–9, 324–5; LMA, CLA/047/LJ/04/112 (December 1744). For the moral panic, see also Richard Ward, ‘Print culture, moral panic and the administration of the law: the London crime wave of 1744’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies 16 (2012), 5–24.

88 Beattie, First English detectives, chapter 2.

89 TNA, SP 36/153, ff. 10–11 [now 7–9].

90 TNA, T 53/43–44, E 407/27/162; LMA, City sessions minute books, CLA/047/04/115–120. Evidence from the 1727–31 period indicates that the vast majority of witnesses who are recorded as testifying in the Old Bailey Proceedings received a portion of the reward, but that a significant number of rewardees do not appear in the trial accounts. This analysis thus underestimates the total number of rewardees.

91 Beattie, First English detectives, chs 2–3; Paley, ‘Thief-takers’, 341.

92 John Berry, James Braybrooke, Nathaniel Harris, William Palmer Hind, Thomas Hind or Ind, Charles Remington, Thomas Stanley, Samuel Unwin, and John Whittenbury.

93 James Braybrooke, William Jones, John Berry, Thomas Hind/Ind and John Whittenbury.

94 OBPO, t17500228–32 (John Stanton et al.).

95 Beattie, First English detectives, 31–32; Paley, ‘Thief-takers’, 303, 314, 336–37; Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 236.

96 Twelve out of 74 rewardees, and 5 out of 11 rewards. These statistics are based on the actual lists of rewardees in the LMA sessions books (CLA/047/04/117–119).

97 Beattie, First English detectives, 117.

98 Beattie, First English detectives, 112.

99 Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, 318–19.

100 Public advertiser, 9 October 1782.

101 TNA, T 53/33–36 (1727–1731), 43–44 (1748–1752), 54–57 (1780–1784).

102 Beattie, First English detectives, 9.

103 For newspaper reporting of violence see Peter King, ‘Newspaper reporting and attitudes to crime and justice in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century London’, Continuity and Change 22 (2007), 88–93; Shoemaker, ‘Print culture’, 5–7.

104 Statistical analysis of the OBPO data kindly provided by Sharon Howard. The median length of all trial reports for highway robbery, burglary, and housebreaking involving one defendant who was fully convicted was 694 words, whereas the median for all other offences with one fully convicted defendant was 207.