Until 1868 all hangings remained public. That was their point: to punish offenders near the scenes of their crimes or outside the local prison and, by the public and prominent nature of their deaths, to deter others. In practice public executions were popular entertainment, where large festive crowds gathered, much drink was consumed, and pickpockets plied their trade with impunity. A deterrent it was not; a disgrace it was. So thought Thackeray, Dickens, and Hardy, all three of whom witnessed executions and wrote about what they had witnessed. Georgians had been exercised by the proliferation of capital statutes, most of which had been repealed by the mid-nineteenth century. Victorians were exercised by the execution procedure itself and the indecency of what had become an ‘open-air entertainment’. Abolitionist sentiment was growing and by the middle of the nineteenth century seemed in the ascendancy.

Anglican clergy were concerned by this development, and none more so than those pioneers of penitence, prison chaplains. The death penalty, unlike transportation for instance, was a sentence of Scripture, ordained of God, while the pre-execution period provided a unique evangelical opportunity. The redemption of the worst is the best, and, as Dr Johnson put it, ‘when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. To save the soul the noose was necessary. To save the noose it was necessary to sanitise its operation.

So thought the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, son of the great emancipator. He believed that the continuation of hanging was essential to the highest principles of justice, but feared that its continued public manifestation would lead to abolition.