Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain

Audience, Justice, Memory

Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex, UK)

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English

Routledge
03 March 2014

Ethical issues: capital punishment; Crime & criminology; Penology & punishment; Criminal justice law; Sentencing & punishment

Series: Routledge SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories

Capital punishment for murder was abolished in Britain in 1965. At this time, the way people in Britain perceived and understood the death penalty had changed – it was an issue that had become increasingly controversial, high-profile and fraught with emotion. In order to understand why this was, it is necessary to examine how ordinary people learned about and experienced capital punishment.

Drawing on primary research, this book explores the cultural life of the death penalty in Britain in the twentieth century, including an exploration of the role of the popular press and a discussion of portrayals of the death penalty in plays, novels and films. Popular protest against capital punishment and public responses to and understandings of capital cases are also discussed, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of justice. Miscarriages of justice were significant to capital punishment’s increasingly fraught nature in the mid twentieth-century and the book analyses the unsettling power of two such high profile miscarriages of justice. The final chapters consider the continuing relevance of capital punishment in Britain after abolition, including its symbolism and how people negotiate memories of the death penalty.

Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain is groundbreaking in its attention to the death penalty and the effect it had on everyday life and it is the only text on this era to place public and popular discourses about, and reactions to, capital punishment at the centre of the analysis. Interdisciplinary in focus and methodology, it will appeal to historians, criminologists, sociologists and socio-legal scholars.

By: Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 530g
ISBN: 9780415622448
ISBN 10: 0415622441
Series: Routledge SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 03 March 2014
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , A / AS level
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lizzie Seal is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include gender representations of women who kill, cultural criminology, historical criminology and capital punishment. Her previous publications include Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill (Palgrave, 2010) and, with Maggie O’Neill, Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture (Palgrave, 2012).

Reviews for Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain: Audience, Justice, Memory

'Despite its abolition almost 50 years ago, the death penalty continues to be a highly contentious topic in the UK. Lizzie Seal provides a fascinating, original and timely study of the cultural life of capital punishment in this country in the 20th century'. George Mair, Liverpool John Moores University