English, Welsh and Irish criminal law from around 1700 to 1823
The "Bloody Code" was a series of laws in England, Wales and Ireland in the 18th and early 19th centuries which mandated the death penalty for a wide range of crimes.[1][2][3][4] It was not referred to by this name in its own time; the name was given later owing to the sharply increased number of people given the death penalty, even for crimes considered minor by 21st century standards.
In 1689, there were 50 capital offences in England and Wales; this increased to 220 by the end of the 18th century. This period saw the introduction of new laws focused on property defence, which some viewed as class suppression. As convictions for capital crimes increased, penal transportation with indentured servitude became a more common punishment. In 1785, Australia was deemed suitable for transporting convicts, and over one-third of all criminals convicted between 1788 and 1867 were sent there. The Bloody Code listed 21 categories of capital crimes in the 18th century. By 1823, the Judgment of Death Act made the death penalty discretionary for most crimes, and by 1861, the number of capital offences had been reduced to five. The last execution in the United Kingdom took place in 1964, and the death penalty was abolished for various crimes in the following years.
^O'Mahony, Paul (September 8, 2002). Criminal Justice in Ireland. Institute of Public Administration. ISBN 9781902448718 – via Google Books.
^Campbell, Noel (2 June 2017). "The long road from the Bloody Code". Mayo Advertiser. Retrieved 15 May 2023.
^King, Peter; Ward, Richard (10 August 2015). "Rethinking the Bloody Code in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Capital Punishment at the Centre and on the Periphery". Past & Present. 228 (1): 159–205. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtv026. PMC 5955207. PMID 29780182.
^Walliss, John (2018). The Bloody Code in England and Wales, 1760–1830. World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74561-9. ISBN 978-3-319-74560-2 – via link.springer.com.
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shoplifting, petty theft or stealing cattle. The severity of the so-called BloodyCode was often tempered by juries who refused to convict, or judges, in the...
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