The public execution at Tyburn is one of the most evocative and familiar of all eighteenth-century images. Whether it elicits horror or prurient fascination - or both - the Tyburn hanging day has become synonymous with the brutality of a bygone age and a legal system which valued property over human life. But, as this fascinating cultural and social history of the gallows reveals, the early modern execution was far more than just a debased spectator sport. The period between the Restoration and the American Revolution witnessed the rise and fall of a vast body of execution literature - last dying speeches and confessions, criminal trials and biographies - featuring the criminal as an Everyman (or Everywoman) holding up a mirror to the sins of his readers. The popularity of such publications reflected the widespread, and persistent, belief in the gallows as a literal preview of 'God's Tribunal': a sacred space in which solemn oaths, supernatural signs and, above all, courage, could trump the rulings of the secular courts. Here the condemned traitor, game highwayman, or model penitent could proclaim not only his or her innocence of a specific crime, but raise larger questions of relative societal guilt and social justice by invoking the disparity between man's justice and God's.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN-13
9781847251718
eBay Product ID (ePID)
90123856
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Criminal Law
Author
Assistant Professor Andrea Mckenzie
Publication Name
Tyburn's Martyrs: Execution in England, 1675-1775
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Subject
History
Publication Year
2007
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
336 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
234mm
Item Width
156mm
Item Weight
710g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Assistant Professor Andrea Mckenzie
Country/Region of Manufacture
United Kingdom
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