In the aftermath of the recent riots in the United Kingdom, the judiciary showed their teeth when it came to dealing with the offenders in court. Justice was swift and caught everyone by surprise. The effect was immediate and the one hundred or so riots predicted to take place over the following few days never materialised.
Sir Kier Starmer, Prime Minister of the UK and former Director of Public Prosecutions is being credited with the crack down. As an experienced prosecutor, he knows how to use the law, but his predecessors in the Middle Ages were no slouches either when it came to punishment.
In medieval times an accused person could lose their head, literally, on the whim of a disgruntled magistrate. The death penalty was a possibility for a relatively minor offence and a stint in prison wasn’t much easier if what I read of medieval gaols is accurate.
I’m reading the Shardlake series of novels at the moment. They’re described as historical mystery novels set in 16th century Tudor England. The main character, barrister Matthew Shardlake, solves crime while trying hard to avoid the wrath of Henry VIII.
The stories contain many descriptions of what it was like to be a prisoner in medieval times in stone walled dungeons with straw on the floor that was changed so infrequently it often stank. Full of fleas, the cells were damp with no fresh air and were regularly overcrowded. Men, women and children were often kept together with hardened criminals mixing with first time offenders.
The quality of care often depended on what money was available from relatives or friends on the outside to bribe the prison guards. A few pence in the right hands could ensure clean straw or an extra helping of gruel. Not much of a treat, but it did help to keep them alive.
According to Digitalponoptican.org, many eighteenth-century statutes specified death as the penalty for minor property offences which meant people tried at the Old Bailey could be sentenced to hang for as little as stealing a handkerchief or a sheep.
Felonies were originally punishable by hanging, but those found guilty of lesser crimes were sentenced to other punishment such as the stocks, imprisonment, whipping and fines. Execution was a public spectacle, and convicts were drawn in a cart through the streets to the gallows, where they were given a chance to speak to the crowd to confess their sins.
Women who claimed they were pregnant when they were sentenced to death could “plead their belly”. Such women were then examined by other women present in the courtroom, and, if found to be “quick with child” – if movement could show signs of life – their punishment was delayed until after the baby was born.
In principle, the punishment could then be carried out, but in practice sympathy for the newborn child or concern for the cost of caring for it meant that the mother was often pardoned.
By the 1840s, the death penalty was abolished for all offences except for murder and High Treason. Women found guilty of either treason or petty treason were sentenced to be “burned alive at the stake”, though executioners usually strangled women with a cord before lighting the fire.
Men found guilty of treason were sentenced to be “hanged, cut down while still alive, and then disembowelled, castrated, beheaded and quartered”. The bodies of those found guilty of murder and hanged were either delivered to the surgeons to be “dissected and anatomised” or “hung in chains”.
Some convicted of lesser crimes were punished publicly in the stocks as a way of destroying their reputations. Stocks were set up in busy streets where crowds could easily gather, and the culprit would be placed on a platform with his arms and head secured through holes in the wooden structure.
The stocks rotated so that crowds on all sides could get a good view and could express their disapproval of the offence by pelting the offender with rotten eggs and vegetables, blood and guts from slaughterhouses, dead cats, mud and excrement, and even bricks and stones.
Those days are long gone and maybe that’s a pity. Leniency seems to be the order of the day in our courtrooms and respect for the officers of the court is disappearing. There was a time when disrespectful behaviour wasn’t tolerated, certainly not by some of the judges I knew. Things change.
The Irish Examiner reported on a bail application being considered by a judge in Cork District Court. During the hearing, gardaí became aware that a young woman had texted another person telling her to pretend she was a relative of the man in the dock if gardaí rang to check if the defendant would be welcome to stay at her address.
The judge said this information effectively scuppered the bail application for the accused person who then stood up in the dock and said loudly, “Just leave it off — I am sick of this shit.” The judge then told the young woman to leave the courtroom immediately.
In other cases, a serving soldier who beat a woman unconscious in a random street attack, and boasted about it on social media, walked free from court after being given a fully suspended sentence which the victim described as “not justice”.
And a former GAA star avoided a criminal conviction for assault after paying compensation to two men who were punched by him in what was described as an unprovoked attack. He pleaded guilty to assaulting the men and the judge stressed to the defendant that such behaviour would “not be tolerated”. He still walked free though.
I wonder how much of that bad behaviour would improve if the stocks were still available to the courts. But then, would judges use them.
An excellent report