
Death for stealing candles - ghosh
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?foo=bar&path=sessionsPapers/17160113.xml&div=t17160113-13
======
mootothemax
This dates from the so-called "Bloody Code" era of 1688 to 1815, where some
220 offences could lead to the death sentence:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code)

Apparently "theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, which was only about one-
twentieth of the weekly wage for a skilled worker at the time" could lead to
the death sentence.

Other crimes that could be punished with death included:

\- Being in the company of Gypsies for one month

\- Strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age

\- Blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime

The latter comes from the Black Act, which introduced 50 such offences:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Act)

"Pleading the belly" was an option for women who were detectably pregnant, and
if they were found pregnant, the woman's death sentence could be postponed
until they had delivered their child, changed to penal transportation, or even
pardoned altogether:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly)

A jury of matrons would be responsible - sometimes corruptly - although a
woman would only receive one reprieve; any further pregnancy would be ignored
and the death penalty carried out regardless:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_of_matrons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_of_matrons)

~~~
noir_lord
It's easy to forget living in 21st century Britain how far we've come
generally.

Thanks for the reminder.

~~~
pjc50
And the death penalty was only formally abolished by the Human Rights Act 1998
(for the remaining offences of high treason or arson in a naval dockyard).

I believe that polls on the subject of reintroducing it for serious crimes
regularly return over 50% support.

Edit: oh and you can still get disproportionate sentences for trivial crimes
in California under the "three strikes" law. There are people serving life
sentences for minor shoplifting.

~~~
runarb
> I believe that polls on the subject of reintroducing > it for serious crimes
> regularly return over 50% support.

To some degree understandable. I used to be against the death penalty for
humanitarian reason, but after Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people,
mostly children, and got only 21 years in prison [0], I think it would have
been better if we just had hanged him. At least then the families of his
victim could get to move on, knowing that they will not meet him on the street
sometime in the future.

0: 21 years is the maximum prison sentence in Norway, but the prison term can
then be repeatedly extended by five years as long as he is considered a threat
to society. However that someone is being a threat to society can be hard to
prove, so it is totally possible that he will be getting out some day.

~~~
iaskwhy
I have some curiosity about how you went from 21 years of jail time to the
death penalty without even thinking about something else like a life sentence.

------
tptacek
The same site suggests that most of these prisoners weren't actually executed:

[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp#death](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp#death)

~~~
monroepe
I was actually going to point that out too. I did a research paper on theft in
this time period when I was in college and was shocked when I saw that people
were sentenced to for theft. I mean I know it was a different time, but it
really wasn't all that long ago. I was relieved when I looked into it more and
found that most weren't really executed.

~~~
ghostberry
By "most weren't really executed", are we talking 99%, 90%, 51%?

------
ballpoint
This was apparently pretty typical for English law hundreds of years ago. As I
understand it, wealthy people had a lot of influence over the government and
were able to lobby for extreme punishments to protect their fortunes. Many of
the death sentences were not even carried out by the executioners, because
they were so common.

~~~
ionised
> As I understand it, wealthy people had a lot of influence over the
> government and were able to lobby for extreme punishments to protect their
> fortunes.

Western society has come a long way indeed.

Oh, wait...

~~~
V-2
[http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.down...](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html?eref=ib_us)

 _" A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of
illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a
total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs."_

(After long battles in courts, the penalty was ultimately settled at
$222,000).

------
ghayes
Going to the source[0], there is no reference to the punishment listed. In
fact, other punishments listed on the same page seem mundane in comparison,
e.g.

> ... the Jury found him Guilty to the Value of 38s.

Is it possible this is just a transcription error?

Edit: maybe not, see [1]

[0]
[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130002](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130002)

[1]
[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130006](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130006)

~~~
SixSigma
According to my tour of The Galleries of Justice, in Nottingham UK, the cut-
off point between transportation and execution was the price of a loaf of
bread.

~~~
lordnacho
And yet people still stole stuff. Does that say something about deterrence?

~~~
throwaway_xl5
In 'The Commonwealth Of Thieves' Tom Keneally notes some people were
committing offences with the express intention of being sentenced to
transportation to the penal colonies in Australia. Apologies for the secondary
source.

~~~
SixSigma
As you probably know, some were only transported temporarily and returned to
England at the end of their servitude.

------
saosebastiao
I found this interesting and upvoted accordingly but I'm hoping to hear why it
was submitted. Is there some context we should know about?

~~~
hvm
I love this kind of historical information. It's difficult (to me) to
empathise with past historical events when we (I) have no knowledge of those
people and how they lived.

Reading about their daily struggles gives events from that time a whole new
image.

BTW, I found extremely interesting that they gave the condemned an interview
which they then wrote down (
[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127)
).

How many average people from that time have the luxury of their lives being
recorded for future people to see? How many of us have that today?

~~~
notahacker
The cynic in me questions the authenticity of the accounts, given that the
chaplain responsible for collecting them was part of the penal apparatus and
derived significant income from selling the accounts to the execution-watching
public as instructive morality tales.

Even accounting for the religiosity of the condemned, they seem remarkably
keen to confess to long histories of criminal behaviour and repent of their
sins rather than question the system that had condemned them.

------
lifeisstillgood
I grew up around Hoddesdon - the same town in England that Mary Knight grew up
in, before she was executed for stealing 9shillings, On the same gallows as
the candle thief

[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127)

That's the weirdest thing ever - it's like finding the middle of butt-nowhere
was still the middle of butt-nowhere 200 years ago.

RIP Mary.

[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127)

------
DannoHung
How much is 48s in a monetary value I am familiar with?

~~~
deanmen
There are 20 shillings in an old pound, so it is £2.40

This is equivalent to about £300 today. If we instead consider it as a
percentage of the GDP per capita it would be eqiuivalent to £6000 today.

~~~
bloat
And if we consider the amount of money needed to buy 96 candles, it's about
£77.50.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bolsius-Ivory-Dinner-
Candles-7-5hrs/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bolsius-Ivory-Dinner-
Candles-7-5hrs/dp/B007T6OIBK/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1430127523&sr=8-18&keywords=candles)

~~~
dunmalg
Modern candles are not even remotely comparable, neither in composition, nor
method of manufacture, nor in their former value as a primary source of light.
Candles used to use valuable raw materials, were fairly laboriously made by
hand, and weren't just a decoration for a romantic dinner, after which one
could simply flip on a light switch.

~~~
logfromblammo
Back then, candles would have been made from either beeswax (churches and rich
people) or tallow (everyone else). Spermaceti and brassica-oil candles were
not yet in common use. The median family spent 65 shillings per year on
candles. The total value stolen was 49.5 shillings. So a valid comparison
would be 75% of the median family's annual lighting budget today. I estimate
the annual cost for lighting at 1000 kWh grid power (US$120, GB£80), plus some
replacement compact fluorescent bulbs (US$30, GB£20), for a crime equivalent
of US$113 or GB£75.

Another valid comparison would be the amount it would cost for an equivalent
amount of lighting now. In modern terms, the items stolen amounted to about
800 hours of a one-candela light source. Maybe one green 20mW LED and 6 AA
alkaline (LR6) batteries, or a white LED and 6 D alkaline (LR20) batteries.
This is equivalent to the light of leaving one 25W compact fluorescent bulb on
for 6 hours.

Imagine if every time you left the light on in your bedroom when you left for
school, your Dad killed you, and then danced on your grave, singing 'alleluia.

------
zby
The detection was very law so for the penalties to be effective they would
have to be severe.

~~~
cstross
The point is, the penalties _weren 't_ effective -- if effectiveness of a
criminal justice system is evaluated in terms of crime prevention.

We're talking about an age where there were no police organizations as we
currently understand the term: a lot of arrests were made by freelance "thief
takers" such as the infamous Jonathan Wilde, who himself eventually went to
the gallows (because he wasn't merely a thief-taker, he was also the biggest
fence for stolen goods in London!):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild)

(Shorter version: think of him as a kind of 18th century anti-Batman.)

Because arrest rates were virtually non-existent except when an angry
shopkeeper grabbed a burglar in the act, or a mob went for a known miscreant,
punishments were draconian. But because punishments were draconian, they were
often commuted -- by the end of the 18th century about half of death sentences
ended up being turned into transportation and involuntary servitude
(basically, exile and slavery). Crime rates remained terrifyingly high by
modern standards until the 1830s, when Sir Robert Peel as Home Secretary
abolished and rationalized a lot of laws (he axed the death penalty for most
offenses but replaced it with imprisonment) and instituted the first modern
police forces:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel)

Anyway, the takeaway from all this is, the British state in the 18th century
performed a large-scale experiment that proved pretty much definitively that
draconian punishments _do not deter crime_. What reduces criminal activity is
_certainty of apprehension_ , even if the punishment is relatively mild or
rehabilitative. (Nobody thinks "I'd better not steal that pizza, I can
probably get away with it but if they catch me I might end up facing life in
jail". But knowing "if I steal that pizza, I _will_ be caught" is an effective
deterrent.)

~~~
zby
More severe penalties are more effective than less severe penalties. The other
dimension of certainty of detection gives better opportunities for improvement
and using it was a great step for civilization - but it does not negate the my
thesis.

Your argument is like proposing that people in 18th century invented airplanes
because using steamers did not really improve the time of travel :)

------
qzervaas
Can anybody shed any light on the etymology of "prov'd"?

 _It was fully prov 'd, that the Prisoner unbolted the Hatch..._

~~~
seatonist
"Prov'd" is just a contraction of "proved". It was common at that time. This
might have a familiar ring...

    
    
      If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
      I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
    

(It's from Shakespeare's famous sonnet that begins "Let me not to the marriage
of true minds / admit impediments".)

Beyond that, "prove", "proof", "proven", etc are all from the latin provare -
to try, or test.

~~~
Terr_
Also, it apparently rhymed at the time, but nowadays we say "proved"
differently.

~~~
JacobAldridge
The Great Vowel Shift - a fabulous part of history, and essential for fully
appreciating Shakespeare.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

------
onion2k
That's not a _light_ sentence.

