A+M - Early Modern Period

• Types of Punishment


  • Pain
  • Humiliation
  • Death
• Aim of punishment


  • Retribution
  • Deterrence
• Corporal Punishment


  • Branding
  • Whipping
  • Stocks
  • Pillory
• Punishment in public was used as a deterrent to others
• Very little was made of prisons
• Use of the stocks


  • Drunkards
  • People who didn't pay fines
  • Those who were profane
• Pillory


  Basically standing up stocks, where people were encouraged to throw things at the offender
• Use of the pillory

  • Dishonest traders
• Ceffyl Pren or "wooden horse"

  Used in Wales to punish a person suspected of domestic violence or assault, where offenders were paraded around villages on top of a ladder
• The Bloody Code


  Introduced in 1668 and ended in 1815, it increased the number of crimes carrying the death penalty from 50 to 225
• Crimes under the Bloody Code


  • Stealing horses or sheep
  • Rioting against high food prices
  • Pickpocketing goods worth one shilling (5p) or more
  • Shoplifting goods worth five shillings (25p)
  • Being out at night with a blackened face
• Reasons for the Bloody Code


  • Increase in poverty leading to more crimes as people were becoming desperate
  • Public hanging used to scare the people, with crowds encouraged to come and see it as a "day out"
  • Growth of towns made them harder to rule
  • Capital punishment over corporal punishment seen as a harsher deterrent
• Henry VIII tasked Rowland Lee to maintain law and order in Wales, who ordered the hanging of over 5000 criminals in 9 years
• Reasons for the end of the Bloody Code

  • People began to believe in fairness and thought capital punishment was too cruel for certain crimes
  • Belief that criminals should have the chance to reform
  • Public executions becoming less effective, as they were a breeding ground for pickpockets
  • Some juries felt the death penalty was too harsh and found offenders not guilty to avoid public execution
• In 1823, Robert Peel agreed to abolish the death penalty for over 100 offences
• By 1861 the number of capital crimes had been reduced to 5: murder, treason, piracy with violence, espionage, and burning down a weapons store or a navy dockyard
• Transportation


  A way to "reform" characters and keep criminals out of the UK, reducing prison population and using them to develop colonies
• At first transportation was to America but when they broke free from the British Empire in the 1770s, this all stopped
• Until they found another location they used "hulks", which were essentially floating prisons, dirty and where more than a quarter of the prisoners died
• Australia was discovered in 1777 and criminals were transported there instead, with 2200 Welsh convicts sent there
• Experiences of convicts transported to Australia

  • The luckiest were skilled workers (carpenters etc)
  • The unluckiest were unskilled workers who had to do hard work chained up to each other known as chain gangs
• In 1838, it was decided that transportation was not a good enough deterrent and was very expensive, and was also failing to reform characters
• Australians were beginning to argue that transportation was being used as a human dumping ground for criminals
• The government of New South Wales refused to accept any more criminals in 1839 and in 1868 all transportation ended