crime and punishment

Over the centuries attitudes to crime and the treatment of those who break the law have changed greatly. Violent crimes, like murder and rape, have always been judged the most serious, however, in the past people received severe penalties for crimes which today are thought less serious, such as poaching, petty theft and damaging property.

Punishments ranged from a time in the stocks, whipping, branding, hanging, and from 1678 transportation to the West Indies or American colonies. Offences like swearing, immorality and vagrancy were dealt with in a similar way to burglary and assault.

Taking away a person's freedom as a punishment is quite modern. Until the late eighteenth century prisons were used to hold people awaiting trial, punishment or execution, and until 1869, debtors who could not pay. Imprisonment as a punishment was championed by Jeremy Bentham and John Howard and by the late nineteenth century, with a decline in the use of the death penalty and the abolition of transportation, "penal servitude" became the punishment for most serious crimes.

"The poacher's family plead his pardon before the squire" (1817).