16. BOWEN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 551 destroyed, since it was not likelj that it ever would be enforced. In the year 1836, the number so condemned to death was four hundred and ninety-four, only thirty-four of whom were hanged. The first year of her Majesty saw a series of Acts of Parliament limiting the number of capital sentences and graduating the secondary punishments. In 1861, a still further amelioration of the law took place, and now murder and treason, piracy with violence, and setting fire to her Majesty's dockyards, arsenals, ships, and naval stores are the only capital crimes. While the population of England and Wales has nearly doubled, the average number of execu- tions, according to Sir Edmund Du Cane, has not increased at all, and the capital sentences have enormously decreased. The present reign, moreover, has seen the extinction of the savage custom of converting into a public spectacle the execution of the final sentence of the law. Down to 1837, the pillory was still a punishment for perjury and subornation of perjury. It ceased in that year; but public executions remained in fashion for thirty years longer. The scenes of licence and disorder which on such occasions might be witnessed outside the prison walls have been portrayed by the graphic pen of more than one great author of the age. Each unhappy criminal, as the fatal day drew near, became the object of sensational curiosity. In 1840, the Lady Mayoress of the day attended the funeral sermon preached in Courvoisier's presence on the last Sunday before his death. On the night preceding an execution, brutal crowds took up their station in the vicinity of the gaol, and parties of pleasure were organised to witness the scene of death — parties not composed only of the uneducated. Even down to 1868 English gentlemen might be seen occasionally at the adj acent windows which commanded a commodious view of the gallows and the drop. The barbarous ceremony which served to familiarise thousands with the agonies of a death struggle is now a thing of the past, and since 1868 the law inflicts its most terrible punishment in private. Prevention and detection of crime are subjects which, like the subject of the execution of the law's judgments, may fairly rank under the head of its administration. Not the
