Caught in a reflective mood, South Australia’s Weekly Chronicle wondered about capital punishment.
Looking backwards from 1867 it wrote how the changes to its administration had been dramatic since public execuÂtions had come to an end. In fact, it was perplexed as to just how quickly these accepted norms had been upended:
Among the questions in which we have anticipated reforms in the old country, is that of public executions, years ago abolished throughout Australia.
It is strange how suddenly systems that have existed for ages, and have been almost universally cherished, as founded on right and essential to the well-being of society, drop into complete disrepute, all the arguments so seriously and vehemently advanced in their favour being abandoned as scarcely worth a serious thought.[477]So far in this book we have heard much about how the abolition of public hangings (and the corresponding introduction of private ones)
impacted upon the punishment in different contexts. Yet, the parliaÂmentary debates, press comment and context of the passage of this legislation have not been fully explored. This Chapter seeks to remedy that by looking into the practicalities around passing the â€?Private ExecuÂtion Acts' through the Australian colonial parliaments during the period 1853 to 1871. The early timing of the Acts in comparison to other jurisÂdictions within the British Empire tells the historian something about the desires and insecurities of colonial Australians. The trigger for introÂducing these Acts, especially in New South Wales, came from a culturally loaded desire to appear civilised to the outside world and distance the Australian colonies from their often chequered beginnings. Colonists, after all, were deeply concerned about their tarnished reputation abroad. Satirists in London had long poked fun at the odium of its far-flung penal settlement. A very early cartoon, for example, imagined the future parliament of Botany Bay in action—the speaker was a convict in irons sitting in a tree listening to a rowdy debate below on different hanging techniques.[478] These sorts of jibes at the colonies' reputation were slow to subside in popular memory. Perhaps—so the thought went—by surging ahead in this area of penal policy they could distinguish themselves from the excesses of a blood-stained convict past? That aside, the legislative debates related to this decision, particularly between 1853 and 1858, was a continent-wide airing of grievances about capital punishment as it was then administered in the colonies from which much can be gleaned.