Preface
For guilty criminals being sentenced in an Australian courtroom today, the words �you are to be hanged by the neck until dead' is not a turn of phrase they need to worry about hearing.
In fact, there is a whole range of punishments that have now become extinct on the continent. Prisons and fines have colonised a penal infrastructure that once condoned sancÂtions like transportation, the pillory and the lash as a criminal’s â€?just desserts'. While it existed on the statute books, capital punishment was the law’s most feared punishment but it too changed dramatically. In the early days of settlement public executions could attract spectators in the thousands; children were occasionally lifted up higher so they could better see the consequences of a life of crime. Criminals might choose to ignore the counsel of the God-fearing clergymen over their shoulder and shock the crowd with their bravado in the face of eternity. Nervous and sometimes inebriated executioners, usually one-time criminals themÂselves, often fumbled the job. For a time the criminal’s body was liable to be â€?hung in chains’ afterwards—a rotting carcass blowing in the wind left to underscore the hangman’s example. And all this could be carried out on a criminal guilty of a crime less than that of murder; property offences were enough to see a person hang in the first decades of British settlement. For those living today who are old enough to hold a personal memory of Australia’s last execution—that of Ronald Ryan in 1967— there is no doubt that their recollections of his death are a world away from the type of colonial executions evoked above.This book gives a comprehensive overview of capital punishment in the Australian colonial period (1788—1900) for the very first time. Many of the basic facts about each colony are outlined in an early chapter on Australia’s â€?hanging years’—execution numbers, the frequency of mercy and the changing nature of capital crimes.
It shows how the â€?settings’ of capital punishment were slightly different for each jurisdiction but always shifting in the same direction. The middle chapters provide an overview of the practice of executions broken down into three compoÂnents: the realities of execution procedure, the behaviour of the dying criminal and the nature of the crowd gathered below the drop. It reveals the perceived problems with the way executions were being conducted and how they were corrected in each case. The reason for the aboliÂtion of public executions, and their partial reintroduction for Indigenous Australian offenders, is discussed after that. Depending on the race of the condemned criminal, Australia was simultaneously a leader and a straggler when it came to this issue in the context of the British Empire. The push for the total abolition of the death penalty concerns the final chapter so that a well-rounded perspective on the punishment can be achieved. In the end, the death penalty survived to Federation in each of the Australian colonies but it emerged in a sanitised, professionalised and institutionalised form.Running through the entirety of the book is a quest to understand not just how, but why, capital punishment changed in the direction it did over the course of the colonial period. I argue that the â€?lesson’ of the gallows, something that those in positions of authority held dear, was threatened by the way executions were being carried out. Colonial authorities went about removing these distractions one-by-one to ensure that the didactic intention of an execution could remain intact. Crucially, any change the punishment underwent had to accord with the unique and ever-changing cultural norms and popular memory of Australian
colonists. This argument could not have been formulated without referÂence to the more sociologically-minded literature on culture and punishÂment which I pay my respects to in the Introduction. I also justify this approach against other candidates of analysis (i.e.
Foucault, Marx, Elias or more traditional accounts of penal â€?progress') that also have the potential to explain penal change.The transformation of the Australian death penalty has many interÂnational analogues. Comparative and transnationally-minded scholars of punishment are sure to find this book useful—there is nowhere else that so many facts and figures about the Australian situation are compiled in one place. Those interested in ongoing debates about penal change active in fields like sociology, criminology, penology and history will also find the practical application of a conceptual position instructive. For those with a penchant for Australian history alone, the gallows wove its way into some of its most notorious chapters: the bushranging epidemic, convict mutinies, frontier conflicts and crimes of lasting notoriety (think of the â€?cannibal convict' Alexander Pearce, for example). From examining the contours of the death penalty much can be learnt about different features of colonial society as a whole. Although this book is focused on the colonial period (1788—1900), it was the era when the vast majority (over 90%) of the approximately two thousand executions in Australian history took place. To know how the gallows operated prior to FederaÂtion on 1 January 1901 is necessary if anyone is to make sense to what happened after it.
The history of capital punishment in Australia is yet to be given the full scholarly attention it deserves. It lacks a comprehensive study that has been to the benefit of the historical debate in places like England, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United States of America and Canada. This is the first monograph of comparable size and scope to be published about capital punishment in Australia. The existing body of academic literature on the topic has proved useful but is most often limited by jurisdiction, timeframe or a specific feature of the penalty. An extensive web of primary sources collected over many years was mustered from all six colonies to accomplish the task.
To categorise them broadly it utilises: parliamentary material; government reports; trial accounts; gaol records; published memoirs; travel accounts; newspaper articles; visual sources; private correspondence; and abolitionist pamphlets. A wide variety of colonists are also heard from—some not often given a voice in existing histories. Legislators, judges, lawyers, sheriffs, journalÂists and clergymen exist alongside criminals, executioners, women, travÂelling writers, pioneering residents and Indigenous Australians. All have a unique perspective on the issues that emerge when discussing something as emotive as capital punishment.Documenting the history of capital punishment in six separate jurisÂdictions over a 112-year time-span was a challenging task to say the least—one that took me a full decade to complete. I am thankful for the financial assistance granted to me from the following institutions during that time to conduct this research: The Australian CommonÂwealth Government; The University of Adelaide; The Australian HistorÂical Association; and The National Library of Australia. The University of Adelaide has proved to be a stimulating and supportive research environÂment throughout this process. I am grateful to the Series Editor (AssoÂciate Professor David Barrie) as well as the team at Palgrave Macmillan (Josie Taylor and Liam Inscoe-Jones in particular) for their show of faith in the latest iteration of this project. The assistance of Kayalvizhi Saravanakumar was also appreciated. It should be acknowledged that portions of Chapter 7 have appeared in the following publication: Steven Anderson, â€?Punishment as Pacification: The Role of Indigenous ExecuÂtions on the South Australian Frontier, 1836—1862', Aboriginal History, vol. 39, 2015, pp. 3-26.
If I listed everyone by name that I have shared this journey with I would soon run out of space. So to all of the friends, colleagues and postgraduates who have supported and advised me—rest easy knowing that you have helped in ways that 12-point Times New Roman cannot express. There are, however, a handful of people who were crucial in making this book all it could be. If it has a godfather the most likely candidate is Associate Professor Paul Sendziuk. As my PhD supervisor he has helped nurture this project from infancy and it has benefited extensively from his wise counsel. Gay Anderson always had her eye out for any errors in punctuation, syntax and spelling along the way. To Emma: there is no other smile I look forward to seeing more than yours. To Gay, Martyn, Kathryn, Amanda, Nima, Layla, Arya, Mila, Alice and Charlotte—I am lucky to have been brought up in such a supportive family environment. Finally, I dedicate this work to my late father, Glenn Anderson, who is still remembered nine years on by his adoring widow, children and now—through old photographs—by his five young grandchildren.
Adelaide, Australia
Steven Anderson