The practice of executions in colonial Australia aimed to communicate a simple message to both the criminal and the onlooker—crime has consequences.
Underlined by the symbolism of death, this punitive message was an easy one to decipher then as it is now. More convoÂluted and hidden, however, was how this lesson of the Australian gallows was constantly being derailed by failures in execution procedure.
For example, when Joseph Mutter was decapitated in Brisbane by an unusually hard and thin rope, unwisely left exposed to the effects of overnight frost, the press were flabbergasted. �[H]orrible’, �disgraceful’, �disgusting’, �sickening’ and �atrociously revolting’ are a select list of adjectives extracted from just one short paragraph that appeared in The Brisbane Courier describing the event.[191] Instead of concentrating on the gravity of the murder Mutter had committed and the warning hangings sent to potential wrongdoers, the Queensland press were busily mounting a case for an official inquiry into the matter. This chapter gives a broad but informative sweep of the changing practice of executionsin the Australian colonies from 1788 to 1900. It uses a memorandum sent out by the Colonial Office in London in 1880 as a template to discuss each component—from sentencing through to taking the limp body down from the gallows. The decapitation of Mutter may be an extraordinary example but the fact remains that even in minor cases of mismanagement a botched hanging took away from the intended lesson of punishment. The frequent bungling of colonial executions caused unnecessary pain, suffering and disfigurement upon the body of the criminal that reflected badly on the justice of the sentence as a whole. Beneath cries of �barbarism’ and �savagery’, the lesson of deterrence was lost when an execution was not performed correctly.