The Reaction of the Colonial Newspapers
The response of the colonial newspapers to the Private Execution Acts as they were under the consideration of the colonial parliaments was overwhelmingly supportive. To the newspapers, capital punishment as a whole was acceptable to the majority but the �barbarous' manner in which it was being carried out needed fundamental reform.
To start with New South Wales, its newspapers had a lot to comment on as the Bill passed through the legislature. The Sydney Morning Herald offered its cautious support, stating that the current mode of execution was beyond repair. As a whole, public executions needlessly excited �morbid passions' and often struck the tone of �cold-blooded revenge', rather than that of a solemn punishment.[545] The newspaper came down exceptionally hard on the �criminal rabble' who insisted on attending with an attitude not appropriate to the occasion: �Brutalising, public executions certainly are; and, in as far as example is concerned, it may be doubted whether the terror they are intended to inflict is equal in force to the disgust or the pity they generate'.[546] For The Sydney Morning Herald, the death penalty was still very much necessary to deter crime but the current mode of execution was simply not hitting the right notes.[547] The newspaper also cautioned against the growing secrecy of the punishment ensuring that it must still �meet the just and stern requirements of public justice'.[548] In its public comment, the newspaper was at pains to protect the transparency of the punishment in this new era of private executions.The Freemans Journal, another Sydney publication supporting the bill before Parliament, was surprised that no one in the colony had thought of this reform earlier: �It appears somewhat strange in an age of such maudlin sentimentalism and spurious humanity as the present, that no philanthropist or statesman has taken up the question before now'.[549] It also thought the crowd who came to watch was a blight on the age: �We do sincerely hope that public executions will be abolished, and the shameful spectacle taken away, of women and children, prentice boys and older fools running with all speed from their respective occupations to witness the last convulsive movements of a fellow mortal, as if it were a matter of public rejoicing or some exhilarating scene of innocent amuse- ment'.[550]4 There was concern from The Sydney Morning Herald over the transparency of private executions and the capacity for corruption but the Freemans Journal was unfazed by the possibility.
With characteristic acerbity it advised its rival publication to �discard all such old womanish apprehensions' and �frightful nursery maids' tales'.[551]Regional newspapers appeared to be in agreement with those of the city on the issue of public executions. The Maitland Mercury, for example, thought it was time that women and children were shielded from proceedings and saw very little �beneficial purpose' that public executions could serve.[552] The Bathurst Free Press andMiningJournal was very much disgusted at the spectacle and those who attended saying that, �A raree show, a horse race, bull bait, or man fight will not excite half the curiosity in the vulgar and unfeeling which is stirred up by the spectacle of a dying wretch struggling out his last breath at the rope's end'.[553] As for moving before England in this reform, the paper offered some words of encouragement to any nervous MPs:
Whilst but too happy to borrow all that is excellent or praiseworthy in the institutions of the mother country, we protest against the folly of copying her errors. And it will be highly credible to the enlightenment and public feeling of New South Wales, if the first step be taken by her legislature towards the reform of an abomination which has long been a scandal to civilisation.[554]
Moving from New South Wales to the other colonies and their newsÂpapers, the proposal caused a large discussion. Upon hearing the news of the Victorian Parliament's success in gaining Royal approval for the introduction of private executions, The Argus of Melbourne published a strongly worded piece entitled â€?The Private Gallows'. It offered uncondiÂtional support for the reform as well as outlining the benefits privacy might bring to the overall decorum of the spectacle. First of all, the â€?crowds of scum' who ritually assembled at the base of the scaffold would henceforth be a relic of Victoria's barbarous past.[555] Thankfully, in the absence of a crowd, it thought the criminal would feel no obligation to act like a hero or a martyr as had been the case in the era of public hangings:
The heroism of the gallows will be destroyed; and the convict, instead of being elevated by the sympathy of the spectators to the dignity of the martyr, or by his own morbid self-esteem to that defiant position which has been supposed to be attained by those who �die game,’ will part from the world under the eye of the few authorised to witness his departure better fitted to meet that Presence into which he is to be so suddenly thrust.[556]
The Argus labelled public executions â€?horrid’, â€?degrading’ and â€?demorÂalising’ while looking forward to a future where capital punishment was stripped of its festive tone.[557] Given the subdued nature of the private gallows, the newspaper hoped that â€?depravity will no longer have excuse for holding holiday on occasions when the circumstances ought to suggest fasting and humiliation rather than a festival’.[558] The article was also careful to put the Act on a grander plane, seeing it as evidence of enlightened progress occurring in the colony of Victoria and one step before the abolition of capital punishment as a whole: â€?We are now about to put in practice a law which, though a startling innovation upon English precedent, may fairly be considered a sign and proof of an advancing civilisation, destined, we trust, in time, wholly to supersede death punishments’.[559]
The newspapers of Van Diemen’s Land were similarly supportive of the push towards private executions. An impatient Hobarton Mercury thought that the reform was overdue:
It is quite time that the disgusting exhibitions, which have so long pampered the morbid curiosity of the ignorant and the vicious, should come to an end...
Every essayist now-a-days has something to say on such subjects, until we are wearied to death of the theme, and our only wonder is how people have tolerated public executions so long. They ought to have gone out with bear-baiting, thirty years ago.[560]The Colonial Times viewed the disappearance of public death from Hobart’s streets as much needed: â€?Nothing can be more opposed to the philosophy of punitive discipline; or so injurious, in the main, to the interests of society'.[561] The Courier also praised the move stating that it was, â€?in consonance with that spirit of improvement of the law which has so creditably distinguished England of late years'.[562] As news of the legislation travelled north to Launceston, The Cornwall Chronicle was similarly relieved by the thought of a calm, contemplative criminal on the drop: â€?instead of being diverted from the solemnity of their eternal preparation by the presence of ancient comrades of their own stamp, who come to see whether they die craven, or game... will find in the presÂence of a few staid men, only an additional incentive. to a reverential, penitent, and submissive demeanour'.[563]
The South Australian press rejoiced at the prospect of introducing private executions into the colony. The South Australian Register was quick to offer its best wishes for the success of the bill thinking it conducive to cultivating an improvement in �public morals'.[564] For the newspaper, public executions were linked to the old tyrannical regimes of Europe, not the quickly civilising colony on Australia's southern shores:
The advancement of society in Europe generally has tended to eradicate the odious practices which subjected the criminal to torture as a preceÂdent of death. We believe that breaking on the wheel, the rack, and other medieval inventions for prolonging the sufferings of those doomed to death are now banished from those States which belong to the great EuroÂpean family; if they linger at all, it is among those nations who yet groan under the worst tyrannies.
In our native land these practices never took root, and disappeared with the light and freedom which accompanied the Reformation.[565]An added bonus for the Register was that volatile interactions between crowd and criminal could be tempered: �There will be no inducement to cultivate a spirit of bravado — no encouragement to “die game;” there will be the consciousness that those who witness the scene, are either the cold, official functionaries of the law, or those whose emotions vibrate between abhorrence of the criminal and pity for the man'.[566]
Unusually, The South Australian Advertiser took a similar stance to its counterpart in both tone and content. It believed that the â€?virtuous recoil with disgust' at public hangings whereas only the â€?profligate and abanÂdoned attend an execution as they would a race, a fair, or a play'.[567] In the Advertiser’s opinion public hangings were:
[A] rallying point for the outcasts of society... a fruitful harvest-field for pickpockets, ruffians, and harlots; it is a region of fearful moral contagion to the idle and the curious, who follow apathetically in the course of the stream, or are led by morbid inquisitiveness to see a man die; it is, in fact, precisely the place where the better qualities of human nature run great risk of defilement, and where vice discovers the most fruitful and congenial field of action.[568]
Furthermore, it also believed that the imagery of violent death emanating from the scaffold was one that created more criminals than it deterred. The newspaper thought that public hangings were a â€?seed-time' from which many â€?crime-harvests' would soon follow.[569] It continued: â€?The lesson which the hangman teaches is not of an ameliorating, not of a refining, not of a reformatory, not even of a terrifying character'.[570] Instead, the paper viewed the public scaffold as â€?purely a lesson in crime, a lesson in demoralisation, a lesson in the downward series, terminating in the abysses of shame, crime, and ruin'.[571] Like the Register though, it too saw this legislation as proof of the advancing civilisation of the age: â€?We think that the friends of humanity will rejoice in this triumph of reason and civilisation over the degrading relics of a barbarous age'.[572] The Advertiser continued that public hangings are â€?one of the last lingering vestiges of a barbarous regime, and, thank God, it is about to disappear'.[573] Clearly, there was a build up of perceived problems that colonial parliaÂments and the press identified in the 1850s that could be solved with the introduction of private executions. However, it is now time to return to a discussion of the specific trigger for this penal reform which, as it turns out, was deeply rooted in the popular memory of colonists.