Why Did England Execute Children?
Over the centuries in England, Crime and Punishment could be seen as being rather sadistic.
During the Tudor Period for example, Henry VIII ordered the executions of over
70,000 people during his reign, and his daughter Bloody Mary I even burned Protestants at the
stake for their religious beliefs. This was the sentence for heretics, and for treason it would
result in a defendant being hanged, drawn and quartered. But many executions shocked the public,
for example during Henry’s reign, some of his closest advisors such as Thomas Cromwell
and Sir Thomas More were beheaded on Tower Hill,
and even two of his wives were executed inside the walls of the Tower of London. But disgustingly
over the centuries, there have been some even more shocking executions, which saw children
going to their deaths on the gallows or on the scaffold. England’s dark history with capital
punishment contains a number of young children being publicly killed in front of large crowds.
Following the Tudor Period, there were a number of accounts that recorded child executions.
There were many crimes that you could lose your life for, and there are accounts that show many
children were executed for committing crimes such as theft. Today we believe that Theft is a
lower class of crime when compared with murder or manslaughter, but during the 17th and 18th century
scores of people were executed for this. It was said that the law did not take age into account,
and that children and teenagers did know the difference between right and wrong. Because of
this, the age for criminal responsibility was just 7, meaning that a 7 year old could be killed in
front of a crowd for stealing goods. It was deemed that girls would be executed for more serious
crimes such as arson, or being complicit in murders, but boys were executed for more crimes.
John Dean has gone down in History as one of the youngest boys ever executed in England.
He was around 8 or 9 years of age, and was sentenced to death for arson. Whilst at trial
at the Abingdon Assizes on the 23rd February 1629, it was said that John Dean set fire to two houses,
barns or dwellings in Windsor. The Judge, Mr Justice Whitelock stated he had evidence that
John knew what he was doing, and that he knew his arson attack was wrong and because of this he was
criminally responsible. He was then executed and was hanged publicly for committing arson.
During Henry VIII’s reign, Alice Glaston just a 11 year old girl was executed in Shropshire.
She’s considered the youngest girl ever to be executed and sentenced to death by the
legal system in England. It’s not known what she did to be sent to the gallows,
and she was executed alongside two others on the 13th April 1546.
Another couple of children who were hanged were Michael Hammond and his sister Anne
whom it’s believed were 7 and 11 when they went to the gallows. In the historical account, it
was said that they were a small boy and girl, but some records claim they could have been teenagers.
The pair were hanged at Kings Lynn in 1709 for a crime that isn’t stated. There was a problem
at the time as teenager executions often weren’t reported. In 1740, 16 year old William Duell was
hanged along with four others at Tyburn, the infamous site of execution in London where
people were hanged, drawn and quartered in front of large crowds. Duell was accused of murdering a
woman or girl, and following his execution his remains were then used for medical dissection
and scientific experiments. His body was cut down after the hanging and after he was declared dead,
and he was taken by surgeons. However something was wrong, when he was taken to the surgeons,
he had somehow managed to revive and he was alive. He was one of only a few who somehow had managed
to survive his death sentence. Because he had undergone his sentence, he was not hanged again
and was instead revived by the doctor before he was sent to Australia to work in the colonies.
It was mostly for crimes of great severity that saw teenagers condemned to die.
Murder was more common than you’d think in the 18th century,
and in 1794 in Dorchester in southern England, a 15 year old girl was brought out in front
of a crowd to be hanged. Elizabeth March was charged with killing her grandfather,
and two days after she was found guilty she was killed. The sentence was not carried out
immediately as the execution could not take place on a Sunday as it was considered a day of rest,
and because of this her death sentence was delayed but only by a day. She was kept in chains locked
up, and was fed only bread and water before she was publicly hanged inside of the tower.
Following her death, her remains were then passed across yet again to the surgeons, as at
the time they were allowed to dissect the bodies of those who were condemned for medical science.
But more executions of children continued, even throughout the 1800s. Those whom we would consider
today to be minors were still sent to their deaths. Adolescents between the age of 15 and 18
were executed for crimes such as murder, arson, theft and highway Robbery. In 1831,
John Bell who was 14 was executed for murdering a boy who was 13. John and his brother who was
11 at the time, murdered Richard Taylor. They did this to steal from him a sum of 9 shillings
which he at the time was trying to collect to give to his disabled father who was struggling.
So they boys killed him to steal his money also, and following their trial, John was executed.
But he was executed using the new drop scaffold, using a slightly different
method rather than simply hanging him over a gallows. It’s considered that in the 1800s,
John Bells execution was of the youngest person to be hanged.
But he wasn’t the youngest to be sentenced to death, as a young boy aged 9 was condemned
but the public hated this, and it caused so much chaos that the judges had to change the sentence.
Usually executions were done in public sites, such as Town Halls or Market squares.
But many were also performed from the walls and ramparts of castles or other buildings.
For example, at Lincoln Castle a number of people were executed from the roof of one of the Towers.
The whole point of this was to ensure that the people of a town saw that justice was
administered, but as time went on the use of public executions began to attract criticism.
It was said that crowds began to act poorly, and the grisly deaths were then forced to be
performed in private for example in prison execution chambers away from the eyes of
the public. As time went on, the age for execution went up. But in the late 1800s,
18 boys younger than 19 had been executed, but then the Children’s Act of 1908
outlined that the minimum age for execution must be 16. This was still too low for many people, but
there wasn’t any records of those under the age of 18 being executed during the 1900s, but there were
some 18 year olds condemned. The final child to be given a death sentence was Harold Wilkins, a
young 16 year old boy who had been implicated in a murder. However he was spared because of his age,
and then the age of execution was raised to 18. In the 1900s, 7 teenage girls had been sentenced
to death, but all of these received some form of different sentence for example prison time.
The children executions of England were incredibly shocking and brutal,
but what is amazing is that they occurred a lot closer to the modern world than you’d think.
Imagine if you were doing your everyday duties in the Tudor Period or later, and you happened
to walk past a scaffold with a child saying his last words before he was due to be killed.
It would have been incredibly shocking, but what is disgusting is the fact that crowds
still attended the executions of children en mass, and still bayed for the blood of those
who were condemned, despite some being just so young. The stories of these children show us that
Britain was incredibly bloody, and that England has a past that must be considered. The child
executions of England are a part of History that communicate how awful people can be sometimes.
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