Hello. This week as part of our regular series on executions and punishments I'm going to talk about
another death sentence. However this is a fairly unique death sentence. Because it can be passed
without proof of a capital crime, without trial, and it's not really a death sentence in the correct
legal terms at all. I'm talking about "Pressing to Death", or to give it its correct title "Peine forte
et dure" or "hard and forceful punishment", and it's what you get when you won't enter a plea at court.
Sound harsh? Well it is, but let's go back to the beginning and understand how this comes about. It,
or at least its ancestor, first appears in the law with the Standing Mute Act of 1275 enacted by Edward
the first, and this is designed so that people cannot escape justice merely just by keeping quiet.
It states that "notorious felons which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in enquests
of felonies that men shall charge them with before the justice of the king's suit shall have a strong
and hard imprisonment (prison forte et dure) as which they refuse to stand to the law of the common land."
So pretty much jailed under harsh conditions until you enter a plea, and the reasoning behind this
is a bit of a legal curiosity. Basically, until the defendant has been accused, and has responded with
a plea that has been recorded, the courts had no jurisdiction to be able to sit in judgment
or to pass a sentence, and as such the entering of a plea into those proceedings is vital to justice
being delivered. A later chronicler in about 1290 described the imprisonment in question and I think you'll agree
it's pretty tough going. It states "and let their penance be this that they be barefooted, ungirt,
and bareheaded in the worst place in the prison, upon the bare ground continually night and day,
that they eat only bread made of barley or bran, and that they drink not the day they eat,
nor eat the day they drink, nor drink anything but water and that they be put in irons." So basically
you're left naked but for a few chains in a cell on a cold stone floor without furniture and only
fed bread once every two days until you decide to tell the courts whether you're innocent or guilty.
And remember this. We're not talking here about people being forced to confess to a crime.
Just enter a plea. You can still tell the courts that you didn't do it that you are completely
innocent that you had just been fitted up and all this horror stops. However as the years progressed
it got more and more graphic. You start to look into a witness in the late 15th century who wrote of
one case "he will lie upon his back with his head covered and his feet and one arm be drawn to one
quarter of the house with a cord the other arm to another quarter and in the same manner it will be
done with his legs and let there be laid upon his body iron and stone as much as he can bear or more"
So, for the layman, assuming that you refuse to say whether you're innocent or guilty of the crime,
you are going to be placed on the floor and tied down with limbs spread apart each limb pointing
to a corner of the room and then weights placed upon your body until you enter a plea or until
you die from asphyxiation or injuries received. That's up to you. Yeah. But the thing is, it worked.
Highwayman William Spigott, this chap was a hardened villain, he lasted a whole half hour in 1721
before he elected to a plea of not guilty, and murderer and gangster Edward Burnsworth held out
for an hour and three minutes before pleading not guilty. This was something that had merit.
So why, with this history of hardened villains lasting only half an hour would you put
yourself through this hell? Well mostly, from what we can find, it is people who are likely
to be guilty making sure that consequences aren't hitting other people as well as them,
and to examine this it's best that we look at a couple of the most famous cases of it.
So we turn to Margaret Clitherow of York. Margaret was arrested in 1586 for the crime of harbouring
catholic priests. This was a capital crime under Elizabeth the first's Jesuit act of 1584.
After a search of her house that had discovered the priest hole
she was brought before York Assizes where she refused to enter a plea. Now some accounts state
that this was just out of stubborn unwillingness to recognize a protestant legal system, which is
possible, and others say that this is because if there was no trial then there was no need
for testimony and as a result she was sparing her children both from having to testify against her
and potentially being tortured themselves if they were not going to give testimony.
Now some sources also say she was sentenced to be pressed to death under her door and this is
not really the case as the sentence was just to be pressed under hard and forceful punishment.
If you died under such treatment then that was an occupational hazard, but it wasn't a
specified outcome of the courts. However given what was at stake it is reasonable to assume
that no amount of pressure would have got Margaret to enter a plea for that indictment.
It's also reasonable to assume that she was never going to walk away from that chamber
and therefore quite reasonable to assume that both she and the judge knew that.
She died at the toll booth on the Ouze Bridge in York on the 25th of March 1586 under more than
750 pounds of weight. That's a third of a ton, and she was pregnant with her fourth child at the time.
Much later she was canonised as a catholic saint on the 25th of October 1970 by Pope
Paul VI. Her relic, one of her hands, sits in the Bar Convent at York. Go see it once the lockdown's up.
Another famous case, and the only case of this in America is that of Giles Corey who was
indicted as part of the Salem witch trials. In his case were he to be tried and found guilty,
and it's worth pointing out that irrespective of whether he actually was guilty he was going to
be found guilty and hanged, so in the event of him being found guilty his property and a state would
have then been forfeit to the government. As it was, because of his refusal to plead,
he couldn't be found guilty in the court of law and therefore when he died he died in possession
of his full estate, which could then be passed to his appointed family members
according to his will. Had he not done this the surviving members of his family
may well have lived out their lives in penury so he was looking to avoid that. Now thankfully now
we live in more civilized times. The last pressing in the UK was in 1741, and it was removed from the
statute books as an option in 1772 but it's worth noting that what replaced it was equally as scary
after 1772, if you refused to enter a plea it was recorded as a plea of guilty. Just think about that!
You are pleading guilty. No trial. No defence. Just a justice reform that drives a coach
and four horses through innocent until proven guilty. That's terrifying, and we can blame the
later Georgians for a lot of things in history, and we do, but they changed that law in 1827
so that a refusal to plea was taken as a plea of not guilty. Which is exactly as it should
be, and exactly as it remains today. Thank you very much for watching we'll see you next time.