During the course of our research there would be very few of us who have not found at least a couple of ancestors who ran afoul of the law and found themselves before the courts. Many laws in England (and elsewhere) were set by the rich and landed in order to control and suppress the poor, to keep the rights and protect property of the wealthy and powerful. By the 1800s over 200 crimes were punishable by death, usually by gallows. Hanging crimes included things like murder, treason and piracy, but also crimes such as robbing a rabbit warren, cutting down trees, associating with gypsies and a number of other more petty crimes.
There was little understanding of, or sympathy for, the desperate social conditions which all but forced many of the poor to resort to crime in order to survive. Criminality was seem as the result of bad blood or bad character, and punishment was set harshly as a deterrent to others.
The English justice system divided crimes into categories to be dealt with by a three-tiered criminal justice system.
The Court of Petty Sessions
This court was established around the 1730s because the more historic Quarter Sessions Courts were getting too busy and were meeting too infrequently. They tried minor offences or misdemeanours such as minor theft and larceny, poaching, assault, drunkenness, vagrancy,
bastardy examinations, and civil actions such as arbitration.
Courts of Petty Sessions were held when needed before a stipendiary magistrate or two or more justices of the peace who could summarily
decide a case without needing to empanel a jury. Thus the cases themselves were known as summary offences.
Punishments meted out by these courts did not include death or transportation.
The Court of Quarter Sessions
These courts were called Quarter Sessions because they were held each quarter: around Epiphany (6 January - winter session);
Lent/Easter (spring session); Midsummer (24 June – summer session); Michaelmas (29 September – autumn
session).
They were held in each county before a 'bench' that consisted of at least two Justices of the Peace who were presided over by
a chairman who sat with the empanelled jury.
Quarter Sessions Courts heard the more serious offences which required a jury and could not be disposed of 'summarily' by
a magistrate. Offences that were punishable by death were usually sent to the higher Assize Courts. The Prosecutor at the Quarter Sessions was often the victim of the crime, and if the victim didn’t have the time or money to pursue the case the
perpetrator frequently got off.
The distinction between the Assize courts and the Quarter Session courts were blurry until 1842 when an Act consigned
all death penalty and life imprisonment cases to the Assize Courts.
The Court of Assizes
The Assize Courts tried more serious offences: felonies such as homicide, infanticide, serious theft, highway robbery, rape, forgery,
counterfeiting, witchcraft. Judges from the High Court travelled to the Assize Circuit Courts two or three times a year to hear the cases.
The Old Bailey, renamed the Central Criminal Court in 1834, was the trial court for most London crimes and was similar to an Assize Court.
Legislation and the Death Penalty
1823 - the Judgement of Death Act allowed judges to commute the death penalty except for the crimes of murder and
treason.
1832 - the Punishment of Death Act eliminated execution as the punishment for two-thirds of what were once capital
crimes including theft, forgery and counterfeiting.
1861 - the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts eliminated the death penalty for all crimes but murder, high treason, piracy
with violence, and arson in the Royal Dockyards, although effectively “murder” became the only capital crime.
1868 saw the last public execution, as distaste for this 'spectator sport' grew.
1964 saw the last execution in England.
