Analysis Of Vic Gatrell s The Hanging Tree Essay

Vic Gatrell’s The Hanging Tree explores the opinions of average and lower-class citizens on public hangings on England from 1770 until 1868 rather than the opinions of bureaucrats, royalty, and other elites as many similar histories do. He argues that the opinions of lower-class citizens grew more and more unfavorable during this time, and the movement of executions to a private setting in the 1860s was a direct result of the diminishing support for public executions. At the same time, the gradual shift among elites and other government officials toward the abolishment of public executions was a reaction against increasingly unruly crowds and the squeamishness toward the spectacle of the execution (67). This book is organized into six sections with a total of 21 chapters. The first section describes the mentality of the audience present at public executions, and the second section covers the private opinions of plebian, or lower class citizens on execution. The third section defends Gatrell’s argument that the outlawing of public executions was more of a solution to large rioting crowds than it was for humanitarian purposes. The fourth and fifth sections offer detailed accounts of specific court cases that demonstrate the unfairness and ineffectiveness of the Blood Code and public execution in England. Finally, the sixth section contains Gatrell’s argument against those who deem themselves â€Å"reformers† who, in Gatrell’s opinion, only reformed out of self-interest to dispel