The end of public hangings

CAPITAL Punishment is prohibited under the European Convention on Human Rights but was used by many countries for centuries. In Ireland, the last execution took place in 1954. After that, all sentences to executions were commuted by the president but it remained on the statute books until it was abolished by law in 1990. The last execution by hanging in England took place in 1964. The sentence of death by hanging was abolished in 1998 and that by beheading in 1973.

 

During the last century, executions were usually carried out within the confines of prisons but for centuries they were in public and were looked upon as forms of public entertainment. Most films dealing with the period of the French Revolution feature some scenes of the guillotine and the crowds that gathered round.

The last person to be executed in public in England was an Irishman, Michael Barrett, in 1868. Public executions were abolished in the UK that same year and the new law came into force three days after Barrett was hanged.

A native of Fermanagh, Barrett joined the Fenians as a young man and worked in the Glasgow area as a stevedore.

In 1867, a policeman was shot during an attempt to free two Fenian prisoners from a prison van in Manchester. Resulting from this, three men, Allen, Larkin and O’Brien, were executed and remembered as the Manchester Martyrs. Some time later, Richard O’Sullivan Burke was arrested. He was charged with being a Fenian arms agent and the mastermind behind the Manchester prison van escape. He was held in remand in Clerkenwell prison in Middlesex.

The Fenians were determined to break him free from jail. On December 13, they placed a bomb in a wheelbarrow outside the external wall of the prison. They hoped the bomb would bring down the wall and let the Fenian prisoners escape. The explosion was badly judged. They succeeded in blowing a hole in the prison wall but they also demolished a number of local houses. This resulted in 12 deaths and 50 other people injured. The deaths shocked Britain and resulted in a very long-lived backlash and hostility against the Irish community there.

Early in the new year, Barrett was arrested in Glasgow and charged with illegally discharging a firearm. Once arrested he was further charged with being the person who placed the bomb at Clerkenwell prison. When the case was heard, Barrett produced a number of witnesses who testified that he had been in Scotland on the day in question. The Times reported that the police had gathered evidence that he was indeed in London at the time. Nevertheless, the case against him depended on one man, Patrick Mullany, who had given testimony in other cases and who was reputedly given free passage to Australia.

Mullany swore that Barrett told him he committed the crime. After two hours, the jury declared him guilty. He was sentenced to be hanged and in spite of many people, including a number of MPs, appealing for clemency the sentence was carried out.

Michael Barrett, Fenian from Fermanagh, became the last person to be executed in public in England when he was hanged outside Newgate Prison on May 26, 1868 – 144 years ago this week.