The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THE EDITORS OF THE DAILY NEWS,1 23 FEBRUARY 1846

Text from the Daily News, 23 Feb 1846, pp. 4-5.2

Gentlemen.

           I choose this time for addressing to you, the first of two or three letters on the subject of Capital Punishment, because it seems to me that the importance of the question is very strongly presented to the public mind just now, by a recent execution in Ireland:3 and the recent acquittal, in England, of one of the most cruel murderers of whom we have any record.4 And although there can be no doubt that such a theme, of all others, should be considered with the calmest reference to its own broad Right and Wrong, and not with a limited appeal to its illustration in this or that instance; still, I apprehend that cases like these resolve themselves so directly into the general question, as to have a legitimate and very powerful bearing on it; and that no better occasion can be seized for reviving its discussion, than when such circumstances are generally remembered.

           I wish to be distinctly understood, in the outset, as writing in no spirit of sympathy with the criminal. It will be a part of my purpose to endeavour to show, that the morbid and odious sentimentality which has been exhibited of late years, in favour of ruffians utterly unworthy of it, but drawing nigh to the gallows, is one of the evil concomitants of the Punishment of Death. And I desire to consider it, with a reference to the criminal, only in two points of view. To these, I will confine this introductory letter.

           First. Whether one of the two great objects of all punishment (reserving the second for its proper place) be not to reform the offender. Secondly. Whether an irrevocable Doom – which nothing can recall, which no human power can set right if it be wrong, which may be wrongfully inflicted with the most just intention, and which has been wrongfully inflicted with the most just intention, as we all know, more than once – should ever be pronounced by men of fallible and erring judgment, on their fellow-creatures.

           It may be urged that, in the preparation of a criminal for death, and in his devout reception of religious comfort, and in his full confession and late repentance, his reformation is achieved and worked out. Reverend ordinaries, at Newgate and elsewhere, have said so. Hosts of angels have been imagined, in enthusiastic sermons, waiting to conduct the murderer to Heaven; and strange parallels have even been suggested, in such discourses, between the Scaffold and the Cross. GOD forbid that I should presume to measure, or doubt, the mercy in store for the worst criminal ever executed! But I do distinctly challenge and dispute this kind of reformation. Besides that the reformation brought about by legal punishment, should be, to be satisfactory, a living, lasting, growing one; working on, in degradation and humility, from day to day; and striving, in its chains, and labour, and long-distant Hope, to make some atonement always; – besides this, I doubt the possibility of a great change being wrought in any man’s heart and nature, in the flush and fever of that flying interval between the Warrant and the Noose. I see the dreadful hurry of the time, expressed in every word and action that comes leaking through the prison-walls, to be caught up by the thirsty crowd outside. I see Hope living on, and know it must live on, in some faint shape, until the Bell begins to toll. I see the restless mind wandering away, miserably, from the main theme of the repentant letter, written in the cell; and while it tells of trust and steadfastness, having power to settle nowhere. I see the abject clinging on to life, which clutches at the hangman’s hand, and blesses him beneath the beam. I see, in everything, the same wild, rapid, incoherent dream: of which I believe the penitence and preparation to be, at least, as unsettled and unsubstantial as any other part. And I believe this, because of the natural constitution of the human mind, and its ordinary workings at such a frightful pass.

           “I can give you no hope of life,” said a gentleman to a criminal in Newgate, on the night before the day appointed for his execution.5 “Unless I had solemnly given the promise elsewhere, that I would tell you so, I should not be here. But, by much entreaty, I have obtained a respite: that there may be time to inquire into what I have represented as a doubtful point. Can you bear the thought of living, only for another week?” “O God, sir!” cried the man, “a week is a long time to live!” And being smitten, as if he were only a week old then, he fell down, senseless, on the ground.*

           Upon the second question, whether an irrevocable punishment be, on principle, justifiable; ordained, as it necessarily is, by men of fallible judgment, whose powers of arriving at the truth are limited, and in whom there is the capacity of mistake and false deduction; upon this question alone, I submit that a firm and efficient stand may be made against the punishment of Death. Better that hundreds of guilty persons should escape scot-free (which, supposing any other punishment to be substituted in its place, they never could or would), than that one innocent person should suffer. Better, I will even say, that hundreds of guilty persons should escape, than that the possibility of any innocent man or woman having been sacrificed, should present itself, with the least appearance or colour of reason, to the minds of any class of men!

           Take the case of SEERY, the man just now executed in Ireland: in that unhappy country, where it is considered most essential to assert the law, and make examples through its means. My impression of the case, so far as I know it from the public reports, is, that the man was guilty; but that is nothing to the purpose. There are these facts in it:

           The prosecutor was shot at, by night; and identified the wretched man who has suffered, as the person who fired at him: against whom there was some other evidence, but all of a circumstantial and constructible nature. Before that miserable man went to his death, he set on record, a deliberate and solemn protest against the justice of his sentence, and called upon his Maker before whom he would so soon appear, with all his sins upon his head, to bear witness to his innocence. Since his death, the prosecutor (an honourable and credible witness, no doubt), has repeated his “positive and unalterable conviction,” that he was not mistaken in his previous identification, and that SEERY was the man who fired at him.

           Will any one deny that there is, here, the Possibility of mistake? I entreat all who may chance to read this letter, to pause for an instant, and ask themselves whether they can remember any occasion, on which they have, in the broad day, and under circumstances the most favorable to recognition, mistaken one person for another: and believed that in a perfect stranger, they have seen, going away from them or coming towards them, a familiar friend. I beg them to consider whether such mistakes be not so common, in all men’s experience, as to render it highly probable that every Irish peasant in whose remembrance this dying declaration lives and burns, can easily recal6 one such for himself. And then I put this question – Is such an execution calculated to assist the law: to diffuse a wholesome respect for it: to repress atrocious crimes against the person: to awaken any new sense of the sacredness of human life?

           Contending, at present, against the Justifiability of the Punishment of Death, on this second ground which I have stated: I submit that Probability of mistake is not required. The barest Possibility of mistake is a sufficient reason against the taking of a life which nothing can restore; whereas, it would weigh but as a shred of gossamer against the infliction of any other punishment, within the power of man to repair.

           With this, I leave the question of Capital Punishment in its reference to the convict sentenced, and shall beg leave, in another letter, to consider it in its bearings on Society and Crime. But, as a part of its effects upon Society, I would, in conclusion, entreat your readers to reflect, whether such a declaration as that made by Seery before his execution, would be likely to have awakened a general sympathy among the Irish people, or any strong conviction of his innocence (unless afterwards revived and borne out by newly discovered circumstances), but for its being surrounded by the awful dignity of Death.

CHARLES DICKENS.

           * In consequence of the new proof elicited by this new inquiry, the man was saved.

• 1. The editor of the Daily News at this time was John Forster (1812–76; Dictionary of National Biography), historian and man of letters, CD’s closest friend, and his literary and legal advisor. CD had been the inaugural editor of the Daily News, until his resignation on 9 Feb 1846.
• 2. Published under the title "Letters on Social Questions. Capital Punishments”. This was the first of five letters CD penned to the Editors of the Daily News on the topic of capital punishment; see To The Editors of the Daily News 28 Feb, and 9, 13 and 16 Mar 1846. The writer Douglas Jerrold (1803-57; Dictionary of National Biography), who had acted as sub-editor and contributed two leader articles during CD’s brief tenure as editor of the Daily News, suggested that the new Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (which had CD’s support at this time) should coordinate its initial preparations with the publication of CD’s articles (see James Gregory, Victorians Against the Gallows: Capital Punishment and the Abolitionist Movement in Nineteenth Century Britain [London: Bloomsbury, 2012], p. 61). As David Paroissien notes, until the publication of Kathleen Tillotson’s “A Letter from Dickens on Capital Punishment” (Times Literary Supplement 12 Aug 1965, p. 704), scholars were not aware of the existence of this first letter (Selected Letters of Charles Dickens [London: Macmillan, 1985], p. 216). CD had proposed an article on the topic of capital punishment to Macvey Napier for the Edinburgh Review after failing to deliver a promised paper on Ragged Schools in 1843; for a detailed description of the proposed topic, intended to focus not on sympathy for the person to be executed but on the negative effects of public executions, see To Macvey Napier, 7 Aug 1845 (Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 349).
• 3. Bryan (or Brian) Seery, who was hanged at Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, 13 Feb 1846 for the attempted murder of his landlord, Sir Francis Hopkins. “He had been found guilty of discharging a loaded gun at Sir Francis Hopkins on November 18, 1845, but was widely believed to be innocent” (Tillotson, p. 704). The Daily News published “reports of the petition to the Lord Lieutenant and of opinion in the district, with sympathetic comment from their Irish correspondent, who was at that time R. H. Horne” (p. 704). The first jury was unable to agree; but at the second trial, Seery was found guilty of attempted murder (Paroissien p. 216).
• 4. Both Tillotson and Paroissien suggest this refers to Captain George Johnstone of the Tory, who was arrested in Nov 1845 and charged with committing atrocities against his crew, and the grisly murder of three crew members (Rambert, Reason and Mars). The trial took place from 5-6 Feb 1846; Johnstone was initially found guilty of murder, before the jury reconsidered, finding him not guilty on the ground of insanity (Paroissien p. 217).
• 5. Basil Montagu (1770–1851), a jurist, barrister, writer and philanthropist, as recounted in his series of articles against capital punishment. From “The Punishment of Death: Letter III. Abolition of the Punishment of Death for Crimes without Violence”, Morning Post (19 May 1841): “In the spring of 1801 I was entrusted by the Secretary of State with a respite for two men who were to be executed early the next morning at Huntingdon, 60 miles from London. I was entrusted with it upon the express understanding that no improper expectation should be excited as, although there were reasons why the execution ought to be stayed, they, upon examination might not lead to a reprieve. [...] Upon my arrival at the gaol, I did not inform the gaoler of the object of my journey, as ‘a reprieve’ might have echoed through the prison, and I should have violated the trust reposed in me. The two prisoners were immediately called. I heard them, loaded with irons, coming towards me. I saw, when I entered the room, that they mistook me for the sheriff. ‘It would be better,’ I said, ‘that you should have another week to make your peace with the Almighty.’ One of the men instantly fell as if dead. I involuntarily ran up to him. He clung round me, and looking up, which I shall never forget, he cried, ‘Oh, God! a week is a long time to live.’” (p. 6). The two men were to be hanged for stealing sheep. Montagu also recounts the disappointment of the crowd at the cancellation of the execution. Montagu co-founded the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge upon the Punishment of Death in 1808; CD cites him again in his letter of 16 Mar 1846 in this series.
• 6. Thus in printed source.