The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THE EDITORS OF THE DAILY NEWS,1 9 March 1846

Text from the Daily News, 9 Mar 1846, pp. 5-6.2

Gentlemen,

           I will take for the subject of this letter, the effect of Capital Punishment on the commission of crime, or rather of murder; the only crime with one exception (and that a rare one) to which it is now applied.3 Its effect in preventing crime, I will reserve for another letter:4 and a few of the more striking illustrations of each aspect of the subject, for a concluding one.5

           The effect of Capital Punishment on the commission of Murder. Some murders are committed in hot blood and furious rage; some, in deliberate revenge; some, in terrible despair; some (but not many) for mere gain; some, for the removal of an object dangerous to the murderer’s peace or good name; some, to win a monstrous notoriety.

           On murders committed in rage, in the despair of strong affection (as when a starving child is murdered by its parent), or for gain, I believe the punishment of death to have no effect in the least. In the two first cases, the impulse is a blind and wild one, infinitely beyond the reach of any reference to the punishment. In the last, there is little calculation beyond the absorbing greed of the money to be got. Courvoisier,6 for example, might have robbed his master with greater safety and with fewer chances of detection, if he had not murdered him. But, his calculations going to the gain and not the loss, he had no balance for the consequences of what he did. So, it would have been more safe and prudent in the woman who was hanged a few weeks since,7 for the murder in Westminster, to have simply robbed her old companion in an unguarded moment, as in her sleep. But, her calculation going to the gain of what she took to be a Bank note; and the poor old woman living between her and the gain; she murdered her.

           On murders committed in deliberate revenge, or to remove a stumbling-block in the murderer’s path, or in an insatiate craving for notoriety, is there reason to suppose that the punishment of death has the direct effect of an incentive and an impulse?

           A murder is committed in deliberate revenge. The murderer is at no trouble to prepare his train of circumstances, takes little or no pains to escape, is quite cool and collected, perfectly content to deliver himself up to the Police, makes no secret of his guilt, but boldly says, “I killed him. I’m glad of it. I meant to do it. I am ready to die.” There was such a case the other day.8 There was such another case not long ago. There are such cases frequently. It is the commonest first exclamation on being seized. Now, what is this but a false arguing of the question, announcing a foregone conclusion, expressly leading to the crime, and inseparably arising out of the Punishment of Death? "I took his life. I give up mine to pay for it. Life for life; blood for blood. I have done the crime. I am ready with the atonement. I know all about it; it’s a fair bargain between me and the law. Here am I to execute my part of it, and what more is to be said or done?” It is in the very essence of the maintenance of this punishment for murder, that it does set life against life. It is in the essence of a stupid, weak, or otherwise ill-regulated mind (of such a murderer’s mind, in short), to recognise in this set-off, a something that diminishes the base and coward character of murder. “In a pitched battle, I, a common man, may kill my adversary, but he may kill me. In a duel, a gentleman may shoot his opponent through the head, but the opponent may shoot him too, and this makes it fair. Very well. I take this man’s life for a reason I have, or choose to think I have, and the law takes mine. The law says, and the clergyman says, there must be blood for blood and life for life. Here it is. I pay the penalty.”

           A mind incapable, or confounded in its perceptions – and you must argue with reference to such a mind, or you could not have such a murder – may not only establish on these grounds an idea of strict justice and fair reparation, but a stubborn and dogged fortitude and foresight that satisfy it hugely. Whether the fact be really so, or not, is a question I would be content to rest, alone, on the number of cases of revengeful murder in which this is well known, without dispute, to have been the prevailing demeanour of the criminal: and in which such speeches and such absurd reasoning have been constantly uppermost with him.

           “Blood for blood,” and “life for life,” and such-like balanced jingles, have passed current in people’s mouths, from legislators downwards, until they have been corrupted into “tit for tat,” and acted on.

           Next, come the murders done, to sweep out of the way a dreaded or detested object. At the bottom of this class of crimes, there is a slow, corroding, growing hate. Violent quarrels are commonly found to have taken place between the murdered person and the murderer: usually of opposite sexes. There are witnesses to old scenes of reproach and recrimination, in which they were the actors; and the murderer has been heard to say, in this or that coarse phrase, “that he wouldn’t mind killing her, though he should be hanged for it” – in these cases, the commonest avowal.

           It seems to me, that in this well-known scrap of evidence, there is a deeper meaning than is usually attached to it. I do not know but it may be – I have a strong suspicion that it is – a clue to the slow growth of the crime, and its gradual development in the mind. More than this; a clue to the mental connection of the deed, with the punishment to which the doer of that deed is liable, until the two, conjoined, give birth to monstrous and mis-shapen Murder.

           The idea of murder, in such a case, like that of self-destruction in the great majority of instances, is not a new one. It may have presented itself to the disturbed mind in a dim shape and afar off; but it has been there. After a quarrel, or with some strong sense upon him of irritation or discomfort arising out of the continuance of this life in his path, the man has brooded over the unformed desire to take it. “Though he should be hanged for it.’ With the entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow of the fatal beam begins to attend – not on himself, but on the object of his hate. At every new temptation, it is there, stronger and blacker yet, trying to terrify him. When she defies or threatens him, the scaffold seems to be her strength and ‘vantage ground. Let her not be too sure of that; ‘though he should be hanged for it.”

           Thus, he begins to raise up, in the contemplation of this death by hanging, a new and violent enemy to brave. The prospect of a slow and solitary expiation would have no congeniality with his wicked thoughts, but this throttling and strangling has. There is always before him, an ugly, bloody, scarecrow phantom, that champions her, as it were, and yet shows him, in a ghostly way, the example of murder. Is she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or old? It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a fascination for all secret and unwholesome houghts.9 And when he struggles with his victim at the last, “though he should be hanged for it,” it is a merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with that ever-haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too: and with a fierce defiance to it, after their long survey of each other, to come on and do its worst.

           Present this black idea of violence to a bad mind contemplating violence; hold up before a man remotely compassing the death of another person, the spectacle of his own ghastly and untimely death by man’s hands; and out of the depths of his own nature you shall assuredly raise up that which lures and tempts him on. The laws which regulate those mysteries have not been studied or cared for, by the maintainers of this law; but they are paramount and will always assert their power.

           Out of one hundred and sixty-seven persons under sentence of Death in England, questioned at different times, in the course of years, by an English clergyman in the performance of his duty, there were only three who had not been spectators of executions.10

           We come, now, to the consideration of those murders which are committed, or attempted, with no other object than the attainment of an infamous notoriety. That this class of crimes has its origin in the Punishment of Death, we cannot question; because (as we have already seen, and shall presently establish by another proof) great notoriety and interest attach, and are generally understood to attach, only to those criminals who are in danger of being executed.

           One of the most remarkable instances of murder originating in mad self-conceit; and of the murderer’s part in the repulsive drama, in which the law appears at such great disadvantage to itself and to society, being acted almost to the last with a self-complacency that would be horribly ludicrous if it were not utterly revolting; is presented in the case of HOCKER.11

           Here is an insolent, flippant, dissolute youth: aping the man of intrigue and levity: over-dressed, over-confident, inordinately vain of his personal appearance: distinguished as to his hair, cane, snuff-box, and singing-voice: and unhappily the son of a working shoemaker. Bent on loftier flights than such a poor house-swallow as a teacher in a Sunday school can take; and having no truth, industry, perseverance, or other dull work-a-day quality, to plume his wings withal; he casts about him, in his jaunty way, for some mode of distinguishing himself – some means of getting that head of hair into the print-shops; of having something like justice done to his singing-voice and fine intellect; of making the life and adventures of Thomas Hocker remarkable; and of getting up some excitement in connection with that slighted piece of biography. The Stage? No. Not feasible. There has always been a conspiracy against the Thomas Hockers, in that kind of effort. It has been the same with Authorship in prose and poetry. Is there nothing else? A Murder, now, would make a noise in the papers! There is the gallows to be sure; but without,12 that it would be nothing. Short of that, it wouldn’t be fame. Well! We must all die at one time or other; and to die game, and have it in print, is just the thing for a man of spirit. They always die game at the Minor Theatres and the Saloons, and the people like it very much. Thurtell,13 too, died very game, and made a capital speech when he was tried. There’s all about it in a book at the cigar-shop now. Come, Tom, get your name up! Let it be a dashing murder that shall keep the wood-engravers at it for the next two months. You are the boy to go through with it, and interest the town!

           The miserable wretch, inflated by this lunatic conceit, arranges his whole plan for publication and effect. It is quite an epitome of his experience of the domestic melodrama or penny novel. There is the Victim Friend; the mysterious letter of the injured Female to the Victim Friend; the romantic spot for the Death-Struggle by night; the unexpected appearance of Thomas Hocker to the Policeman; the parlour of the Public House, with Thomas Hocker reading the paper to a strange gentleman; the Family Apartment, with a song by Thomas Hocker; the Inquest Room, with Thomas Hocker boldly looking on; the interior of the Marylebone Theatre, with Thomas Hocker taken into custody; the Police Office, with Thomas Hocker “affable” to the spectators; the interior of Newgate, with Thomas Hocker preparing his defence; the Court, where Thomas Hocker, with his dancing-master airs, is put upon his trial, and complimented by the Judge; the Prosecution, the Defence, the Verdict, the Black Cap, the Sentence –each of them a line in any Playbill, and how bold a line in Thomas Hocker’s life!

           It is worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the gallows – the great last scene to which the whole of these effects have been working up – the more the overweening conceit of the poor wretch shows itself; the more he feels that he is the hero of the hour; the more audaciously and recklessly he lies, in supporting the character. In public – at the condemned sermon14 – he deports himself as becomes the man whose autographs are precious, whose portraits are innumerable: in memory of whom, whole fences and gates have been borne away, in splinters, from the scene of murder. He knows that the eyes of Europe are upon him; but he is not proud – only graceful. He bows, like the first gentleman in Europe, to the turnkey who brings him a glass of water: and composes his clothes and hassock, as carefully as good Madame Blaize could do.15 In private – within the walls of the condemned cell – every word and action of his waning life, is a lie. His whole time is divided between telling lies and writing them. If he ever have another thought, it is for his genteel appearance on the scaffold: as when he begs the barber “not to cut his hair too short, or they won’t know him when he comes out.” His last proceeding but one, is to write two romantic love-letters to women who have no existence. His last proceeding of all (not less characteristic, though the only true one) is to swoon away, miserably, in the arms of the attendants, and be hanged up like a craven dog.

           Is not such a history, from first to last, a most revolting and disgraceful one; and can the student of it bring himself to believe that it ever could have place in any record of facts, or that the miserable chief-actor in it ever could have had a motive for his arrogant wickedness, but for the comment and the explanation which the Punishment of Death supplies!

           It is not a solitary case, nor is it a prodigy, but a mere specimen of a class. The case of Oxford,16 who fired at her Majesty in the Park, will be found, on examination, to resemble it very nearly, in the essential feature. There is no proved pretence whatever for regarding him as mad; other than that he was, like this malefactor, brimful of conceit, and a desire to become, even at the cost of the gallows (the only cost within his reach) the talk of the town. He had less invention than Hocker, and perhaps was not so deliberately bad; but his attempt was a branch of the same tree, and it has its root in the ground where the scaffold is erected.

           Oxford had his imitators. Let it never be forgotten in the consideration of this part of the subject, how they were stopped. So long as their attempts invested them with the distinction of being in danger of death at the hangman’s hands, so long did they spring up. When the penalty of death was removed, and a mean and humiliating punishment substituted in its place, the race was at an end and ceased to be.

CHARLES DICKENS.

• 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 Punishment”. This was the third 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 23 and 28 Feb, and 13 and 16 Mar 1846. The writer Douglas Jerrold, 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 initially had CD’s support) coordinate its initiation 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 the second letter in The Law as Literature anthology (ed. Louis Blom-Cooper, London: Bodley Head, 1961) and Kathleen Tillotson’s publication of the letter of 23 Feb (“A Letter from Dickens on Capital Punishment”, Times Literary Supplement 12 Aug 1965, p. 704), scholars believed Dickens had contributed only three letters, beginning with this one (Selected Letters of Charles Dickens [London: Macmillan, 1985], p. 216). CD had initially 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. As Philip Collins notes, by 1832 “murder was virtually the only crime for which capital punishment was exacted” (Dickens and Crime, 3rd ed., [London: Macmillan, 1994], p. 4). However, “high treason, arson in Royal Navy dockyards and arson of dwelling houses with persons therein, piracy with violence, robbery attended with wounds, and sodomy” were legally still capital crimes (Paroissien, p. 229).
• 4. To The Editors of the Daily News, 13 Mar 1846.
• 5. To The Editors of the Daily News, 16 Mar 1846.
• 6. François Benjamin Courvoisier (1816–40), a Swiss valet found guilty on 6 May 1840 and hanged 6 July 1840 for the murder of his master, Lord William Russell. See Proceedings of the Old Bailey, June 1840; https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18400615-1629. CD hired a room that faced the gallows, and watched Courvoisier’s hanging with Daniel Maclise and Henry Burnett (Paroissien p. 222).
• 7. Martha Browning, executed at Newgate on 5 Jan 1846 for the murder of Elizabeth Mundell, with whom she had been lodging for three weeks in Westminster. Mundell was found dead on 1 Dec 1845, having been strangled with a cord. The coroner returned a verdict of suicide, but her daughter identified a faked bank note of the ‘Bank of Elegance’, known to belong to the victim, which Browning had attempted to cash. Browning confessed to the murder, and was the first woman to be executed at the Old Bailey in fourteen years. See Proceedings of the Old Bailey, Dec 1845: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-201-18451215&div=t18451215-201.
• 8. Paroissien identifies this as Thomas Wicks, who murdered the brass and gun-mental founder James Bostock, to whom he was apprenticed, on 16 Feb 1846. “[A]fter murdering his master early in the morning [he] returned to the scene of the crime, where police arrested him” and acted as if “he were fully justified in murdering his employer” at his trial (p. 229). Wicks was hanged 30 Mar 1846.
• 9. Thus in printed source, but clearly "thoughts" intended.
• 10. Rev. Thomas Roberts, a Baptist minister in Bristol; this statistic appears to have been first reported in the Bristol Mercury (12 Oct 1833), p. 3.
• 11. Thomas Henry Hocker (1823-45) was executed on 28 Apr 1845 for the murder of James Delarue (or de la Rue) on 21 Feb 1845. Paroissien provides an overview (see Selected Letters of Charles Dickens [London: Macmillan, 1985]); known as the ‘Hampstead Murder’, there was a great deal of public interest in the case. Hocker “exhibited ‘a very extraordinary degree of audacity, and of misdirected talent’ during his trial by attempting to impute false crimes to his victim and make the murder seem almost an act of justice” (p.213). Hocker lured Delarue to Belsize Park to murder him for making his lover pregnant. CD also discusses Hocker in the previous letter of the series (To The Editors of the Daily News, 28 Feb 1846). For analysis of Hocker's execution and its influence on CD, see Claire Wood, Dickens and the Business of Death (Cambridge: CUP, 2015). For details of Hocker's trial see Proceedings of the Old Bailey, April 1845: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=def1-821-18450407&div=t18450407-821.
• 12. Thus in printed source.
• 13. John Thurtell (1794-1824; Dictionary of National Biography), a gambler who murdered William Weare, whom he owed £300. The "Radlett murder", also known as the "Elstree murder", took place on 24 Oct 1823; on the way to a weekend of gambling outside London, Thurtell shot Weare at point-blank range with a pistol, but the gun misfired and glanced off his cheekbone. Thurtell then pursued Weare and cut his throat, also jamming the pistol into his skull. With the help of two accomplices, the body was dumped in a pond in a garden in Radlett, but later transferred to a pond in Elstree. One of his two accomplices, William Probert, turned King’s evidence, and the second, Joseph Hunt, led the police to the body and subsequently had his death sentence commuted to transportation to Botany Bay. The men had to defend themselves, in accordance with the custom of the time; Thurtell gave an eloquent speech, described by the judge as “eminently manly, energetic, and powerful” (A Full Account of the Atrocious Murder of the Late Mr. W. Weare [London: Sherwood, Jones and Co. 1823], p. 91). The crime was the subject of many books and stage plays.
• 14. The sermon delivered in the Newgate prison chapel before execution. For an account of a House of Lords debate on the Condemned Sermon for Thomas Hocker see Hansard 28 April 1845, vol 79, columns 1359-68; the account describes the proceedings in the chapel as "theatrical".
• 15. See Oliver Goldsmith, “An Elegy on the Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize”, The Bee 4 (27 Oct 1759).
• 16. Edward Oxford (1822-1900), the first of seven would-be assassins of Queen Victoria. On 10 June 1840, Oxford fired two pistols at the Queen from a footpath on Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace, as she passed by in a phaeton (an open horse-drawn carriage). Both shots missed, and he was seized by onlookers. Oxford was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and spent twenty-four years in Bethlehem Hospital, before being transferred to Broadmoor in 1864, and released in 1867 on the condition that he emigrate. He lived under the name John Freeman in Melbourne, Australia, until his death.