Hanging in Judgment: Religion and the Death Penalty in England
Continuum Intl Pub Group (sd), 1993. Hardcover. Generally fine (touch of foxing about the edges of the text block) in fine dust jacket. Hardcover. 292 pages, with bibliography and index. Comprehensive history of capital punishment in 19th and 20th century England (and the only one that includes the period 1957-1969). It shows how time and again the Church of England came to the rescue of a punishment that was in danger of being abolished, pushing for a policy which so sanitized the operation of hanging that people lost interets in its abolition. Based on externsive research and much unpublished archival material, the author introduces the reader to a serie sof odd, interesting, and macabre characters---early evangelical feminists, "thrice-hanged Lee", religious hangmen certain of their divine calling, bishops that justified hanging on evangelical grounds as providing perfect reasoning for coversions, and literary figures like Thackeray, Dickens, Hardy, Byron, and Shelley. Near Fine / fine. Item #WE25047
ISBN: 9780826406262
Price: $12.00