ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22337, 26 February 1938, Page 13

ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY

TO THB EDITOR OF THB FRESH. Sir,—After reading the various letters evoked by my first letter on this topic, I think it will be best if I make seme comment on two issues raised by '•No Sickly Sentimentality." Your correspondent asks the question, "Is there any reason to suppose that such men fas Lord Ellenborough, whom he calls "Lord Chief Justice," though that title was not created till' 1873) ■'-with their great experience ; do not know what they are talking about?" I reply, "Judge for yourself. In Lord Ellenborough's day (he lived from 1750 to 1818) the English law recognised more than 20 capital offences. Felling a tree, stealing five shillings, robbing a rabbit warren, and pickpocketing were all capital offences, and you could be iianged for associating for a month with gipsies." Pickr pocketin;;, by the way, was especially rife at executions, which in those days were in public! Children were not immune. Samuel Rogers tells how he met "a cartload of young girl? in dresses of various colours on their way to be executed at Tyburn." In 1831 a boy of 13 was hanged at Maidstone, and in 1833 Mr Justice Bosanquet, at the Old Bailey, sentenced a boy of nine, who had pushed a stick through a broken shop window in. London, to r;;ke out some children's paints valued at two pence. I am glad to say the sentence was commuted. Now in 1810 Sir Samuel Romilly proposed a new law about shoplifting to the effect that hanging was to be the penalty only if the value of the goods stolen was 5s or over. This was the time when Lord Ellenborough "strongly opposed the abolition of the death penalty." In the House of Lords' debate, May 30, he said: "I am convinced, with the rest of the Judges, public expediency requires there should be no i-emission of the terror denounced against tiiis description of offender," i.e., the shoplifter; , he. or she should be hanged. No sickly sentimentality in Lord Ellenborough! I am ashamed to say that an archbishop and oix bishops

agreed with him, and so did the majority of the House of Lords, who rejected Romilly's bill by 31-votes to .11. Because we have abolished ibn hanging of shoplifters we have not found, as Lord Ellenborough said we would, that "no man could trust himself fpr 3 n hour out of doors without the most alarming apprehensions that on his return every vestige of his property would be swept off by the hardened robber." Your correspondent has something to say about United States. Of the 48 states of the union, eight have abolished the death penalty, seven retain it absolutely, and in the remaining 33 the Court has power to \}se as en alternative life imprisonment. Murr ders are more numerous in the states which retain the in these which do not. To a large extent this is due to differing social conditions. For example,' the homi-r cidal rate in the abolition state of Maine is 1.8 for every. 100,000; but in the non-abolition state of Montana it. is 12.9. Your correspondent speaks of 12,000 "murders" in the United States last year. For "murders" he should write "homicides," which includes those convicted of manslaughter. The difference in the murder rate in Detroit from that in Toronto I should put down to a difference of social conditions, which, of course, includes efficiency in police action. Warden Lawes, director of Sing-Sing Prison (who by the way believes that it is the use of the death penalty which introduces sentimentality into the administration of justice and therefore opposes it), points out that in Detroit you have a large industrial centre, a mixed population, almost every nationality being represented, with a large aggregation of negroes, a supply point of bootleg whisky, plenty of speakeasies, and a lax police force (to-day some pf these conditions have we hope altered for the better). To "No Sickly Sentimentality" I would say-—the death penalty is doomed; because it is contrary to the spirit of brotherhood.—Yours, etc., N. M. BELL. February 24, 4938. [This correspondence is now closed.— Ed. "The Press."]