SENTENCES OF DEATH.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3904, 24 January 1884, Page 4

SENTENCES OF DEATH.

A table compiled by the Directors of Convict Prisons presents some curious facts regarding the history of sentences of death in England and Wales during the last 50 years. It appears that even as late as 1833, when the table commences, so common was it to pass death sentences for offences not of the gravest kind that out of 931 such sentences in that year only nine were for actual murder. Death sentences must, however, clearly have lost their peculiar terrors, for out of theso 931 condemnations, with all their attendant solemnities of the black cap and the'judge's" exhortations, the extreme penalty was really carried out only in 33 cases. The last year in which sentences of death was passed for a crime short of murder was 1874, when there was one instance only. With this exception there has beeu no such case since 18G2. Tho enormous disproportion between sentence and executions has long since disappeared ; but the chances of a capital sentence being carried out appear to be still in favor of the condemned. Thus in four years 1879-82 there have been 107 con-demnations,-.whereas the executions have been 51 only.