Death recorded

rdf:langString Death recorded

rdf:langString Morning Herald

rdf:langString If all the persons, who receive sentence of death at the Old Bailey, were actually to pass into the hands of the executioner, the feelings of the people would not tolerate the repeated exhibitions of the wholesale work of blood .... What a number of convicts, too, have the sentence of death recorded against them at the several Assizes, who, as a matter of course, never suffer the last punishment of the law! ... If death ought not to be inflicted – if, in fact, it dare not be inflicted on the greater number of those to whom our laws afford it, is not the solemn passing of the sentence, and the recording it in open Court, and in the face of the people, a mockery of retributive justice ...?

rdf:langString General Character of the Criminal Code

rdf:langString In nineteenth-century British law many crimes were punishable by death, but from 1823, the term "death recorded" was used in cases where the judge wished to record a sentence of death – as legally required – while at the same time indicating his intention to pardon the convict or commute the sentence.