The Chronicles of Crime

Date

1887

Identifier

Special Collections HV6945 P443 1887

Publisher

London: T. Miles and Co.

Abstract

François Courvoisier cut the throat of his master, Lord William Russell, and was sentenced to hang outside Newgate Prison on 6 July 1840. Dickens attended the execution along with 40,000 others, including Thackeray. Although Dickens attended four public executions during his lifetime, he disliked them as spectacles. On capital punishment, he was ambivalent, as expressed in a letter written in 1864: ‘I should be glad to abolish both [public executions and capital punishment] if I knew what to do with the Savages of civilization. As I do not, I would rid Society of them, when they shed blood, in a very solemn manner but would bar out the present audience.’ A full account of the Courvoisier case is in volume II of Chronicles of Crime (1887), which is superbly illustrated by ‘Phiz’.

[Heading from article regarding Courvoisier's hanging for murder, page 581 from Camden Pelham's The Chronicles of Crime; Or, The New Newgate Calendar.]

Files

Executed for Murder heading.jpg

Citation

Camden Pelham [pseud.], “The Chronicles of Crime,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7182.