Crime and punishment through time
History · Key Stage 2 · The School
What counted as a crime
Some acts have been crimes in every period: killing, stealing, damaging property. Others appear and disappear. Poaching a deer became a serious crime under Norman forest law and is barely one now. Witchcraft was a capital crime for about 150 years and then ceased to be a crime at all. What a society punishes tells you what it was frightened of.
How it was punished
Medieval punishment was public and physical: the stocks, whipping, hanging, and trial by ordeal before it was abandoned. By the 1700s over two hundred offences carried the death penalty, many for theft. From the 1800s the prison replaced most of that, and transportation to Australia carried others away. The death penalty for murder ended in Britain in 1965. The direction of travel is from public pain toward removal from society.
Was it an improvement?
This is the historian's question, and it is not answered by "we are more civilised now". Ask what each system was trying to do — deter, punish, protect, reform — and whether it did it. Public execution was intended to deter and drew crowds of pickpockets working the audience, which is evidence against it. Judge a change by what it achieved, and say what evidence you used.
ANGLO-SAXON: a fine paid to the victim, or trial by ordeal — the community handles it. MEDIEVAL: church courts, hue and cry, the pillory — public shame as the main weapon. 1700s: the 'Bloody Code', over 200 capital offences, but juries often refused to convict because the punishment was so out of proportion. MODERN: prison, fines, community sentences. Same crime; what changed is who punishes and what they think punishment is for.