public execution

penology

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July 13, 2026

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Public executions, once common, were attacked as cruel and barbaric starting around 1833. Tens of thousands would attend, with merchants selling souvenirs and alcohol, and fights often breaking out. Onlookers would curse the condemned and try to tear down the scaffold or rope for keepsakes, leading to violence and drunkenness. Many U.S. states, including Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, began enacting laws to abolish public hangings and switch to private executions by 1835. This shift was opposed by some abolitionists who believed public executions might eventually lead people to protest capital punishment itself.1

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capital punishment
Historical considerations
Public executions were banned in England in 1868, though they continued to take place in parts of the United States until the 1930s. In the last half of the 20th century, there was considerable debate regarding whether executions should be broadcast on television, as has…
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Public executions were banned in England in 1868, though they continued to take place in parts of the United States until the 1930s. In the last half of the 20th century, there was considerable debate regarding whether executions should be broadcast on television, as has…
Read More

good-night
…at the scaffold if the execution were public), at the moment that it was accomplished. Many good-nights, originating in broadsides, have been incorporated into the folk tradition.
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…at the scaffold if the execution were public), at the moment that it was accomplished. Many good-nights, originating in broadsides, have been incorporated into the folk tradition.
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Joseph de Maistre
…on the necessity of the public executioner as a negative guardian of social order, writing in The St. Petersburg Dialogues that “all power, all subordination rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world, and the very moment…
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…on the necessity of the public executioner as a negative guardian of social order, writing in The St. Petersburg Dialogues that “all power, all subordination rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world, and the very moment…
Read More