For many Victorians, a death sentence was only the beginning

Imagine the scene; you’re the accused in a Victorian courtroom packed with people clamouring for your blood. With sickening finality, the gavel comes down as sentencing is pronounced. The penalty is death. It’s surely the end, right?

Right?

Wrong.

In fact, for many convicts, it was anything but the end. If you’ve ever had the chance to trawl through courtroom archives, you may have marvelled at the sheer number of death sentences issued by judges with their black caps. The sight of it reinforces the stereotypical assumption of austere Victorians sacrificing criminals’ lives to keep a sense of order on the unwashed masses.

Convicted of murder? Death.

Convicted of rape? Death

Convicted of theft? Definitely death.

Many a university student has fallen into this trap; collating the top layer of numbers into a spreadsheet only to spit them out in lecture halls. The truth however, is rather more nuanced. Take for example, one convicted felon, Constantine Sullivan.

In 1840, aged 41, Sullivan had been prosecuted for the rape of a girl aged fourteen or fifteen years old. As part of his defence, he’d claimed it was consensual (and here’s where I pause to loudly clear my throat), and it was the parents of the girl who sought prosecution once their daughter had told them all about it.

His sentence was death, but a look at the records shows he was instead transported to a penal colony in Australia. This kind of outcome, especially for rape, was very common during this time. Transportation was in fact seen as a mercy, and Sullivan himself was sent on the prison ship, Lady Raffles, to be incarcerated at the notorious Van Diemens Land.

Despite his twenty one year sentence, he was pardoned in 1853 and freed to go about his lawful business. Some death sentence, eh?

And Sullivan’s case isn’t outside the contemporary norms, it’s one of many recorded. So why the leniency?

It may come as a surprise, but even as far back as the first half of the nineteenth century, attitudes to capital punishment were changing. Many voices called out for a focus on reforming criminals and not just locking them up somewhere. After growing pressure from the people of Australia, who by then were fed up with having their country used as a human dumping ground, the decision was taken to stop transportation by 1857.

And so the Victorian prison system in England expanded to keep up with the sudden demand. As a side effect, the number of death sentences issued by the courts saw a steady decline as confinement became the preferred punishment for rape cases.

Many convicts built new lives for themselves down in Australia, even while incarcerated, helping to build the country into what it is today. Prison records show certificates were issued allowing inmates to marry, for example. So far from a death sentence being a…well, death sentence, the Victorians were rather more pragmatic than we sometimes give them credit for. Many sentencing outcomes could even be considered lenient, considering the high percentage of pardons issued, cutting their often twenty year sentences in half.

It’s a timely lesson on the importance to follow historical sources right down to the bare bones. What you uncover might surprise you.