Today’s Abolished Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In England in 1964, two young men were taken out of their death-cells because just fifteen days before they were due to be executed the House of Commons voted to end hanging as a punishment for murder. They were Peter Anthony Dunford, 18, who had been convicted of killing a fellow prisoner in Wakefield Gaol, and Ronald John Cooper, a 26-year-old croupier who, after being arrested in the Bahamas, had been found guilty of murdering a company director called Joseph Hayes. Two other men, 21-year-old Peter Allen and 24-year-old Gwynne Evans – both milkmen – were the last to be hanged for murder in Britain before that vital vote in the Commons in December 1964.
This was not the first time that hanging had been abolished in England. For 40 years after William the Conqueror took over the country in 1066 the gallows were never used – because of his royal decree. William ordered that, instead, male criminals were to be castrated and have their eyes pulled out. His second son, William Rufus, brought back hanging for one crime only – stealing royal deer. But the Conqueror’s fourth son, Henry I, was made of far tougher material and he commanded that hanging be reintroduced for a wide spectrum of crimes including arson and theft.
Culled from: Crimes and Punishment – the Illustrated Crime Encyclopedia, Volume 14