Ireland 1849, Sidney Osborne
Ireland 1849, Sidney Osborne: “The gallows in Ireland were familiar and ever present features in front of every jailhouse - no higher from the ground than an ordinary second-floor. Unlike England, they were in Ireland permanent fixtures - balconies with their fallen floors still hanging down from the last execution for all Irish Catholics to see and contemplate. About 10 feet above each trapdoor was a horizontal iron beam from the end of which hung a large iron cast of a skull.” The law did not distinguish between adults and children, and ‘strong evidence of malice in a child of 7 to 14 years of age’ was also a hanging matter. It was not until 1861 that that the number of capital crimes was reduced to just four by the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, these being murder, arson in a royal dockyard, treason and piracy with violence. Further reform followed, and the last public hanging took place in 1868, after which all executions were carried out within prison walls. The second image i