The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770-1868.

It is very fitting that V. A. C. Gatrell, whose work with the criminal statistics of the nineteenth century was seminal for all historians working in the field, should now point us in new directions. In this remarkable book, brimming with the enthusiasm of the newly converted, Gatrell writes of having been "fired with the lived experiences of past people which criminal justice historians have meanly served." (p. vi) Using the Home Office Appeals files as his starting point, Gatrell largely eschews the numbers in favor of such relatively new historical methodologies as mentalite, microhistory and psychohistory. The effect is fascinating and the scholarship is dazzling. The central argument, among many, seems to be that the movement against public hanging was not based on a more humane ethos among the middle classes but on a squeamishness that had nothing to do with genuine emotions and a great deal to do with projection and repression.

In wide ranging style Gatrell looks at a number of different groups and questions, adjusting his technique and tone as seems appropriate. He analyzes the scaffold crowd, the evidence of plebeian sentiments found in ballads and broadsides, the complex variety of views held by the polite classes as well as the words and deeds of the judges and government officials who determined who among the convicted felons should live and who should die. Given the lottery like atmosphere of the period in which over 90 percent of condemned felons were not executed, the basis for deciding who would die is clearly an important one. Unfortunately much of the evidence Gatrell found indicates the decision was often purely arbitrary.

Gatrell announces in his preface that his work is not only meant to be a history of emotion but "an emotional book," (p. ix) which it clearly is. His opening chapter which graphically tells the truth about death by hanging is chilling and disturbing on a level modern histories rarely touch. But in the latter parts of the book the emotional element sometimes deteriorates into a shrillness based on assumptions about motives and morality which are not always fully supported by the evidence. Though Gatrell is highly critical of historians who have chosen more objective methods of studying crime and the law, he accepts the theories of Freud and Foucault without question. Gatrell's psychoanalysis of the motives and thoughts of the "polite classes" suggest an authorial omniscience which is hard to justify. Gatrell implies that those convicted and condemned were always the poor, weak victims of the strong and callous men who ran the system. While some of the stories are tragic and appalling, many also involve felons who were neither poor nor weak. In this emotional history the victims of the crimes largely disappear.

Gatrell seems particularly unwilling to acknowledge any human feelings among the judges, ministers and aristocrats who oversaw the system, but much of the evidence belies this conclusion. Sir Robert Peel, whom Gatrell finds particularly objectionable, did respond to heart-rending pleas with a cold efficiency, but Peel was also utterly committed to the disinterested pursuit of justice. While impartiality might be an unemotional trait, it is vital to any system which purports to provide equal justice. In his effort to assert the humanity of the plebeians, the vulnerability of the condemned and the inhumanity of the bourgeoisie (his term), Gatrell sometimes sets up earlier historians as straw men. For example, Gatrell uses the evidence of the appeals files to attack historians who have argued that the law was available to all and generally viewed with respect by all classes. Gatrell says such arguments are true "so far as they go" but cites the lack of balance and what is omitted. (p. 213) But the arguments of the historians he cites are by definition general rather than specific. In his previous incarnation Gatrell himself has demonstrated the value of detecting trends from aggregate data. While the appeals for mercy on behalf of the convicted may provide valuable insight into the thoughts and feelings of those who fought the law and lost, they hardly represent a reasonable source for assessing general views of the law. A person writing on behalf of a convicted felon clearly had a personal agenda which may or may not reflect general opinion.

Gatrell's wonder awe-struck tone regarding the appeals files themselves is surprising. He describes finding a mountain of appeals "untouched since they had been bound in volumes and tied in pink-ribboned bundles" (p. vi) - an experience common to most historians but one that rarely inspires such wonder among the veterans. The stories he found in the appeals file inspired him to a level of "emotional and imaginative engagement" (p. vi) which is invaluable to significant scholarship but can also be overpowering. Beneath a photograph of murderer Courvoisier's death mask Gatrell notes that "Its obscene realism at least reminds us that this book's subjects once lived as we do and then were killed." (p. 118) Historians might do well to keep the first part of this observation in mind. All of our subjects were once living human beings with all the complexity that entails, and even the most sensitive historian must be guilty of oversimplification. But having said that it is important to recognize that the judges, ministers and prosecutors were also once living human beings and that the poor felons versus evil government dichotomy is an oversimplification.

While leaving much room for political and probably emotional debate, this book is a very valuable contribution both in terms of the scholarship and as a corrective to the clinical detachment to which many of us fall prey. In his wide-ranging style Gatrell reminds us how varied and complex views regarding crime and punishment were and always will be.

Carolyn A. Conley University of Alabama at Birmingham