By the time that Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, the list of crimes liable to attract the death penalty had effectively been reduced to murder. Yet, despite this, the gallows remained a source of controversy in Victorian Britain and there was a growing unease in liberal quarters surrounding the question of capital punishment. Unease was expressed in various forms, including efforts at outright abolition. Focusing in part on the activities of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, James Gregory here examines abolitionist strategies, leaders and personnel. He locates...
By the time that Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, the list of crimes liable to attract the death penalty had effectively been reduced to mu...
William and Georgina Cowper-Temple were significant figures in nineteenth-century Britain. William Cowper-Temple, later Lord Mount Temple, was private secretary to one Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and minister in the government of Lord Palmerston. He sought to improve the nation's health and rebuild London, and famously amended the Education Act in 1870. His charismatic wife, Georgina, was also champion of diverse social and moral reforms, and friend to such worthies as John Ruskin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frances Power Cobbe and Mrs Oscar Wilde. In the first full-length biography of this...
William and Georgina Cowper-Temple were significant figures in nineteenth-century Britain. William Cowper-Temple, later Lord Mount Temple, was private...