The only consolation is that the criminal is not a Welshman: The foreign-born men hanged in Wales, 1840-1900.

Brown, Stephanie

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the portrayal in contemporary newspapers of the eight foreign-born men hanged for murder in Wales from 1840 to 1900. In doing so, it fills a major lacuna in the historiography of capital punishment, migration, and otherness in nineteenth-century Wales. The eight men were part of a wider demographic study of the socio-economic backgrounds of all 31 men hanged for murder in Wales in that period, 23 of whom were Welsh or English and who were not judged on their appearance or their place of birth by the press when reporting their crime and punishment. This chapter argues that although the eight foreign-born men had the potential to be treated differently in the newspaper reporting because of their appearance, race, or nationality, this was not in fact the case. The eight men were not all harshly criticized by the press; furthermore, their experience was not universal and even men with a shared nationality were not always treated the same. This chapter shows that racial identity or ‘otherness’ was not a determining factor in whether there was a local community petition for clemency in these cases. These findings, therefore, uncover the perhaps unexpected complexity of race and nationality in Victorian Wales.

Citation

Brown, S. (2020). The only consolation is that the criminal is not a Welshman: The foreign-born men hanged in Wales, 1840-1900. In P. Low, H. Joan Rutherford, & C. Sandford-Couch (Eds.), Execution Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain: From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429318832-12

• Online Publication Date: Nov 30, 2020
• Publication Date: Nov 30, 2020
• Deposit Date: Sep 18, 2024
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Series Title: Routledge SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories
• Book Title: Execution Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain: From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual
• Chapter Number: 9
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429318832-12
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4832929