It is said that George III. kept a register of all the cases of capital punishment, that he entered in it all names of felons sentenced to death, with dates and particulars of convictions, together with remarks upon the reasons which induced him to sign the warrants.  It is also said that he frequently rose from his couch at night to peruse this fatal list, and that he shut himself up closely in his private apartments during the hours appointed for the execution of criminals condemned to death.

Tyburn ceased to be the place of execution for London in 1783; from that year Newgate witnessed most of these horrors.

Philanthropists of every class were, at the period of Mrs. Fry’s career now under review, considering this matter of capital punishment, and taking steps to restrain the infliction of the death penalty.  The Gurney family among Quakers, William Wilberforce, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Samuel Romilly, and others, were all working hard to this end.  In 1819 William Wilberforce presented a petition from the Society of Friends to Parliament against death punishment for crimes other than murder.  Writing at later dates upon this subject, Joseph John Gurney says:  “I cannot say that my spirit greatly revolts against life for life, though capital punishment for anything short of this appears to me to be execrable.”  And, again, “I cannot in conscience take any step towards destroying the life of a fellow-creature whose crime against society affects my property only.  I am in possession, like other men, of the feelings of common humanity, and to aid and abet in procuring the destruction of any man living would be to me extremely distressing and horrible.”  As a banker, Mr. Gurney felt that the punishment for forgery should be heavy and sharp, but less than death.  In the Houses of Parliament various efforts were made to obtain the commutation of the death penalty, and when in 1810 the Peers rejected Sir Samuel Romilly’s bill to remove the penalty for shop-lifting, the Dukes of Sussex and Gloucester joined some of the Peers in signing a protest against the law.  The time appeared to be ripe for agitation; all classes of society reverenced human life more than of old, and desired to see it held less cheap by the ministers of justice.

According to Mrs. Fry’s experience, the punishment of death tended neither to the security of the people, the reformation of any prisoner, nor the diminution of crime.  Felons who suffered death for light offenses looked upon themselves as martyrs—­martyrs to a cruel law—­and believed that they had but to meet death with fortitude to secure a blissful hereafter.  This fearful opiate carried many through the terrible ordeal outwardly calm and resigned.

Among the condemned ones was Harriet Skelton, a woman who had been detected passing forged Bank of England notes.  She was described as prepossessing, “open, confiding, expressing strong feelings on her countenance, but neither hardened in depravity nor capable of cunning.”  Her behavior in prison was exceptionally good; so good, indeed, that some of the depraved inmates of Newgate supposed her to have been condemned to death because of her fitness for death.  She had evidently been more sinned against than sinning; the man whom she lived with, and who was ardently loved by her, had used her as his instrument for passing these false notes.  Thus she had been lured to destruction.