ABSTRACT
Such affirmations of faith in the system were routine in nineteenth century debates in the Commons as confirmed by Thomas Denman MP-'it [is] the practice to indulge very much in commonplace eulogies on the tenderness and humanity of the law of England towards prisoners' .2 Nor did the general public (or at least that section of it which had had no dealings with the courts) need any persuading as to the superiority of English criminal justice: to most Victorians it was a self-evident truth.
