ABSTRACT
The public execution was punishment as spectacle, a drama managed by the authorities to show the populace that crime did not pay. The crowd had a crucial role in the performance. Spectators were needed to participate in this morality play, though they did not always stick to the script. The rituals of popular culture often inverted the intended meaning of public execution. Broadside ballads, lauding the deeds of the criminal, also exemplified this inversion of the execution’s official meaning. The fact that it took another 20 years before executions were moved inside the prisons suggests that Dickens’s letters contributed only slightly to the Capital Punishment Amendment Act of 1868. A broadside ballad was typically one sheet of paper printed on one side; a broadsheet was printed on both sides of the sheet of paper; and a chapbook was a broadsheet folded to create a booklet of 4, 8, or 16 pages.
