What do historians do?

Course reviews

• 
  Kevin McCarthy 18 February 2026 8:15PM

  1 2 3 4 5

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  A fascinating and well-balanced introductory course, particularly built on the foundations of the study of artefacts and the requirement to confirm the reality of the implementation of the prevailing legal system. The references and further reading lists are especially strong.
  
  By its nature the course encourages readers to delve further into relevant primary and secondary sources, which proved to be extremely interesting.
  
  The inclusion of larger versions of the graphics with the greatest detail online was greatly appreciated. That said, the resolution of some of the images that were actually contained within the associated MS Word document were surprisingly low, thus requiring substitution.
  
  Miscellany:
  
  2.3 Activity 6 934 or 924 nursing mothers?
  
  2.4 Regarding the Glaxo advertisement:
  
  a) I was intrigued to note the presence of “By Royal Appointment to the Court of Spain” in a clearly patriotic advertisement.
  
  b) Whilst reviewing the reference to the 1913 Gold Medal, I came across the following Glaxo URL that tried to drive home the product’s benefits even further by referring to the avoidance of “fat babies” (which also further emphasised that the intended audience was not the working classes). The reference to “fresh milk” from a powder might not survive an Advertising Standards Authority assessment today!
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/KT19141001.2.3.1
  
  3.1 The ‘Bloody Code’ Whilst reading around public executions I was intrigued to note the existence of survivors (an admittedly small number) due to the usage of the short-drop (strangulation), rather than the long-drop (broken neck that was introduced 1870s-1890s). Since the Tyburn executions were a public event the previous usage of “finishing off” of a convict was limited. Indeed, the crowds considered that survival (“half-hanging”) indicated that God had intervened (the outcome in only rare cases was re-hanging; some had their sentences commuted, e.g., transportation; very occasionally fully pardoned.) The typical usage of the corpses of executed prisoners was anatomical dissection, which brought the medical profession into the process, this made the case of William Duell (1740) of special interest, since surgeons revived him as he was being prepared and his sentence was later commuted to transportation. The case of “Half Hanged” Mary Jones (1786) again led to transportation and her case is often cited in discussions of the “Bloody Code” and its inconsistencies.
  
  3.3 and 3.4 I am not clear that the text sufficiently emphasises the timeline of changes to the legal system that occurred (though the audio in Activity 10 does mention the date for the introduction of “death recorded”):
  
  1) Pre-1756, the vast majority of capital convicts were pardoned on condition of transportation to the American colonies. This was the main safety valve of the Bloody Code. The Seven Years’ War disrupted the ability of colonies to receive convicts. Transportation became unreliable, irregular, and sometimes impossible, this alone massively increased executions.
  
  2) Pre-1782: Judges had no discretion: they had to pronounce death; transportation was not a judicial sentence; it was a royal pardon; juries used “pious perjury” to avoid death; mercy depended on local elites, clergy, employers, victims; the Secretary of State handled pardons, but there was no systematic review, no standardised reports, no bureaucracy, no expectation of consistency. It was a patchwork of personal influence, local politics, and ad hoc decision making
  
  3) 1782 — the Creation of the Home Office: it centralised responsibility for domestic governance, including: policing, pardons, transportation, prisons, criminal administration. For the first time, there was a department whose job included overseeing the criminal justice system.
  
  4) After 1782 the criminal justice system shifted from local, personal, discretionary mercy to a centralised, bureaucratic, judge driven system of formal review and systematic commutation.
  
  5) 1787 — Transportation to Australia begins.
  
  6) 1790s–1810s — The Home Office becomes a true criminal justice authority. By this period: every capital case was reviewed centrally; judges’ reports were standardised; petitions were logged and evaluated; transportation quotas were managed; pardons were issued in a more predictable way. The system was still discretionary, but it was no longer chaotic.
  
  7) After the 1823 — The Judgement of Death Act the terminology “death recorded” is recognised. The Act allowed judges to record a death sentence, instead of pronouncing it. This was a legal recognition of what had already become administrative practice.
  
  8) 1830s–1850s — The fully centralised mercy system, by this point: The Home Office reviewed every capital case; Judges’ reports were mandatory; “Death recorded” was a formal mercy mechanism; transportation was a standard alternative sentence; execution rates plummeted; regional variation narrowed (though London remained an outlier).

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• 
  Mag Jax 5 October 2025 11:50AM

  1 2 3 4 5

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  I found this course interesting.

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