"This is the most comprehensive history of capital punishment in modern England ever written, the first in more than thirty years, and the only one to cover the period 1957-1969. It shows how time and again the Church of England came to the rescue of a punishment that was in danger of being abolished, pushing for a policy which so sanitized the operation of hanging that people lost interest in its abolition. When finally the church withdrew its support, the retentionist cause collapsed." "In the telling of this grim and depressing story, backed by extensive research and based on much unpublished archival material, Harry Potter introduces a whole series of odd, interesting, and macabre characters. There are early evangelical feminists; an eccentric abolitionist millionairess; thrice-hanged Lee; religious hangmen certain of their divine calling; moral crusaders to rival those engaged in the fight against slavery; Lord Haw Haw, Edith Thompson, and Derek Bentley in the condemned cell; bishops who justified hanging on evangelical grounds as providing the perfect terrain for conversions; and literary figures like Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Byron, and Shelley who were both fascinated and repulsed by public hangings."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved