the administration of capital punishment as his views about the role of trans-
portation had played in the administration of the act of 1718.^88
The sentence of transportation for fourteen years had been established in
that act as the condition upon which pardons from hanging would be granted.
This did not induce decision-makers to grant more pardons. Roughly speaking,
half the men convicted of capital offences and sentenced to death were par-
doned in the period 1714 – 50 , and about 70 per cent of the women—levels
that were in both cases very nearly the same as in the previous quarter century
(Table 9. 3 ). The difference in the two periods from the point of view of the
William Thomson and Transportation 457(^88) Thomson’s tough-mindedness with respect to pardons was almost certainly high on the list of his
attributes that Henry Fielding had in mind when he said of Recorder Thomson, twelve years after his
death, that his ‘Memory deserves great Honour for the Services he did the public in that Post’ (An Enquiry
into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, ed. by Zirker, 163 ). For the pardoning process at the end of the cen-
tury, emphasizing its complexity, the factors that determined the granting of pardons, and stressing in
particular the ‘individualized nature’ of pardoning decisions, see King, Crime, Justice, and Discretion, ch. 9.
Table9.3.Capital punishment in property offences, City of London, 1714 – 1750
A.Pardons and executions:
Sentenced to Died in gaol Pardoned: Executed
be executed transported condition
unknown
Men 135 6 61 7 61
% 100.0 4.4 45.2 5.2 45.2
Women 33 2 20 a 3 8
% 100.0 6.1 60.6 9.1 24.2
Total 168 8 81 10 69
% 100.0 4.7 48.2 6.0 41.1
% Men 80.4 88.4
% Women 19.6 11.6
B.Offences against property punished by hanging
Men % Women %
Burglary 15 24.6 — —
Theft from house 15 24.6 1 12.5
Robbery 14 23.0 2 25.0
Shoplifting 3 4.9 5 62.5
Horse-theft 5 8.2 — —
Picking pockets 5 8.2 — —
Housebreaking 2 3.3 — —
Theft from warehouse 2 3.3 — —
Total 61 100.1 8 100.0
Notes:
aSix of whom were initially reprieved for pregnancy
Source: Sample