Customer Reviews

The Encyclopaedia of Executions: The Stories Behind Every Execution in Twentieth Century Britain

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a sensational door stopper sized collection of the stories of every single execution in Great Britain between 1900 and 1964. 865 people paid for their crimes with their lives and you can read their stories and the stories of their victims. This isn't just a reference book of facts, although if you are researching for an assignment or something you could certainly use this book in that way and I can't think of a better book of facts for doing that.

The beauty of this mammoth sized book is that each criminal analysed is written like a short story so what you've really got here is a collection of 865 non fiction short crime stories. I also found it interesting when reading the information boxes on each execution for example James Billington was pretty much the sole executer no matter where the execution took place for the first couple of years before some of his assistants got a bit of work.

There are also tables at the back of the book showing the statistics on which crime the death penalty was implemented for, and which country within Great Britain had the most executions. There's also an index of the towns and their executions as well as a calendar so you can compare which day of the year is the most popular for executions. This book is simply excellent. No avid crime fan wether used to reading fiction or non fiction should pass up purchasing this masterpiece.

In 960 pages, this rather hefty tome briefly recounts the 865 judicial hangings that took place in Britain during the twentieth century. There is a tabular record for each execution listing the essential information such as the names of the accused, victim(s) and executioner(s), and also the date of execution and trial. There is also a synopsis of the crime for which the accused was hanged. Obviously, at an average of just over a page for each execution, there is not a wealth of detail and this is not the sort of book where one can get 'lost' in the story. However, the book is still very thorough and provides a pretty decent reference for those interested in the subject. My only quibble is that, for a reference, it is not very well indexed. There is a list of executions by city, which is quite useful, but then there is an entry for each day of the typical calendar year followed by relevant events for specified years. This is certainly an unusual way of indexing things and I cannot think why the author did not include a list indexed by the name of the accused. Perhaps in a subsequent edition?