Execution has long fascinated historians, and in this major new study, Simon Devereaux skillfully brings together decades of work on the subject, including his own, to provide “the first comprehensive, single-volume account of how and why the character, the physical location and the numerical scale of English executions changed during the two-and-a-half centuries following the Restoration” (5). Devereaux uniquely and ambitiously combines three key approaches to the subject: (i) a close attention to political context and penal philosophy—reminiscent of the pioneering work of Leon Radzinowicz—based upon extensive research into parliamentary records, legal treatises, and the personal papers of politicians; (ii) a heavily empirical, quantitative analysis of judicial practice—similar to the work of J. M. Beattie—underpinned by Devereaux's invaluable Capital Convictions at the Old Bailey 1730–1837 database (openly available at https://hcmc.uvic.ca/project/oldbailey/index.php); and (iii) a careful consideration of the wider social and cultural context—echoing the work of Andrea McKenzie and Randall McGowen—as revealed by newspapers, pamphlets, and crime literature. Through this multifaceted approach, Devereaux effectively interrelates political, material, and cultural causes, without privileging any single one.

Devereaux presents a story of long-term, uneven change, implicitly rejecting the argument (most closely associated with Michel Foucault) that there was a sudden shift in the late eighteenth century from “a system” of capital punishment to “a system” of imprisonment. To this end, the book is broadly arranged chronologically, with specific themes identified for each sweep of time. The book's first substantive chapter shows how the punishment of traitors was restrained in practice between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, even if the letter of the law remained unchanged. Chapter 3 shifts the focus to “common criminals” (other than murderers), demonstrating how changing conceptions of God, death, and the afterlife between c.1660 and 1770, along with an emerging “culture of feeling,” eroded traditional ideas that underpinned the death penalty for nonviolent property crimes. Chapter 4 argues that the large-scale resort to the gallows during the “penal crisis” of the 1780s and the subsequent relocation of gallows in many jurisdictions to the center of towns proved counterproductive, in that it reinforced a growing urbane distaste for executions. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to execution for murder, arguing that the purposes and effects of the Murder Act of 1752 were in fact more in line with humanizing trends (in the shorter term at least) than historians have suggested. Chapter 7 shifts the focus back to the capital code beyond murder, demonstrating that there was more support in parliament for the reform movement between 1808 and 1821 (certainly in the House of Commons) than its formal successes would suggest. How Home Secretary Robert Peel responded to that reform movement and set about the decisive reduction of the Bloody Code, both in terms of the law and practice of capital punishment, in the 1820s and 1830s, is the focus of Chapter 8. Yet as the final substantive chapter reveals, after 1830 and up to 1900 at least, some aspects of execution were stubbornly resistant to change.

Devereaux's argument is that this long-term story is best explained by a prolonged transition from a landed, aristocratic culture of governance that valued the Bloody Code as an instrument of its rule, to an urban-oriented, middling one that held an image of justice based upon newly emerging values of reason, feeling, and secularization. Crucial to the development, and impact, of this “urbane” ruling culture were England's unique constitution, system of criminal law, urban growth, public sphere, and dominant capital city, in comparison to other European nations.

Devereaux has produced a remarkably deep, persuasive, and subtle account. Deep, in that light is shed on several under-studied issues, including the practice of hanging, drawing, and quartering in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Persuasive, in that traditional arguments and assumptions—such as the widely held notion that complete abolition was a realistic possibility in the mid-nineteenth century—are compellingly challenged. And subtle, in that Devereaux's account convincingly demonstrates that urbane professions of sympathy for the condemned were more genuine, and more directly influential, than V.A.C. Gatrell claims in The Hanging Tree (1994), but that such humanizing trends were neither as inevitable in their development, nor as linear in their effects, as some “Whiggish” studies have suggested. Indeed, Devereaux shows how humanizing impulses, such as greater sympathy for the sufferings of the victims of crime, could in some instances lead to seemingly regressive developments, such as the 1752 Murder Act.

Execution, State and Society focuses primarily on London and makes a strong case that urbane sensibilities had a significant influence on execution there. Yet, questions can be raised about the extent to which urbane sensibilities influenced execution practice outside London, both at the local and imperial level. In eighteenth-century provincial England and Wales, per-capita execution rates for property crimes were lowest on the “peripheries” (including the far west and north of England, and across the whole of Wales), yet this is where urbane culture was at its least developed. Whilst Execution, State and Society does to some extent examine execution practice in provincial England and Wales—mostly on the basis of the Capital Punishment UK website and digitized historical newspapers—the findings here are more tentative, as Devereaux admits (e.g., 220). At the imperial level, the urbane sensibilities of colonial administrators did not prevent them from making extensive use of execution, for the purposes of power and authority, not just crime control. It is hoped that Devereaux's book will spur similar work on provincial and imperial archives to fully understand the impact of urbane values on execution across Britain and its empire.

In all, Simon Devereaux's Execution, State and Society is a formidable achievement that will be essential reading on capital punishment and will no doubt sustain historians’ fascination with the subject.