The Anglo-Saxon Justice System

During the 17 and 18th century the British legal system was incredibly harsh, distributing death penalties for often minor offences, the aim of this was to deter individuals from committing crime. There was very

Punishments for crimes has changed tremendously from the 1800s. Crime rates began to rise because of an increase in population and wealth. Punishment has been around for thousands of years. The law originally stated that only slaves were allowed to be punished, and was later changed allowing free men to be tortured for committing crimes as well. The harsh punishments include, people getting their dominant hand cut of for stealing, and people were also burned alive. Women who committed adultery were drowned. Even the Catholic Church used torture to show they had power regardless of whether the people were guilty. Crime and punishment in the 1800s is similar and different from today because the crimes that are being committed have stayed the same where as the punishments have changed drastically.

Punishments in the Middle Ages were harsh and horrific, with change occurring as heads of state and laws changed. In the Middle Ages, punishments were used as a deterrent to gain peasants obedience. Types of punishments included torture, mutilation, and public humiliation. When the Normans invaded England in the 11th century, (Norman Conquest of England, 2017) many changes were made to punishments. William the Conqueror used the death penalty

To begin with, the middle ages of crime and punishment in western Europe, which was stated above ranged from the time of the 5th century through the 15 century, was acknowledged for feudalist ideas. Feudalism can be defined as the aristocrats of Europe having control of the lands in exchange for

The delivery of punishment has changed significantly over the centuries. Up until the 19th century in England, imprisonment was not regarded as a punishment, it was merely used while the offender waited to be sentenced to their ‘real’ punishment (Bull, 2010; Hirst, 1998). Corporal punishment such as flogging, branding and mutilation, death by hanging, and transportation to other continents such as America and Australia were common punitive measures through the ages, until well into the 1800’s (Newburn, 2003). Although these extreme penalties are no longer acceptable or practised by criminal courts in England or Australia, in some ways, the past has

In order to determine what the law was in the Elizabethan Age for crime and punishment, you must research crime and punishment in that age, the laws and the acts. In the Elizabethan Age there were many different crimes. Each of those crimes had their own punishment or punishments. They were very strict about what they could and could not do in this age. If you have ever thought about planning a crime, you would have to really think about the punishment you would receive.

The authors of Crime and Punishment in the Elizabethan Era conclude that due to Elizabeth’s strict convictions, England became a safer society. Even for committing minor crimes, people would be “arrested and punished quickly” (1). Before Elizabeth’s reign, punishments for committing crimes were uncommon, resulting in an unorganized society. Having a careless, free society leads to outbursts and revolts which could eventually lead to bigger disputes, like a civil war. Elizabeth worked to prevent this by enforcing acts of public humiliation and larger punishments. These tough punishments lead people to not want to break the law or commit any crimes whatsoever. Although Elizabeth was strict and penalized citizens for small crimes, her actions led to maintaining peace and balance throughout England. The orderly society that she built could’ve been disastrous if it weren’t for the austere precautions she took to enhance England. The actions Queen Elizabeth I took towards crime and punishment helped transform England into a more stable

Looking back into the 1800s, those accused of a crime did not receive the treatment they would nowadays due to the lack of freedoms they had. In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the characters Victor Frankenstein and Justine Moritz were both unjustly accused, tried, and Justine was executed; similarly, a significant amount of people experienced the same unfair treatment in the 1800s (Shelly).

Between 1700 and 1900 a system familiar to our eyes emerged as a result of important changes. The 1800s very harsh and a lot of crime was done in that time. The laws, punishment and jail were similar, also very different from today's. In the 1800s the punishment was much more survivor and stick to it more than now. If you lived back in that time, it was usual to walk the streets and you see a hanging happening. This showing the cruelty and none caring of the people and how harsh the punishment was.

Crime and punishment in Wendake communities and in New France was completely different, as the Wendat people based their legal system on reparations and preserving the community while New France’s legal system was based on religion and terror. According to records kept by French Catholic missionaries, the Wendat legal system emphasized compensation for crimes and prioritized social cohesion as opposed to individual punishment. For example, when someone was murdered, the family of the perpetrator arranged reparations with the family of the victim. It was a collective responsibility, so the entire family of the murderer was expected to pay for the crime. Accompanying the compensation was a public ceremony meant to heal the wounds of the victim’s family. Unlike contemporary European legal systems, there were no judges or individual punishments. New France, on the other hand, inherited their legal system from France and therefore did have judges and individual punishment. Although both systems attempted to create social order through law, their methods of doing so were different. While Wendat law focused on preserving the community and healing together, the New France legal system was based on the idea of terror as a deterrent to crime. Individual punishments were meant to terrorize the public and impress upon them the consequences of deviance. For example, convicted murderers were publically hanged and had their corpses displayed on gibbets. Criminals with lesser charges were

According to Clear, Cole, and Reisig, (2013, p. 28 & 29) during the middle ages various forms of punishments were imposed on the body of the offender. Authority of government grew, and the criminal law system became more fully developed. Other forms of sanctions were applied due to the rise of trade, the breakdown of feudal order, the emergence of a middle class. In Europe before the 1800s fines and five punishments were common: galley slavery, imprisonment, transportation, corporal punishment and death. Each

People have been committing crimes for many centuries, however over time crime punishment changed in different ways. Some of the punishment methods used in one century is found not affective in another century. In England, during the 1600’s crime punishment where hasher and people who were considered criminals did not get many opportunities to be put on trial most time before being sent to face the death penalty. There are many factor that could have contributed to how crime punishment have revolved from the 1600’s all the way to the 1800’s. What were the causes that made the punishments from the 1600’s very different from the ones in the 1700’s and 1800’s? Is it just the different method

The punishments in the Middle Ages were severely brutal.For stealing you would get your right hand cut off and for rape you would be quartered. One of the most severe punishments in the middle ages was Impalement. It worked by forcing your victims to sit on a sharp and thick pole. The pole was then raised upright and the victim was left to slide further down the pole by his or her own weight. This was among the most brutal of punishments ever imagined and practiced by humans. Theft was considered a petty crime. But even though it was considered petty your right hand was still chopped off.If you were drunk in public you would get a fine. Victims were sawed in half, they did this because it was a cheap way to torture and kill a victim accused

As probably studied in any law or history class, punishment in medieval times consisted of

Nowadays every legal system wants to achieve justice. Different legal traditions in the world have given a different meaning of this concept by following one of the two legal systems: a civil law system and a common law system. The civil law system emerged from Roman law and throughout many centuries has been developed in continental Europe and often is called a “continental legal system”, achieving its prominence through development of aqui communitare in Europe. The common law system emerged in England during the Anglo-Saxon period and was developed by British colonies, reaching its peak in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.