Capital punishment was routinely performed publicly in preindustrial London and France

Evidence

The ultimate punishment-death-was also often carried out in public. A foreign visitor to London in the early 1 700s reported that “[public] executions are frequent in London, they take place every six weeks, and five, ten or fifteen criminals are hanged on these occasions” (quoted in Chancellor, 1907 :62). In medieval France, the “gibbet” was a permanent fixture in every city and town, and after the hanging, the corpse was allowed to remain till it crumbled: One can easily imagine the strange and melancholy aspect of this monumental gibbet [called Montfaucon and located at the outskirts of Paris] if one thinks of the number of corpses continually attached to it, and which were feasted upon by thousands of crows. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 180

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Urbanization drove executions out of public view into prisons — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1663