Hanging for murder in late colonial Burma

Abstract

The first decades of the twentieth century saw a marked rise in the number of recorded murders in British-ruled Burma. The sentence for murder prescribed by the Indian Penal Code—in force in Burma as a province of British India—was death or transportation for life. However, while Burma's murder count was rising sharply, the number of executions taking place in the province's jails remained broadly stable, with perhaps a tendency to fall, and indeed it fell decisively at the end of the 1930s. By that point, a high standard of evidence was being increasingly demanded for conviction for murder and increasingly the death penalty was being imposed only when murder had clearly been premeditated. In other words, in the administration of justice in murder cases, the rule of law had been markedly tightened. The focus in the article will be on the local pressures, on the practices and perspectives of Burma's colonial administration and of the Burmese themselves that led in time to a decisive fall in the number of convicted murderers who were hanged for their crime.