Reflections on Legal Process and Crime Scene Executions in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

Recent analysis of public executions on judicial warrant for the crime of murder in Scotland includes an assertion that the practice of carrying into effect the sentence at the place of the crime ended in 1841. That date may be open to some doubt given the locations of later public executions. Moreover, the legal aspects of these public executions suggest underlying legal requirements, practices and political tensions yet unaccounted for.