User:Sherrmitchell/sandbox

Ottoman empire weapons of this time period

he Bloody Code is a term used to refer to the system of laws and punishments in England between 1688 and 1815. It was not referred to as such in its own time, but the name was given later owing to the sharply increased number of crimes that attracted the death penalty such as capital crimes. good ideas, the bloody code was a very bad idea

n 1688 there were 50 offences on the statute book punishable by death, but that number had almost quadrupled by 1776,[1] and it reached 220 by the end of the century.[2] Most of the new laws introduced during that period were concerned with the defence of property, which some commentators have interpreted as a form of class suppression of the poor by the rich.[3] George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, expressed a contemporary view when he said that "Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen".[4] Grand larceny, defined as the theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, was one of the crimes that attracted the death penalty,[nb 1] but as the 18th century wore on jurors often deliberately under-assessed the value of stolen goods, below the crucial figure that would have made a sentence of death mandatory.[5]

Since the law makers still wanted punishments to scare potential criminals, but needed them to become less harsh, transportation became the more common punishment. Since the American Colonies had won independence by this time, the majority of convicts were transported to Australia. It has been estimated that over one-third of all criminals convicted between 1788 and 1867 were transported to Australia and Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). Some criminals could escape transportation if they agreed to join the army.