“The Last To Face The Gallows In Britain [1957-1965]” looks at 30 [Thirty] cases in the period when although the death penalty for murder was abolished in Britain in November 1965, the first mandatory life sentence for murder was in fact passed in May 1957 under the terms of the Homicide Act (1957). The reason for this apparent paradox was that for eight-and-a-half years British courts distinguished between capital murder — where the mandatory death sentence was retained — and murder where, as is the case today, a mandatory life sentence was passed.

In all, between March 1957, when the Act received Royal Assent, and November 1965, 402 persons were convicted of murder in Great Britain; of this number only 73 (including just eight in Scotland) were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, or more accurately as stipulated by s. 10 of the new Act, they were: "To suffer death in the manner authorized by law.

" In retrospect the Act was a compromise, if not directly intended as such, to ease Britain into life without the death penalty for murder. It is widely regarded as a very poor piece of legislation that had few supporters ….

Within the 30 cases are the last execution on Jersey and a death sentence passed in Northern Ireland after November 1965 - In neither of those jurisdictions did the 1957 Act apply; and also included is the case of the first person to stand trial for what would have been capital murder after the Abolition Act came into force in England …. .