Dickens and Dostoevsky: Capital Punishment in Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of Two Cities and The Idiot

Abstract

Whenever the history of the abolition of the death penalty in Britain is written, Dickens often takes a position of honour for his hostility towards public executions, which were outlawed during his life, in 1868, just as the number of offences for which hanging could take place was reduced from 200 in 1820 to two by 1861: either treason or murder. The abolitionist movement, associated with Bentham and the Utilitarians, newly empowered through the Radical MPs of the Reformed House of Commons after 1832 is a less familiar narrative. Dickens between 1840 and 1849 — the year that Dostoevsky faced a firing squad — moved from abolition to a position, which he argued in letters to The Times, of demanding execution within prison walls. John Bright (Mr Honeythunder in The Mystery of Edwin Drood) argued that Dickens wanted assassination rather than public execution, and was motivated by ‘mere longing to put someone to death’.1 So Dickens dreamed of scaffolds, according to Bright. Movements for abolition, usually led by William Ewart, came before Parliament first in 1840, then in 1849 and 1850, 1856, 1864 and 1868. Dickens in the 1850s and 1860s moved further and further away from the abolitionist position.