Abstract
The measure of 1723 known as the ‘Waldiam Black Act’ (9 Geo. I, c. 22) has acquired a lasting notoriety. Lecky called it ‘a special and most sanguinary law’, and even Sir Leon Radzinowicz finds it ‘remarkable’ as the most severe legislation of the eighteenth century, its comprehensive nature making it an ‘ideological index’ to the capital laws at large. The Act was extended for five years in 1725 (12 Geo. I, c. 30), amended in 1754 (27 Geo. II, c. 15) and made permanent in 1758 (31 Geo. II, c. 42). Effectively it survived for a century, until Peel took it off the statute book despite opposition from the Quarterly Review. Its main provisions were directed against ‘wicked and evil-disposed Persons going armed in Disguise, and doing Injuries and Violences to die Persons and Properties of his Majesty's Subjects’. It became a felony without benefit of clergy to go abroad into woods in any form of disguise or with a blackened face. Commission of a specific act of destruction or larceny was not necessary for a prosecution to lie.
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