| Europe � Surplus Populations, the �Bloody Code� and the Death Penalty
In the 1300s and 1400s, most Britons were basically free peasant farmers within a feudal system which entailed traditional intergenerational ties between the landlords, the peasants, and the land. In addition to the land that they farmed, the peasants also had extensive access (usufruct) to vast common lands which they used for hunting, pasture, timber for building homes, gathering wood for fireplaces, etc. By this time, the deadly Plague epidemics that had killed huge numbers of people in Europe and England in the 1200s and 1300s had subsided, and agricultural productivity and peasant populations were expanding rapidly. Toward the end of the 1400s and into the early 1500s the �enclosures� began � both peasant farm land and the common lands began to be seized and converted into private property of the richer landlords � because of the increasing trade in wool textiles, the rich landlords wanted the land for large �sheep-walks� (sheep farms). As the enclosures continued, the displaced peasants were forced to become either wage workers (on the farms or in emerging factory towns) or paupers. In the 1500s, the Reformation led to the seizure of land held by the Catholic Church, and the seized land was given or sold to the richer members of the nobility and other landlords, thus displacing many more peasants. Through the 1500s and 1600s the majority of the British population were displaced, and by the mid 1700s the free peasant farmers had almost completely disappeared, along with most of the common lands, which were now private property. Throughout this whole process, there were never enough new wage labor jobs (on farms or in towns) to employ the huge and growing numbers of displaced peasants, so most became impoverished � beggars, robbers, and vagabonds. Meanwhile, the cheap labor and improved productivity of the large farms generated great wealth for the nobility and landlords. This whole process culminated in the 1700s and 1800s with the final �clearing� of feudal estates � the few remaining peasant lands in England were enclosed and the extension of the process to Scotland and Ireland impoverished most of the population throughout the whole British isles. The combination of increasing productivity, growing populations, and the enclosures led to large and ever growing �surplus populations� of displaced and impoverished peasants, even as the wealthy landowners and the �nation� (the emerging British empire) grew wealthier and more powerful. As the surplus populations grew, they were increasingly �criminalized� by a government entirely controlled by the rich � everything that they did to try to survive became a �crime� against the private property of the rich. Hunting on the formerly common lands became poaching, farming and pasturing became trespassing, gathering wood became theft, and so on. Similar processes occurred across much of Europe between the 1500s and 1800s as trade and agricultural productivity increased and elites increasingly seized traditional feudal lands as private property. As Karl Marx summarized the process in Capital: The spoliation of the church�s property, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a �free� and outlawed proletariat. (Capital, Volume III, Chapter XXVII.18) Criminalization of the surplus populations in England � the �Bloody Code� As the surplus populations of displaced peasants continued to grow, they came to be regarded by the ruling elites as the �dangerous classes� and the rich property owners who controlled government at every level responded with a steady stream of �Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated� (Marx), later called the �Bloody Code� by modern historians. Because earlier shortages of workers (during the decades of Plague epidemics) had often driven up the wages of workers, the government legislated maximum and minimum wages (mostly set at a starvation level) and legally defined any workers� collaboration to raise wages or otherwise improve their conditions (e.g., unions) as criminal conspiracy. Complementing the controls on wages were many changes in the criminal codes to deal with the huge displaced populations who were not employed, including brutal workhouses, enslavement, torture and mutilation, and public execution. Marx (Capital, Vol III) describes the origins of this legislation in the 1500s and 1600s in England and Europe: VIII.XXVIII.1 The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this "free" proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wanted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the present working-class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as "voluntary" criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed. VIII.XXVIII.2 In England this legislation began under Henry VII. VIII.XXVIII.3 Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the carttail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have lived the last three years and to "put themselves to labour." What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII. the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal. VIII.XXVIII.4 Edward VI.: A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him.*35 The last part of the statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of �roundsmen.� VIII.XXVIII.5 Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597. VIII.XXVIII.6 James I: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit...Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Ann, c.23. VIII.XXVIII.7 Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI.'s reign (Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the "Plakaat" of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c. VIII.XXVIII.8 Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system. The Bloody Code and Executions in England Although slavery, branding, torture, and mutilation were the primary punishment used against the surplus populations, there were also tens of thousands of executions of men, women, and children as young as 7 or 8 years old resulting from the Bloody Code. For example, during the reign of Henry VIII in the first half of the 1500s, there were an estimated 72,000 executions in England. By the mid-1600s there were about 50 capital crimes in England and the number continued to grow for more than a century, by the mid-1700s there were more than 150 capital crimes and by the early 1800s more than 220. But as brutal as they were, enslavement, torture, mutilation, and execution ultimately failed to solve the problems posed by the surplus populations. In the 1700s many of the criminalized peasants began to be forcibly transported to British colonies in America. Typically, the prisoners were sentenced to death and then the death sentenced was commuted to transportation. Between 1770 and 1830, for example, about 35,000 were sentenced to death but only about 7,000 were executed - most of the rest were transported. This approach ended with the American Revolution, as American ports were closed to the British. Meanwhile the British had begun using �prison hulks� to confine �criminals� � the prison hulks were primarily old naval and merchant ships that were no longer serviceable. Conditions aboard the prison hulks were so bad that most of the prisoners soon died. For example, historians estimated that more American prisoners of war died aboard the prison hulks than died in all of the battles of the revolution. Because the prison hulks were so expensive to maintain, though, in the early 1800s the British began transporting prisoners by the thousands to Australia, but by then the surplus populations were beginning to diminish and by the mid-1800s the laws had begun to change away from capital punishment for minor crimes and the Bloody Code finally ended by the late 1800s. Copyright � 2009 Ernie Thomson. All rights reserved. email: [email protected] |