This juvenile felon was indicted, arraigned and found guilty all on the same day, February 23, “and was hanged accordingly.” The actual date of his execution is not known, but it can’t have been long afterward because the wheels of British justice ground very quickly in those days.
The age of criminal responsibility in Britain at the time was seven years old. (It was later raised to eight, and in 1963 to ten, where it remains; there have been calls to raise it again.) Accordingly, anyone seven years or older could be charged with a crime and face the same penalties as someone seventeen or forty-seven — including the death sentence.
But do remember that this does not mean that vast numbers of children were executed, quite the contrary. As records show, death sentences were certainly routinely passed on 7 -13 year olds but equally routinely commuted. Girls were only typically hanged for the most serious crimes whereas teenage boys were executed for a wide range of felonies.
The youngest person to have been hanged in Britain was in 1708 of a boy called Michael Hammond aged 7, hanged in King's Lynn at the South Gate along side his sister Ann aged 11.
