the explanations of the acts court or even just written down because it was the motive generally assumed. Therefore, their warning to historians reproducing the explanations of the authorities is worth listening to.852 Or was the execution in itself causing more executions? Was there no need to go further than stating this unexpected outcome of the executions? This idea, although it had been suggested before, especially often was suggested by nineteenth–century abolitionists stating that most of the executed themselves had witnessed executions – executions thus leading to crimes.853 Among groups in focus were those watching an execution and then committing murder and also those committing crimes during executions, such as pickpockets working the crowds while their colleagues were executed.854 Stressed was also that capital sentences and executions tended to be followed by an increasing number of murders.855 The Swedish professor of law and supreme court judge Knut Olivecrona, for example, sought to find relevant information by writing to prison chaplains that had prepared those condemned to die asking about their previous attendance at any execution.856 Posing the question to prison chaplains was probably based on such information from prison chaplains and others working with the condemned being quoted in public. One set of numbers was given by Henry Lyford, for many years physician at the Winchester gaol, who in a letter to William Tallack September 1st 1865 had stated that of forty executed whose execution he had witnessed thirty-eight themselves had seen executions.857 Much more quoted was, however, a prison chaplain, probably John Roberts, in Bristol. Some discrepancies exist about the exact 852 Nilsson and Eriksson 2020 p 104. 853 See e g Olivecrona 1891 p 187 sqq, Ducpétiaux 1865 p 273, Vuy 1888 p 23 sq. 854 Olivecrona 1891 p 238 sq, Mittermaier 1862 p 106, Francart 1864 p 28, Savart 1828 p 30, Mercier 1798 p 74. Bruno Preisendörfer calls the stories of pickpockets ”einem Topos strafreformerischer Rethorik”, Preisendörfer 2000 p 254. 855 See e g Report of the society 1865 p 11 sq, Report of the society 1866 p 9. 856 See e g letter from Carl Nygren to Knut Olivecrona 9 October 1865, from Oscar Westöö to Knut Olivecrona 19 April 1876, from Nils Anders Björkman to Knut Olivecrona 28 November 1877, and from Malte Banér Hasselquist to Knut Olivecrona 9 August 1890B187 m:26UUB. 857 Report of the society 1866 p 10. 241
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