thecrimes cealment of the motive. Changes in the popular conception of the execution and the greater uncertainty of execution as a method of dying and thus a route to salvation caused by the rarer use of it could also lead to other choices by those considering this option. Two words can be used to describe many of the crimes studied here: proximity and certainty. More than now most people a couple of hundred years ago lived in rather close social relationships. You knew your neighbours and so on. Even closer was the situation in prisons and gaol. This led to many crimes being committed in the settings of rather close relationship. Even though proximity says something about the life of many, there were exceptions. Some travelled because of their profession or were following the tradition to spend some time in another place finding more work or they were outside most relationships, possibly fleeing from the law or military service. Then the pure chance meeting could be the setting for a crime. Soldiers were also an exception from proximity, so that they could and sometimes did shoot from a distance someone they did not know. To reach the goal of being executed the crime had to be certain in two respects. It had to be conducted in such a way that the crime was completed, and the crime had to be, in the view of contemporary legislation and practice, severe enough to result in an execution. Most people did not as guardian soldiers carry guns and were not used to use them. A method that came to be used much probably primarily to reach the first certainty was to cut a throat with a knife.105 When it comes to the second certainty statistics probably will not help us much, but reasonably it would be a failed project to commit a crime in a state where non had been executed for that crime in a long time, and even more where executions generally were extremely rare. Probably many potential actors in such a situation either aborted or changed their plans. 105 See also ”The most frequent murder method was cutting the victim’s throat.” Stuart 2023 p 77. Two young women in a prison planned the murder of a child because they thought the crime resulted on certain death, Stuart 2023 p 162. 51
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