the execution and its message This development was not limited to one or a few countries. Criticism of the presence of women at executions was heard in England, the USA, and Denmark too.123 Children, women, and eventually most of those present were thought problematic, especially once the very presence of certain groups came to form the problem rather than their behaviour. The key social factor was the mob, at least in the eyes of governments and honourable citizens. By them it was generally identified with the lower classes in society. The Amsterdam press of the 1830’s kept their reporting of the executions of corporal and capital punishment to a minimum. Often they even did not mention them. The rich burghers who were their main subscribers did not want to read about such vulgar and popular happenings.124 The higher classes were also hardly ever put in the pillory.125 David Cooper tends, faithful to his nineteenth–century British sources, to view the crowd at the executions as a mob.126 Even though this mob was seen as a problem, advocates of executions in private, like the rulers and politicians who introduced them, were eager that the meaning of execution should reach the public.127 Evans dates the fear among Prussian officials of the execution crowd as a mob to around 1800, and the introduction of intramural executions in Germany some decades later as stemming from fear of the mob.128 Criticism had been directed against public execution, seeing it as a major problem where a criminal beyond the authorities’ control acted in the view of an unruly crowd.129 122 Le précurseur 9 May1856, Het Handelsblad 8 May 1856: ”Wy begrypen niet, dat er zelfs vrouwen zyn, die den moed hebben zoo iets te gaen zien, en echter zy ontbraken er niet. Het gezigt achter de voile verborgen wandelden er dames, om te optimmering van het schavot te zien”. 123 Report 1856 p2, Banner 2002 p144 sqq, 150 sqq, Linders 2002 p 624, Hansen 1920 p 167. 124 Franke 1981 p 213 sqq. 125 Franke 1981 p 223. 126 See for example Cooper 1984 p 3, 10, 70. 127 Cooper 1984 p 84 (concerning Charles Dickens) 117 sqq, Evans 1997 p 258. 128 Evans 1997 p 200, 257 sqq, 305 sqq. 129 Martschukat 2001 p 16. ”Eine öffentliche Hinrichtung trug, dies besagten zumindest die diskursiven Zuschreibungen, die Züge eines degenerierten Schaustückes mit einem unkalkulierbaren und zumeist renitenten Hauptdarsteller vor einem pöbelhaften, bestenfalls unsensiblen Publikum.” 57
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