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Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens probably wrote or heavily rewrote the following portions of 'Cain in the Fields': from 'This was the young' to 'pretended embrace' (p. 147); from 'There is no escape' to 'learn it!' (p. 148); from 'But, perhaps the most striking' to 'two thieves' (p. 149).
Dickens may also have rewritten or added to the following sections: the opening paragraph; from 'Twelve years have passed' (p. 151) to the conclusion.
In addition, Dickens seems to have interpolated phrases into passages primarily by Horne (for example, the ironic asides in the first two-thirds of the paragraph beginning 'Of domestic poisonings,' p. 148).
The psychology and punishment of murderers - the subject of this article - had fascinated Dickens from his earliest days. Sketches by Boz (1836), Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), and Oliver Twist (1837-1839) - as well as many of his later novels - demonstrate this fascination. His periodicals reflect the same interest. In Household Words, in 'The Finishing Schoolmaster' (17 May 1851) - to cite only one example - he demonstrated how the very office of hangman exerted a baleful, brutalizing effect. Dozens of essays took up similar and allied matters. One of those allied matters - again dealt with in the article below - was the practice of holding executions in public, a practice Dickens vehemently opposed. In 1846, in five letters to the Daily News, and in 1849, in two letters to the Times, Dickens argued brilliantly against capital punishment and public executions. Here he continues that campaign.
Public executions were finally abolished in 1868.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

This article relates closely to Dickens's long-standing concern with the issue of capital punishment. He had contributed to a powerful series of letters advocating total abolition of the death penalty to the Daily News (23 February–16 March 1846). The previous year he had offered to write an article on capital punishment for the Edinburgh Review, but never did so (see Pilgrim, Vol. IV, pp. 340–41). By the time of his two 1849 letters to The Times deploring the disgusting scenes at the Mannings' execution (Pilgrim, Vol. V, pp. 644–45 and 651), he had come to believe that total abolition was not a practical possibility and concentrated on arguing for the abolition of public executions. For the texts of the five Daily News letters, see D. Paroissien (ed.), Selected Letters of Charles Dickens (1985), pp. 213–55; for an excellent detailed discussion of them, and Dickens's attitude to capital punishment generally, see Philip Collins, Dickens and Crime (1962), Ch. 10.

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