An offence formerly unknown in this part of the United Kingdom : robbery and the death penalty in early nineteenth-century Scotland

The first third of the nineteenth century was a period of debate over the infliction of the death penalty, and one of increasing scrutiny over the efficacy of the gallows across much of Britain. Despite this, the number of capital convictions in Scotland reached unprecedented levels in the second decade of the nineteenth century and the number of executed malefactors doubled compared to the previous decade. The crime of robbery was held up for especial judicial and press censure. Within the death sentences passed against those capitally convicted were repeated lamentations that the offence was being committed to an extent formerly unknown in Scotland. The ensuing executions were justified as being an indispensable and public means of correcting what one judge referred to as “the loose manners of the time” regarding robbery