The End of Execution Ballads?

Abstract

This chapter looks at the evolution of execution ballads into the nineteenth century and beyond, revealing that public executions still drew enormous crowds, although towards the end of the century public executions would eventually become ‘private’ affairs conducted within prison walls. Ballads focused largely on murder, and were produced about every element of the case, trial, and execution, often including large amounts of prose alongside the verse. This period saw the rise of celebrity cases, with scores of ballads being produced for a single case. The disappearance of execution ballads seems to have been linked to the move towards ‘private’ executions—in most regions there are few ballads after this shift occurs, except for especially egregious crimes. The exception is Italy, where hundreds of ballads were composed after the death penalty had been abolished, in what appears to have been a nostalgia for more brutal justice than life imprisonment.