Wolf has committed a “pretty basic error”, Ward added. In the vast majority (almost certainly all) of the cases marked ‘death recorded’, the offender would not have been executed.” “It empowered the trial judge to abstain from formally pronouncing a sentence of death upon a capital convict in cases where the judge intended to recommend the offender for a pardon from the death sentence. The historian Richard Ward agreed, adding that the term was a legal device first introduced in 1823. “But I read every Old Bailey record throughout the 19th century, so I know that not only did they continue they got worse.”Īccording to Sweet, who first challenged Wolf on Radio 3’s Arts and Ideas, her error concerning Silver stems from a misunderstanding of “the very precise historical legal term, ‘death recorded’, as evidence of execution, when in fact it indicates the opposite”. “People widely believe that the last executions for sodomy were in 1830,” Wolf told the Observer.
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