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Supplement to: Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic
Pacification
Peter Frost
March 2015
In each generation from 1500 to 1750, between 1 and 2% of all English men were executed
either by court order or extra-judicially (at the scene of the crime or while in prison). This was
the height of a moral crusade by Church and State to punish the wicked so that the good may
live in peace.
Meanwhile, the homicide rate fell ten-fold. Were the two trends related? In a recent paper,
Henry Harpending and I argued that a little over half of the homicide decline could be
explained by the high execution rate, and its steady removal of violent males from the gene
pool. The rest could be partly explained by Clark-Unz selection—violent males lost out
reproductively because they were increasingly marginalized in society and on the marriage
market. Finally, this decline was also due to a strengthening of controls on male violence:
judicial punishment (policing, penitentiaries); quasi-judicial punishment (in schools, at church,
and in workplaces); and stigmatization of personal violence in popular culture.
These controls drove the decline in the homicide rate, but they also tended over time to
hardwire the new behavior pattern, by hindering the ability of violent males to survive and
reproduce. The last half-century has seen a dramatic relaxation of these controls but only a
modest rise in the homicide rate among young men of native English origin.
The above argument has been criticized on two grounds:
1. Executed offenders were not the worst of the worst. They were often people caught in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
2. Executed offenders may have had children who survived to adulthood.
Let me discuss each criticism at length.
1. The worst of the worst?
Did execution remove the most violent men? Or did it randomly remove individuals from, say,
the most violent third?
Many genetic factors influence our propensity for personal violence: impulse control; violence
ideation; pleasure from inflicting pain; etc. Regardless of how strong or weak these factors may
be, the propensity itself should be normally distributed within the male population—it should
follow a bell curve. If we move right or left from the population mean, the number of men
should initially decline very little, with the result that over two-thirds of the men can be found
within one standard deviation of the mean.
We really have to go one standard deviation to the right before the men begin to seem
abnormally violent, but the remaining right-hand “tail” leaves us only 16% of the male
population. What if we’re looking for a man who’s at least twice as violent as the normal two-
thirds? He’s in the far right 1%. In a single gene pool, violent men stand out not just because
they are noticeably abnormal but also because they are much less common.
1.1 Identifying the most violent men. But how?
Were these men the ones that the English justice system executed between 1500 and 1750?
Murder is violence taken to its logical extreme, yet most murder cases went unsolved in early
modern England. The crime was difficult to prove for want of witnesses, either because none
wished to come forward or because they had likewise been murdered. There were no police, no
forensic laboratories, and much less of the investigative infrastructure that we have today. If
you committed a one-time murder, your chances of not getting caught were good.
The criminal justice system in the eighteenth century [...] therefore operated on a
rationale very different from that of a modern state, with its professional police
forces, social services and a fully bureaucratised law-enforcement system. In the
early eighteenth century at least, the enforcement of law and order depended largely
on unpaid amateur officials, the justices of the peace and the parish constables and
other local officers. (Sharpe, 2010, p. 92)
This is not to say that the justice system gave murder a lower priority. Rather, with the limited
resources available, judges and juries engaged in "profiling." They scrutinized not only the
offence but also the accused—his character and demeanor, his behavior during the crime and in
the courtroom, and his previous offences. Juries could be lenient in cases of first-time offences
for theft, but this leniency disappeared if the accused had a criminal history.
The justice system thus looked for signs that the accused had already committed worse crimes
or would go on to do so. Ironically, our current system is the one that tends to catch people who
were in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e., inexperienced one-time murderers.
1.2 Hanged for robbery but guilty of murder
This may be seen in a book, published in London in 1735, that told the life stories of 198
executed criminals. Of the 198, only 34 (17%) had been sentenced to death for murder. A much
larger number, 111 (56%), were charged with robbery, being described as highwaymen,
footpads, robbers, and street robbers. Finally, another 37 (19%) were executed simply for theft
(Hayward, 2012; see Notes). Robbery was punished more severely than simple theft because it
threatened both life and property, especially if the victim failed to cooperate sufficiently or
seemed to recognize the robber.
Robbery is the taking away violently and feloniously the goods or money from the
person of a man, putting him in fear [...]. Yea, where there is a gang of several
persons, only one of which robs, they are all guilty as to the circumstance of putting
in fear, wherever a person attacks another with circumstances of terror [...] And in
respect of punishment, though judgment of death cannot be given in any larceny
whatsoever, unless the goods taken exceed twelve pence in value, yet in robbery
such judgment is given, let the value of the goods be ever so small. (Hayward,
2013, vol. 1, preface)
Sooner or later, a robber ended up killing. We see this in the life story of Dick Turpin, who was
hanged for cattle theft, even though he had committed worse crimes:
The process of reconstruction may not tell us much about Turpin's personality, but it
does give us the opportunity to put together a remarkable criminal biography, a tale
of violent robberies, of murder, and, eventually, of the horse-thefts that led to his
execution. (Sharpe, 2010, p. 8)
Allegations of murder came up in trials of robbers, but typically remained unproven because no
witnesses could be produced. Nonetheless, the accused would sometimes confess to murder,
either to clear his conscience or, in the wake of a death sentence, because he had nothing left to
lose, like this man convicted for highway robbery: "This Reading had been concerned in
abundance of robberies, and, as he himself owned, in some which were attended with murder"
(Hayward, 2013, p. 91). A member of another gang, when caught, confessed to a long string of
murders:
[...] he, without any equivocation, began to confess all the crimes of his life. He said
that it was true they all of them deserved death, and he was content to suffer; he
said, moreover, that in the course of his life he had murdered upwards of three-score
with his own hands. He also carried the officers to an island in the river, which was
the usual place of the execution of those innocents who fell into the hands of their
gang [...]
(Hayward, 2013, The Life of Jacques Perrier)
In most cases, however, the accused would deny involvement in murders even after being
condemned to death:
There has been great suspicions that he murdered the old husband to this woman,
who was found dead in a barn or outhouse not far from Hornsey; but Wigley,
though he confessed an unlawful correspondence with the woman, yet constantly
averred his innocency of that fact, and always asserted that though the old man's
death was sudden, yet it was natural. (Hayward, 2013, The Life of John Wigley)
At the place of execution he behaved with great composure and said that as he had
heard he was accused in the world of having robbed and murdered a woman in
Hyde Park, he judged it proper to discharge his conscience by declaring that he
knew nothing of the murder, but said nothing as to the robbery. (Hayward, 2013,
The Life of William Casey)
1.3 In the wrong place at the wrong time?
If we look at executed criminals, their profile is not that of unfortunates caught in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Most were young men who had done their work in the company of
likeminded young men. Those who operated alone were atypical, like this highwayman:
Though this malefactor had committed a multitude of robberies, yet he generally
chose to go on such expeditions alone, having always great aversion for those
confederacies in villainy which we call gangs, in which he always affirmed there
was little safety, notwithstanding any oaths, by which they might bind themselves to
secrecy. (Hayward, 2013, The Life of John Wigley)
For most, long-term safety was a secondary concern. Their behavioral profile—fast life history,
disregard for the future, desire to be with other young men and impress them with acts of
bravado and violence—stood in contrast to the ascendant culture of early modern England. One
example is this robber:
[...] when he returned to liberty he returned to his old practices. His companions
were several young men of the same stamp with himself, who placed all their
delight in the sensual and brutal pleasures of drinking, gaming, whoring and idling
about, without betaking themselves to any business. Natt, who was a young fellow
naturally sprightly and of good parts, from thence became very acceptable to these
sort of people, and committed abundance of robberies in a very small space of time.
The natural fire of his temper made him behave with great boldness on such
occasions, and gave him no small reputation amongst the gang. [...] He particularly
affected the company of Richard James, and with him robbed very much on the
Oxford Road, whereon it was common for both these persons not only to take away
the money from passengers, but also to treat them with great inhumanity [...]
(Hayward, 2013, The Life of Nathaniel Hawes)
This sort of description comes up repeatedly. Most condemned men struck observers as very
atypical, and not merely among the worst third of society. In 1741, an observer described a
hanging and the interactions between the condemned men and a crowd composed largely of
their friends:
The criminals were five in number. I was much disappointed at the unconcern and
carelessness that appeared in the faces of three of the unhappy wretches; the
countenance of the other two were spread with that horror and despair which is not
to be wondered at in men whose period of life is so near [...]
[...] the three thoughtless young men, who at first seemed not enough concerned,
grew most shamefully wanton and daring, behaving themselves in a manner that
would have been ridiculous in men in any circumstances whatever. They swore,
laughed, and talked obscenely, and wished their wicked companions good luck with
as much assurance as if their employment had been the most lawful.
At the place of execution the scene grew still more shocking, and the clergyman
who attended was more the subject of ridicule than of their serious attention. The
Psalm was sung amidst the curses and quarrelling of hundreds of the most
abandoned and profligate of mankind, upon them (so stupid are they to any sense of
decency) all the preparation of the unhappy wretches seems to serve only for
subject of a barbarous kind of mirth, altogether inconsistent with humanity. And as
soon as the poor creatures were half dead, I was much surprised to see the populace
fall to hauling and pulling the carcasses with so much earnestness as to occasion
several warm rencounters and broken heads. These, I was told, were the friends of
the persons executed, or such as, for the sake of tumult, chose to appear so; as well
as some persons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection. The
contests between these were fierce and bloody, and frightful to look at [...] The face
of every one spoke a kind of mirth, as if the spectacle they beheld had afforded
pleasure instead of pain, which I am wholly unable to account for. (Hayward, 2013,
Introduction)
The situation in early modern England was akin to a low-grade war, and it was not for nothing
that its justice system seems to us so barbaric. The judges and juries were dealing with
barbarians: gangs of young men who led a predatory lifestyle that made life miserable for
people who ventured beyond the safety of their own homes.
1.4 Conclusion
We are still left with the original question: Were these criminals the most violent 1 to 2% or a
random sample of a much larger proportion? In general, they behaved quite unlike most people,
especially if they belonged to gangs, which seem to have been responsible for most homicides.
It is hard to see how such people could correspond even to the most violent 16%—a range of
individuals that begins one standard deviation to the right of the mean, at which point behavior
just begins to seem "abnormal."
In all likelihood, execution removed individuals who were more than one standard deviation to
the right of the mean, with a strong skew toward people more than two standard deviations to
the right—in other words, something less than the most violent 16% with a strong skew toward
the most violent 1%.
These assumptions differ from those of our model, which assumes that execution removed the
most violent 1 to 2%. On the other hand, our model also assumes that each executed criminal
would, in the absence of execution, have killed only one person over a normal lifetime. Clearly,
many people among the executed were already serial murderers, not so much among the
convicted murderers as among the convicted robbers. It is difficult to say whether the two
sources of error would balance each other out, since we need more information on (1) just how
abnormal the executed were in terms of behavior and (2) how many people they would have
otherwise killed over a normal lifetime.
Executed criminals were probably a heterogeneous group. A quarter of them (mostly the
thieves) would have likely killed 0 to 1 people on average if allowed to live out their lives.
Another quarter may have averaged 1 to 2 murders. Finally, the remaining half may have had an
ever higher score. Within this last group, we can be sure that a hard core of individuals would
have each gone on to kill dozens of people, if they had not already done so.
In England, executions peaked between 1500 and 1750 at 1 to 2% of all men of each
generation. Were there genetic consequences? Were propensities for violence being removed
from the gene pool? Did the English population become kinder and gentler? Such is the
argument I made in a recent paper with Henry Harpending.
2. Did the executed already have children?
In this column, I will address a second criticism made against this argument: Many executed
criminals already had children, so execution came too late in their lives to change the makeup
of the next generation.
Hayward (2013) provides a sample of 198 criminals who were executed in the early 1700s. Of
this total, only 32 (16%) had children at the time of execution, and 12 of them had one child
each. Their reproductive success breaks down as follows:
Table 1 – Reproductive success of the executed
Family size Number of executed criminals (out of 198)
1 child 12
2 children 3
3 children 3
3 to 4 children 1
5 children 3
9 children 1
“children,” “several,” etc. 9
Although the above figures include illegitimate children, some executed criminals may have
had offspring that they were unaware of or didn't wish to acknowledge. So we may be
underestimating their reproductive success. But what were the chances of such children
surviving to adulthood and reproducing? In pre-1840 England, 30% of all children were dead
by the age of 15; in pre-1800 London, only 42% of all boys reached the age of 25 (Clark and
Cummins, 2009). Chances of survival were undoubtedly even lower for children raised by
single parents.
Here and there, we find references to high infantile mortality among the progeny of executed
criminals. The coiner John Johnson regretted "the heavy misfortune he had brought upon
himself and family, two of his children dying during the time of his imprisonment, and his wife
and third child coming upon the parish" (Hayward, 2013, The Life of John Johnson). Prospects
seemed better for childless widows, as noted in the life story of the thief Robert Perkins: "He
said he died with less reluctance because his ruin involved nobody but himself, he leaving no
children behind him, and his wife being young enough to get a living honestly" (Hayward,
2013, Robert Perkins).
Reproductive success was also curbed by marital instability. The footpad Joseph Ward was
married for all of two days:
The very next morning after their wedding, Madam prevailed on him to slip on an
old coat and take a walk by the house which she had shown him for her uncle's. He
was no sooner out of doors, but she gave the sign to some of her accomplices, who
in a quarter of an hour's time helped her to strip the lodging not only of all which
belonged to Ward, but of some things of value that belonged to the people of the
house. (Hayward, 2013, The Life of Joseph Ward)
In these life stories, the word "wife" is often qualified: "lived as wife," "whom he called his
wife," "who passed for his wife," "he at that time owned for his wife," etc. Overall, only 40% of
the executed criminals had been married: 38% of the men and 80% of the women.
2.1 – Age structure
The age composition of the executed criminals suggests another reason for their low
reproductive success. More than half were put to death before the age of 30. Since the mean age
of first marriage for English men at that time was 27 (Wikipedia, 2015b), it's likely that most of
these criminals were still trying to amass enough resources to get married and start a family.
Table 2. Ages of the executed
Age class Number of executed criminals (out of 198)
10 - 19 18
20 - 29 88
30 - 39 41
40 - 49 20
50 - 59 6
60 - 69 0
70 + 1
Many criminals may have planned to steal enough money to give up crime and lead a straight
life. Such plans came to nought for the thief John Little:
[...] the money which they amass by such unrighteous dealings never thrives with
them; that though they thieve continually, they are, notwithstanding that, always in
want, pressed on every side with fears and dangers, and never at liberty from the
uneasy apprehensions of having incurred the displeasure of God, as well as run
themselves into the punishments inflicted by the law. To these general terrors there
was added, to Little, the distracting fears of a discovery from the rash and
impetuous tempers of his associates, who were continually defrauding one another
in their shares of the booty, and then quarrelling, fighting, threatening, and what not,
till Little sometimes at the expense of his own allotment, reconciled and put them in
humour. (Hayward, 2013, The Life of John Little)
Nonetheless, it is possible that others would have saved up a "nest egg," started a family, and
moved on to a respectable life. Dick Turpin, for instance, was able to abandon highway robbery
and pose as a horse trader. His ruse ultimately failed because he continued to run afoul of the
law (Wikipedia, 2015a). The extent of this life strategy is difficult to measure because the
existing information almost wholly concerns those criminals who were caught and executed.
2.2 Conclusion
Clearly, some of the executed criminals had already reproduced, but the overall reproductive
success was very low, and probably lower still if we adjust for infantile mortality. Instead of
arguing that executions had little impact on the gene pool because too many of the executed had
already reproduced, one could argue the opposite: the genetic impact was inconsequential
because so few would have reproduced anyway, even if allowed to live out their lives.
Reproductive success was highly variable in the criminal underclass. Many would have had few
children with or without being sent to the gallows. But some would have done much better. At
the age of 26, the highwayman William Miller already had two children by two wives, and
many other women gravitated around him, even as he prepared for death: "Yet in the midst of
these tokens of penitence and contrition several women came still about him." At the age of 25,
the murderer Captain Stanley had fathered three or four children by one woman and was
looking for a new wife. One might also wonder about some of the executed teenagers. At the
age of 19, the footpad Richard Whittingham was already married, though still childless, and the
thief William Bourne likewise at the age of 18.
In an earlier England, such young men would have done well reproductively, as leaders of
warrior bands. But that England no longer existed, and criminal gangs offered the only outlet
for engaging in plunder, violence, and debauchery with other young men.
Notes
The other executed criminals were identified as 8 housebreakers, 7 forgers, 4 pirates, 2
incendiaries, 1 threatening letter writer, 1 ravisher, 1 thief-taker, and 1 releaser of prisoners.
Wherever a single individual was charged with more than one crime, I classified him or her
under the most serious offence, i.e., murder took precedence over robbery, and robbery took
precedence over theft.
Of the 198 executed criminals, 10 were women. The book actually tells the life stories of 201
criminals, but three of them were not executed. I excluded the life stories in the appendix (7
murderers and 4 thieves) because they came from a much earlier time period and may have
been less representative.
References
Clark, G. and N. Cummins. (2009). Disease and Development: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives. Urbanization, Mortality, and Fertility in Malthusian England, American Economic
Review: Papers & Proceedings, 99,2, 242-247
http://neilcummins.com/Papers/AER_2009.pdf
Frost, P. and H. Harpending. (2015). Western Europe, state formation, and genetic pacification,
Evolutionary Psychology, 13, 230-243. http://www.epjournal.net/articles/western-europe-state-
formation-and-genetic-pacification/
Hayward, A.L. (2013[1735]). Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals - who Have Been
Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining
Or Other Offences, Routledge.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13097/13097-h/13097-h.htm
Sharpe, J. (2010). Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman, Profile Books.
http://books.google.ca/books?
hl=fr&lr=&id=4PLg58uSY2QC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=the+myth+of+the+english+highwayma
n&ots=-tncTTdZlQ&sig=hBBGSOhajnOpHc_G6_128gSDgtc#v=onepage&q=the%20myth
%20of%20the%20english%20highwayman&f=false
Wikipedia. (2015a). Dick Turpin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Turpin
Wikipedia (2015b). Western European Marriage Pattern
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern