Harry Allen (executioner) keep away from the trapdoor!. Under the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, capital punishment in the UK for murder was suspended, before finally being abolished in 1969 (It was abolished in 1973 in Northern Ireland). Although the death penalty remained for other crimes such as treason and piracy with violence, no further executions took place in the UK, although a working gallows was kept in service and regularly tested at Wandsworth Prison until 1998. It was dismantled when the death penalty for treason and piracy was abolished by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Allen moved to Fleetwood
Treason Act 1814 at the discretion of the court, up to life imprisonment. The last execution under the Act was of William Joyce in 1946, for assisting the Third Reich during the Second World War. Note that hanging, drawing and quartering was never the penalty for counterfeiting or clipping coins (which was high treason until 1832). The penalty for this kind of high treason was the same as for petty treason, which for men was to be drawn to the place of execution and hanged, and for women was burning without being drawn. The death penalty for forging seals and the Royal sign-manual,