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
High treason in the United Kingdom Women were excluded from this type of punishment and instead were drawn and then burned at the stake, until this was replaced with hanging by the Treason Act 1790 and the Treason by Women Act (Ireland) 1796. The penalty for high treason by counterfeiting or clipping coins was the same as the penalty for petty treason (which for men was drawing and hanging without the torture and quartering, and for women was burning or hanging.) Individuals of noble birth were not subjected to either form of torture, but merely beheaded. Even commoners' sentences were sometimes commuted to beheading—a sentence not