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Teacher sheet
6
A very public execution
Low/minimal
Understand increasingly challenging texts:
 make inferences and refer to evidence in the text
 learn new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary
and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries.
National Curriculum ref. Speak confidently and effectively:
 improvise, rehearse and perform play scripts and poetry in order
to generate language and discuss language use and meaning,
using role, intonation, tone, volume, mood, silence, stillness and
action to add impact.
Lesson level
C
Teacher input required
Learning objective
To read a pre-1914 text, identifying the main themes and ideas.
Resources required
Student instructions, student resources sheet, dictionaries, exercise books or paper.
Lesson guidance

Starter – in pairs, make lists of arguments for and against the death penalty. (10 mins)

Development – (Parts A and B: 15-20 mins each)
1. Questions to be answered on the letter to The Times.
2. Write a script for the (imagined) TV news coverage of this public execution, using ideas
from the text as well as making up necessary details. (If you prefer, this could be a drama
activity for groups of five or six.)

Plenary – edit the letter down to 150 words. Swap and cut it again to 50 words. (10 mins)
Extension activities / notes for gifted and talented students
Q7 of the analysis: at least three paragraphs to be written; also see challenge task on student
sheet.
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Student instructions
6
A very public execution
Learning objective
To identify the main ideas in a pre-1900 text.
Success criteria
By the end of the lesson I will:



have read and understood a letter describing an execution in 1849
be able to describe the author’s feelings about what he has seen
have identified the main ideas in the letter and used them as the basis for a TV news script.
Warm up
In pairs, make two lists of arguments: one list FOR and one list AGAINST the death penalty. You
can discuss it, and you don’t have to agree on all the points, but you must each write down both
lists.
Your main task!
1. Analyse the text
Read Charles Dickens’ letter on the student resource sheet and answer the questions. (There
is a glossary of the underlined words. Look up any others you don’t know in a dictionary.)
Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
What was Dickens’ aim in attending the execution?
In your own words, explain what ‘made [his] blood run cold’, and why.
What sorts of people made up the crowd?
What does Dickens suggest about the spectators’ attitudes through the phrase
‘general entertainment’?
5. Reading between the lines, how does he think people should have behaved when the
criminals were hanged?
6. Explain how the references to Christian ideas (in bold) help to emphasise how badly
the crowd behaves. (Write at least one detailed paragraph, including a quotation and
an explanation.)
7. What is his attitude to the execution and the executed, and how is this shown? (Write
your answer as a point, evidence, explain paragraph.)
2. Your creative response
If TV had been invented in Dickens’ time, what would the news have reported about this
execution?
Script the dialogue for a TV news programme for:




the news anchor (the man or woman who reads the news in the studio)
the special correspondent (reporting live from Horsemonger Lane)
Mr Dickens (as an interviewee)
at least one other interviewee.
You should draw relevant facts and opinions from the letter and make up any other facts you
need (e.g. the crime, the names of the victims).
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6 A very public execution
Round it off with this
First, imagine the Editor did not have space to print Mr Dickens’ letter in full. Edit it to no more
than 150 words. The shortened version must keep the key ideas and be in full sentences.
Swap with a partner. Now edit their shortened version to 100 words. You must still retain the
most important ideas, but now it can be words and phrases instead of full sentences.
Extra challenge
Identify aspects of Dickens’ letter that nowadays could be interpreted as snobbish and racist
(even if in his own times he was neither). Use these points to write your own letter to the Editor.
Begin like this:
‘Sir, I have read Mr Dickens’ letter published in your newspaper yesterday
and while I have no wish to defend the practice of hanging convicted
criminals from a gibbet until they are dead, I find his opinions and attitudes
deplorable. In particular …’
See if you can use exaggerated language, as Dickens himself did!
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6 A very public execution
Student resource sheet
Charles Dickens’ letter to the Editor, printed in The Times newspaper, November 1849
Sir – I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning. I went
there with the intention of observing the crowd gathered to behold it, and I had
excellent opportunities of doing so, at intervals all through the night, and
continuously from day-break until after the spectacle was over … I believe that a
sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd
collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could
be presented in no heathen land under the sun.
The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers
to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the
assembled spectators. When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the
cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a
concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood
run cold. As the night went on, screeching, and laughing, and yelling … were
added to these.
When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every
kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour.
Fightings, faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous
demonstrations of indecent delight when swooning women were dragged out of
the crowd by the police, with their dresses disordered, gave a new zest to the
general entertainment.
When the sun rose brightly—as it did—it gilded thousands upon thousands of
upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness, that a
man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore, and to shrink from himself, as
fashioned in the image of the Devil.
When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them
were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no
more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement, no more restraint
in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard
in this world, and there were no belief among men but that they perished like the
beasts.
Glossary
levity
light-heartedness
heathen land country that doesn’t follow Christianity … so implying that it’s uncivilised,
savage
gibbet
gallows
shrillness
high pitch
concourse
crowd
Punch
a violent character from the traditional Punch and Judy puppet shows
mirth
laughter and enjoyment
callousness
hardness of feeling
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