The Murder Act 1751 (25 Geo 2 c 37), sometimes referred to as the Murder Act 1752,Leon Radzinowicz
A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750
Macmillan Company. 1948. Volume 1. Page 801. was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain.

Provisions

The Act included the provision "for better preventing the horrid crime of murder" "that some further terror and peculiar mark of infamy be added to the punishment", and that "in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried", by mandating either public dissection or " hanging in chains" of the

cadaver A cadaver or corpse is a dead human body that is used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Stud ...

. The Act also stipulated that a person found guilty of murder should be executed two days after being sentenced unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the execution would take place on the following Monday. On 1 July 1828, this Act was repealed, as to England, by section 1 of the

Offences Against the Person Act 1828 The Offences Against the Person Act 1828 (9 Geo. 4 c. 31) (also known as Lord Lansdowne's Act) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It consolidated provisions in the law related to offences against ...

(9 Geo 4 c 31), except so far as it related to rescues and attempts to rescue. The corresponding marginal note to that section says that effect of this was to repeal the whole Act, except for sections 9 and 10.

Section 1

This section was repealed by section 1 of, and the Schedule to, the

Statute Law Revision Act 1871 The Statute Law Revision Act 1871 (34 & 35 Vict c 116) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was intended, in particular, to facilitate the preparation of the revised edition of the statutes then in progress. This Act was part ...

Section 9

This section provided that any person who, by force, set at liberty or rescued, or who attempted to set at liberty or rescue, any person out of prison who was committed for, or convicted of, murder, or who rescued or attempted to rescue, any person convicted of murder, going to execution or during execution, was guilty of

felony A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie") to describe an offense that resul ...

, and was to suffer death without

benefit of clergy In English law, the benefit of clergy (Law Latin: ''privilegium clericale'') was originally a provision by which clergymen accused of a crime could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead in an ec ...

. This

death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

was reduced to transportation for life by the

Punishment of Offences Act The Punishment of Offences Act 1837 (7 Will 4 & 1 Vict c 91) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It abolished the death penalty for a number of statutory offences and replaced it with transportation f ...

(1837).

Section 11

This section was repealed by section 1 of, and the Schedule to, the

Notes

References

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