1723: The first London executions under the Waltham Black Act
On {December 4th} in 1723, seven Waltham Blacks were hanged at Tyburn.The law of England has displayed no unnecessary nicety, in apportioning the punishments of death …. Kill your father, or catch a rabbit in a warren — the penalty is the same! Destroy three kingdoms, or destroy a hop-bine — the penalty is the same!”
-Sir Thomas Buxton, commenting on the “Bloody Code” in 1821
These poachers were the impressive first salvo of the Black Act, a new-minted statute early in the landmark government of Robert Walpole.
This law had been enacted to combat the rise of game poaching. As we’ve noted before, poaching was a longtime conflict zone in a Great Britain emerging as distinctly capitalist.
The Black Act would not merely sharpen those conflicts — it would intentionally define them, helping to enclose a labor marketplace enforced with hemp.* The Black Act added nearly 50 capital offenses to the rolls; it was a seminal statute for the 18th century’s notorious “Bloody Code”.
“The Black Act had a much wider sweep than a statute intended merely to protect the royal forests,” Frank McLynn notes. Poaching gangs “provided the occasion for draconian legislation; they were not its cause."
...
Poaching followed these un-neighborly injuries to traditional commons rights as vigorously as hounds follow hares. The state answered with the Black Act, and did not scruple to accuse known companies of "Blacks" of being Jacobite catspaws. So named because it targeted poachers’ practice of "blackening" their faces, the 1722 law made it a hanging crime to go on the hunt in disguise, as well as a hanging crime to poach deer, rabbits, conies, or fish. Formerly, “deer-stealing” and the like had been mere misdemeanors.
(Source)
That what "Blacks" were under British law in 1722, persons who painted their faces dark to hunt in disguise.
Related:
Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act
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