Summary

In "Public Executions in Pennsylvania," from the Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society (1960), the author, Negley Teeters, discusses the role public executions played in the culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in early America. Teeters began by discussing the influence the locations of public executions had on their immersion into the culture of colonial America. For instance, in Philadelphia, all executions took place in "the Commons," the square in the middle of town. In Lancaster County, and numerous other Pennsylvanian counties, execution sites sat atop the highest point in the town so that everyone in town could witness the execution. Rural counties like Lancaster even purchased large plots of land so that thousands of people could congregate to view the executions. Counties also did this because the "concourse of spectators at public executions was so great that the property of private individuals was necessarily trespassed upon" (Teeters, 1960, p.95).

In her exercise of cultural history, Negley Teeters also draws on sociology and social history as she discusses the impacts public executions had on society. She states that the thousands of callous spectators who attended the executions were a "testimony of the community demoralization accompanying the practice" (Teeters, 1960, p.110). Throughout the early nineteenth century, people began to protest public executions as they were deemed inhumane. This allowed for the creation of an anti-culture to break away from the dominantly public execution-loving norm. The Mayoral Proclamation discussed earlier also gives reference to the demoralization of society. Pennsylvania was eventually the first state to ban public executions in 1834. However, private executions continued (something Foucault would label as the transition between absolutist and disciplinary power).

Teeters discusses multiple examples of public executions that drew large crowds. For instance, the last public execution in Philadelphia, of James Moran, drew a crowd of over 20,000 spectators. She also discusses the John Lechler execution in Lancaster on Oct. 25, 1822. The execution drew between 20,000 and 30,000 spectators with more than 2,000 people coming from York County and even more coming from the surrounding seven counties. She even provides an example of an old lady who walked over seventy miles to watch the execution but fell asleep from fatigue before the execution began and ended up missing it. Teeters discusses the specifics of various public Pennsylvanian executions, and in all of them, she acknowledges that executions galvanized communities and united people.

Ultimately, Teeters draws on a quote from Edward Livingston, a famous Pennsylvanian lawyer, who recalled "that state [Pennsylvania] executions are scenes of riot and every species of wickedness; twenty, thirty, and even forty thousand persons are in attendance on such occasions. In the country, two or three days are employed in the merry-making, much after the manners of fairs, in former days." This quote, like other Teeters mentioned, recognizes Pennsylvania for its notorious attitude and approach toward public executions as entirely different from every other state. She also highlights that this reflects Pennsylvania's distinct cultural and societal norms, different from other states.