Between roughly 1688 and the 1820s, a worker in England, Wales, or Ireland who stole goods worth 12 pence, about one twentieth of a skilled worker’s weekly wage, could be hanged for it. Historians call the system the Bloody Code. In 1689 there were about 50 capital offenses. By around 1820 there were more than 200, and most of the additions protected property. As common land was enclosed, the landowners sitting in Parliament made it a hanging matter to poach deer, cut down estate trees, damage a fish pond, or embezzle from the post office.

This episode examines the logic behind those laws and why they failed. With no organized police, Parliament bet on terror, a view summed up by the Marquess of Halifax: men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen. Juries refused to cooperate. Executions actually declined as the statutes multiplied, and the standoff pushed the government toward transportation, first to the American colonies and then, after 1776 and the misery of the prison hulks, to Australia. The story ends with a repeal so slow that its last traces survived into the age of the internet.

• The Black Act of 1723, aimed at poachers like the Waltham Blacks who darkened their faces with soot, created over 50 new capital offenses on its own.
• In a practice called pious perjury, juries valued an obviously costly stolen item at 11 pence, one penny under the threshold for death.
• The First Fleet sailed in 1787, and between 1788 and 1867 over a third of all convicted criminals in Britain were transported to Australia.
• The Judgment of Death Act of 1823 let judges pass lesser sentences for almost all capital crimes, and by 1861 the list had shrunk to five.
• Treason and piracy with violence stayed capital crimes on paper until September 1998, decades after the last execution in 1964.