In 1835 James Pratt and John Smith became the last people to be hanged in England for a crime so heinous that no newspaper dared print its name. Instead, it was rendered as “b-gg-ry”. Pratt and Smith had been discovered in a room by a nosy landlord and his wife, who had taken it in turns to peer through the keyhole before calling the police.
Even these busybodies, however, seemed shocked at how heavily the law had pressed on their errant guests. When the case came before the Old Bailey, Mr and Mrs Berkshire pleaded with the judge to show mercy – they liked to run a respectable house, but stringing up James and John was not what they’d had in mind.
