Introduction: the rehabilitative ideal
English prisons and penal culture, 1895-1922
Judges, the tariff, and the abatement of imprisonment, 1880-1914
War, inter-war, and the decreasing prison population, 1914-1939
Prisons, prisoners, and penal reform, 1922-1938
The persistent offender, 1908-1939
War and criminal justice legislation, 1938-1948
Labour government, abolition, and the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, 1945-1953
Penal practice in a changing society
Homicide Act 1957: the politics of capital punishment
The high-water mark of rehabilitation
Royal Commission on the Penal System, 1964-1966
Abolition of the death penalty
Epilogue: the retributive turn.