Until recently, piracy was all about counterfeit goods!

Look up the word ‘piracy’ on any Internet search engine and you will be presented with lots of references to the production of forged DVDs or computer software or such like. But now, with the situation concerning the Somali Pirates escalating, we have reverted back to the meaning of the word and piracy is all about stealing boats and goods on the high seas.

However, did you know that until as recently as July 1998, piracy with violence was still a Capital Offence in England, which meant it carried the death penalty? It is hard to believe that as recently as that it was still technically possible to receive the death penalty for this crime.

There is a great deal of information to be found on the internet concerning the Death Penalty in Britain. I think a key date was probably 1808. This was the time when Samuel Romilly introduced reforms to abolish the penalty for around 200 crimes of a less serious nature. Up until then, it was possible to be hung for such ridiculous offences as “being in the company of gypsies for one month” or “vagrancy for a soldier or sailor”. Romilly really did set things in motion to clean up what became know as the “Bloody Code” in England and Wales.

However, it was not until Sidney Silverman’s private members bill of 1965 that the death penalty was suspended for five years, to eventually be abolished for almost all crimes in 1969. The last two people to be executed in England were Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans who were hung on 13th August 1964. The 13th really was an unlucky date for these to men.

The final twist in the story of the death penalty was the Criminal Justice Bill of 31-7-98 which removed the death penalty for High Treason and Piracy with Violence. However, with the Somali situation being on people’s minds at the moment maybe there will be calls for the reintroduction of this ultimate deterrent.

For those of you who are keen to write historical fiction, and need to have accuracy of detail for the penalties for particular crimes, then do search the Internet and discover the wealth of information on the subject. I am still searching, but it would appear that the youngest person to be hanged in England, for the simple act of stealing it would appear, was a 7-year-old child. What will your research turn up?

Writing Inspired by Worms!

We recently had a crisis in our household. Well, I think we had a small problem but my wife assures me it is a crisis. In a moving round of some furniture we discovered a collection of little holes, and a pile of fine sawdust on one of the back support sections of our settee. It looked like woodworm we decided.

But what exactly is woodworm and what do you do about it? Well it was time to turn to the Internet and discover what the problem was. Wikipedia is always a good source of information on any subject so that is where I started. I very quickly established that there is more than one type of woodworm. Did we have Ambrosia beetles, or Common Furniture beetles, or Powder Post beetles or what?

Before I realized what was happening, I had forgotten the original problem and was merrily surfing the Net in order to improve my knowledge on all these little arthropods and their ability to consume my furniture. The level of detailed information was all quite fascinating and much more interesting that the plight of our settee.

Bookworms, I discovered, were actually not a specific breed of creature but a popular generalization for any insect which supposedly bores through books. These include silverfish and cockroaches. Our settee was actually in the room we very grandly call the library! As the name suggests this room is full of books. Now my interest was really taken up. I was not overly concerned about one settee, but if all our books are at risk of being on some bugs’ Michelin Food Guide to our library then I was all for some kind of remedial action.

The trouble is that these little blighters are only about one millimeter in length, and you only know you have them when they leave the holes they make and become bugs which fly away! Reading little phrases like “the adults do not feed; they just reproduce” didn’t fill me with confidence at all.

Anyway, it got me thinking about stories I could write which involved all this newly gleaned information I now had about woodworm. This writing could be fiction, science fiction or maybe a factual piece about the stresses of discovering these little holes. There was a slim chance I would be inspired to write poetry about my woes. I’ve already got a blog piece out of it all!