Michael Barrett was publicly hanged outside Newgate Prison in London after being convicted for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion. He became the last person publicly executed in Britain. Subsequent executions were conducted inside prison walls under legislation passed that year.

Public hanging had long supplied ballads, broadsides and novels with scenes of spectacle, judgement and crowd behaviour. Its abolition marked a shift towards the concealed punishment explored in later crime writing and poetry about state violence.