Professor Lizzie Seal

Lizzie Seal is a professor in criminology at the University of Sussex. Her books include Capital Punishment in 20th-Century Britain: Audience, Justice, Memory (Routledge, 2014), Imaginative Criminology: Of Spaces, Past, Present and Future (with Maggie O'Neill, 2019, Bristol University Press), and Gender, Crime and Justice (2021, Palgrave)

Ruth Ellis and her friend Desmond Cussen

The true story of Ruth Ellis and the hanging that rocked a nation

"For those of noble birth who were condemned to die, execution by beheading (which was considered the least brutal method of execution) was used until the 18th century," says criminologist and historian Lizzie Seal. This illustration depicts the execution of Charles I in January 1649. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of capital punishment in Britain