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These changes in the justice system weren't carried out just in the interests of the miscreants. Some criminals, such as Jack Sheppard, became celebrities precisely because they had defied the oppressive social rules that imprisoned working people's lives.
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When Jack was finally hanged on 16 November 1724, 200,000 people came to watch the event, not to gloat but in the hope that their hero would escape at the last minute. People who were put in the pillory with the intention of humiliating and making an example of them were often cheered by the crowd instead. In 1764, the London Evening Post reported on three old men pilloried for perjury: 'Their tears and grey hairs drew compassion from the people, and instead of being pelted, money was collected for them.'
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This did not enhance the authority of the law or serve the interests of the property owners. The time was ripe for such reformers as Elizabeth Fry and Josephine Butler to campaign for change in the prison system and in the society that forced so many into destitution and crime.
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