Yet it was not until 1835 that the decisive case regarding children and capital punishment came: William Wild, 13, sold into virtual slavery as a farm servant, and mocked for doing work for "maidens", drowned a three-year-old and an 18-month-old that he had been supposed to be fetching from the field where they were playing. Wild's death sentence was commuted to transportation to Tasmania for life. (Loach follows his fate, which wasn't a happy one, but it was still a humanitarian advance from the wrenching case of John Bell, aged 14, who had been hung in 1832.)
And so it was that by 1861, in a case with strong echoes of the 20th-century Bulger one, when two eight year olds, Peter Barratt and James Bradley, in Stockport, abducted a boy of two and a half, stripped him naked, beat him with a stick, weighed his body down and then flung him into water to drown, the public response was moderate. The Times explained it would have been "absurd and monstrous" for them to be treated as though they were adult murderers.
Perhaps the late 20th century, had it been able to take the long perspective of Loach's book, might have been able to be so moderate and humane.
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