During The Tablet’s first summer, an event took place both that was very much of its time – the hanging of a convict in front of a gawping crowd of 40,000 – and that continues to engage us 180 years later: the moral responsibility of culture, and the ethics of media coverage of crime

The basics of the story were reported in a late edition of the London paper The Standard on Monday 6 July 1840: EXECUTION OF COURVOISIER FOR THE MURDER OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL – THIS DAY. The man merely surnamed in the headline was François Benjamin Courvoisier, a 23-year-old Swiss-born valet to the gentleman who, by journalistic and hierarchical rules of the time, was granted full title.

Lord William Russell was an English aristocrat who had made little social or political impact until 5 May 1840, when, aged 77, he was found dead in bed with his throat slit. His valet claimed that this had happened in the course of a burglary through which Courvoisier had slept, but he was disbelieved, charged with robbery and murder, convicted, and sentenced to death.

In the way of the day, his capital punishment became an entertainment spectacle. As The Standard reported: