In Tudor England there was no minimum age for execution. Children were tried as adults, sentenced as adults and hanged as adults. The youngest known person executed in the Tudor era was a girl. She was 11 years old. Her name was not recorded. The crime was not considered unusual enough to document in detail. She was hanged. The crowd watched. Nobody questioned it. Age was not a legal protection. It was not even considered a mitigating factor. She was the youngest. She was not the only one.
Interesting Fact
It wasn’t until 1933 that England raised the minimum age of execution to 18. Before that, children as young as 7 could legally be hanged if deemed to understand the difference between right and wrong.
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