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The bill then went to the House of Lords, which in the past has been a stronghold of pro-hanging sentiment. This time, however, the mood had changed markedly. Declared Lord Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor: "I think that human beings who are not infallible ought not to choose a form of punishment which is irreparable." On that reasonable note, the Lords voted down 220-174 a three-year delaying amendment, and joined Commons in outlawing capital punishment in the British Isles as the penalty for murder.
Another old British custom died last week. It was the Royal Navy's tot of rum. For the past 238 years, a good part of the yo-ho-ho in any British sailor's day came precisely at seven bells (11:30 a.m.), when the bosun of a Royal Navy ship anywhere in the world piped "up spirits" to signal the daily ration of spirits. The traditional reward for any man who had spliced the main-brace or pulled another tough deck duty was an extra tot, and for many tars one of the attractions of helping Britannia rule the waves was to collect their cup of "Nelson's blood."
The ration had been cut already from its original half-pint of 95.5 proof spirits to a less sinkable eighth-pint measure of watered-down rum. Even so, the British Admiralty announced last week, grog must go. Said Admiral Sir Michael le Fanu, the First Sea Lord: "Rum is not appropriate to a modern, instant-response navy." In the future, officers will be able to buy any amount of other spirits aboard ship, but ordinary seamen will have to make do with three cans of 6% beer per day.