I put this on Facebook this evening. I hope to do a series of these on different topics.

Because I was bored, and morbid, I went through all executions in Great Britain between 1957 and 1964 in order to classify them as per aggravating factors from the 1957 Homicide Act, which distinguished capital and non-capital murders.

The aggravating factors that made an offence capital murder were:
- Murder during the course or furtherance of theft.
- Murder of a police or prisons officer
- Murder while resisting arrest
- Murder using firearms or explosives
- 2 or more murders committed on 2 separate occasions, provided both were committed in the UK

Of the 33 executions, this is what I found:
- 25 were during the course of theft
- 9 were using firearms
- 2 were police officers
- 1 of the police officers was murdered while the murderer was resisting arrest
- 1 was convicted of multiple murders, there was also a theft murderer who had earlier been acquitted of a very similar murder after claiming the death was accidental.

Some cases had 2 or more aggravating factors, as I will describe:
- Of those that were theft related, 4 also had firearm usage as an aggravating factor.
- Of the firearm murders, 4 were during the course of theft, 1 was murder of a police officer, the remaining 4 all arose out of romantic disputes.
- Of the 2 police officer murders, in 1 case the murderer (Ronald Marwood) possibly didn't know the victim was a police officer (the police officer had intervened to break up a brawl at night, during which he was stabbed), the other (Guenther Podola) managed to accumulate 3 aggravating factors by shooting a police officer to avoid arrest.
- The only multiple murderer was Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.

What's really interesting is that murder during the course of a rape didn't make the crime capital murder. So the most famous of these 33 (the A6 murderer James Hanratty) was sent to the gallows because he'd shot his victim and stolen the car, not because he'd raped the victim's female companion, which by today's standards would be far more reprehensible. So in 1957 rape was seen as a less serious crime than theft, apparently.