In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, punishment was intended to be a short, sharp shock, often administered in public to discourage others from committing similar crimes. There were more than 220 crimes for which offenders could be hanged, including burglary, horse stealing, forgery, rick burning, highway robbery, assault and, of course, murder. In Black Country Murders, Don Cochrane provides accounts of many trials for murder and other offences drawn from the sensationalist press reports of the time, such as poisonings, robbery and the murder of the Gummery family, a case that remains unsolved today.