The Forgery, Abolition of Punishment of Death Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 123) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that abolished the death penalty for all offences of forgery, except for forging wills and certain powers of attorney. The exception was abolished in by section 1 of the Forgery Act 1837 (7 Will. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 84).
Background The act was passed during a period when Parliament was abolishing the death penalty for hundreds of capital crimes. Under English law, there were over 200 offences, many of them minor, for which the mandatory punishment was death; this was known as the Bloody Code. The Judgment of Death Act 1823 (4 Geo. 4 c. 48) made the death penalty discretionary for all crimes except treason and murder. Other acts abolished the death penalty for other categories of crimes, such as the Coinage Offences Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 34) and the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. c. 100).
Provisions Section 1 of the act abolished the death penalty for all offences of forgery. But section 2 of the act provided that this abolition did not extent to punishments for forging or altering wills and certain powers of attorney.
Section 3 of the act provided that it is sufficient to describe a forgery in an indictment and that indictments did not need to include a copy of the forged document.
Repeal Section 1 of the Forgery Act 1837 (7 Will. 4 & 1 Vict. c. 84) abolished the exception, providing that any person convicted of any of those offences was liable to be transported for life, or for a term not less than seven years, or to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding four years and not less than two years.
The whole act was repealed by section 1 of, and the schedule to, the Criminal Statutes Repeal Act 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. c. 95), which came into force on 1 November 1861.
See also Forgery Act Peel's Acts Capital punishment in the United Kingdom
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