Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 1 Issue 1 | Seite 19

9
!

each time a man with whom they had grown intimate was killed”.50 While the Church
condoned the death sentence it was not their role to condemn but rather to save the
soul of the convicted before their execution.
Nevertheless, as the conditions of life, industry and medical health changed,
opinions on death also began to evolve just in time for the First World War: “Those
who died on the scaffold became fewer and fewer, in contrast to those who died in
wars”.51 Pat Jalland explains that the First World War changed the nation’s opinions
on death. Sudden, violent deaths, psychologically viewed as potentially the most
damaging, became the norm and affected everybody.52 It was not only opinions on
death that altered; Stephen Koss explains that the First World War, “dealt a
shattering blow to organised religion. The Chu