The population of Australia was rather sparse in the 19th century, but the number of criminal executions it carried out was disproportionately large — up to 80 in some years, without regard for age or gender. In Western Australia, some criminals were summarily executed at the spot of the crime, but many were taken to Perth Gaol, renamed Fremantle Prison, which by the late 1800s became the only legal site of capital punishment. Some 44 were executed there until the province banned the practice

On this day, September 5, in 1984 the Acts Amendment (Abolition of Capital Punishment) outlawed executions in Western Australia, the last province to hold them.

Queensland was the first state in Australia to abolish the death penalty by legislation, in 1922. Queensland’s would be the only Australian province with life imprisonment as the harshest sentence for 46 years, before Tasmania joined it. By 1973 the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory abolished capital punishment, then Victoria in 1975, South Australia in 1976 and Australian Capital Territory in 1983.