At 8 a.m. on 13 August 1964, Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were hanged at separate prisons in Liverpool and Manchester. They became the last people executed in Britain, although there had been no decision that morning to end capital punishment.

Allen was executed at Walton Prison in Liverpool and Evans at Strangeways Prison in Manchester. The two men had been convicted together at Manchester on 23 June of murder and sentenced to death.

Their executions took place simultaneously. Capital punishment remained part of British law, and there was no guarantee that another death sentence would not lead to another execution.

The argument over hanging was already well established. Controversial cases and miscarriages of justice in the post-war period had strengthened opposition. Attempts to restrict or abolish capital punishment had also been debated in Parliament before Allen and Evans were executed.

Later in 1964, Labour MP Sydney Silverman introduced the bill that became the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965. It received Royal Assent on 8 November 1965 and came into force the following day.

The Act suspended the death penalty for murder in Great Britain for five years. It replaced it with a mandatory life sentence. Parliament voted in December 1969 to make the change permanent.

Capital punishment did not disappear entirely from British law then. It remained available for a small number of other offences, although no further executions took place. Parliament removed the remaining provisions allowing the death penalty in 1998.

Allen and Evans acquired their place in British legal history after their deaths. The executions at Liverpool and Manchester on 13 August 1964 were the last carried out in Britain.