Because historically that’s exactly what public executions devolved into. Rowdy bloodlust entertainment.

From a recent article in The Guardian warning that viewing this kind of material can result in harm to mental health in those who watch it, a historian talks about how public executions went down in the 1800s and how even Charles Darwin Dickens weighed in on making executions non-public back in the day (emphases mine):

Prof Rosalind Crone, a historian at the Open University in the UK, said: “Public execution in England and Wales was abolished in 1868 because of persistent and increasing concern about the effects of watching hangings on the crowd. It was clear that public execution did not have a deterrent effect; in fact, sometimes the opposite.”

Crone said crowds were increasingly made up of people missing work to attend, and people who were drunk, rowdy and celebratory.

“Charles Dickens sums up the increasing objections well in his letter to the Daily News in 1846: ‘No sorrow, no salutatory terror, no abhorrence, no seriousness, nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness and flouting vice in fifty other shapes,’” she said.

ugh. had not even thought about that. I know its oversaid but I do hate this timeline.