execution occurred on 7 December 1869 when Nicholas Melady was hanged in front of "a few hundred spectators", outside the Huron County Gaol, now called the Huron Historic Gaol, in Goderich, Ontario. The last judicial execution carried out in public in the United States was the hanging of Rainey Bethea in a parking lot in Owensboro, Kentucky on 14 August 1936, in front of an estimated crowd of 20,000. Executed out of public view In 1862, in Wellington, James Collins became the first person in New Zealand to be executed out of public view. In 1866, the site of the old Auckland Gaol was made ready for a temporary market. The Sheriff approved the removal of the graves of the five executed criminals, to respect "public decency". The bodies were reinterred in "a remote and unused spot" of the Symonds St Cemetery. The last person to be executed was Walter James Bolton, for poisoning his wife, on 18 February 1957. Abolition: 1949–1961 When the Labour Party formed its first government following the 1935 general election, it commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment. The Crimes Amendment Act 1941 changed the penalty for murder from death to life imprisonment with hard labour. The only crimes for which the death penalty still applied were treason and piracy. The Labour Party lost power to the more conservative National Party, which had pledged to reintroduce capital punishment, in 1949. During that earlier period, support and opposition for capital punishment were clearly delineated on partisan grounds. The National Party supported the restoration and maintenance of the death penalty, while the Labour Party opposed it. During debate over the Capital Punishment Act 1950 (which exempted expectant mothers and young persons under the age of 18 years), Labour expressed concern about the constitutional implications of the concentration of executive power in this context (although Labour had used this power from 1935 to 1941), while National Party Attorney-General Clifton Webb referred to the alleged "deterrent" value of the death penalty as potential threat and punitive severity. However, Webb was relatively sparing in his use of the death penalty, while his successor, Attorney-General Jack Marshall (1955–1957), was a hardliner on that issue and the number and pace of executions accelerated, arousing debate. During the time that the National Party was in office (1949–1957), 36 people were convicted of murder, and 22 of those were sentenced to death (George Horry