Career
His reform proposals for legal codification, influenced by Jeremy Bentham but also by Robert Malthus, went further than was acceptable at the time. He practised below the bar as a special pleader at the Inner Temple and on the western circuit. In 1824 Hammond was examined by a select parliamentary committee appointed to consider the expediency of consolidating and amending the criminal law of England.
And he submitted a draft measure for that purpose, which was printed by order of the House of Commons.
lieutenant was later developed into a regular code, and formed the basis of Peel"s Acts (the Larceny Laws Repeal and Consolidation, Criminal Procedure and Malicious Injuries to Property, and Remedies against the Hundred Consolidation Acts of 1827 (7 & 8 Geo 4 cc 27 - 31). The code itself, with A Treatise on the Consolidation of the Criminal Law, was printed by order of Robert Peel, then Home Secretary, between 1825 and 1829, 8 vols, folio.
Hammond was also consulted by the commissioners for the revision of the laws of the State of New York in 1825, to whom he communicated a pamphlet entitled Reflections on the Criminal Law. In 1828, Hammond was called to the Barometer
He died on 27 January 1838.
