The New Newgate Calendar

December 10 is the aptly wintry feast date of Saint Eulalia of Merida, a virginal girl of age 12 to 14 who was martyred for the Christian faith under Diocletian‘s... read more »

Thirty years ago today, Singapore hanged Sek Kim Wah for his “thrilling” home invasion murders. A sociopathic 19-year-old army conscript, Sek... read more »

Horace Moore was a blackguard. He was the sort of character that might have  appeared in a Dickens novel and, at the end of his court appearance in... read more »

On this date in 1718, Tsar Peter the Great had his brother-in-law beheaded. The brother of Peter’s discarded first wife Eudoxia Lopukina, our man... read more »

This week I won a lucky dip on the National Lottery, not much I grant you, but it means I go into tonight’s draw with an extra line. My chances of... read more »

Besides being Pearl Harbor Day and Noam Chomsky Day, December 7 is a black-letter anniversary for capital punishment as the date in 1982 when the United... read more »

Bishop’s Walk, Lambeth (sometime in the later 1800s – it must be before the 1860s as the police are still wearing stove pipe hats).  This... read more »

On this date in 1787, the only two men to hang for the infant American republic’s seminal post-independence rebellion went to the gallows at Lenox,... read more »

Just recently there was a news items which suggested we need to examine the hands of those asking for money on the streets of London and other British... read more »

On this date in 1705, Edward Flood and Hugh Caffery hanged at Dublin’s St. Stephen’s Green for robbing one “Mr. Casey.” Both men... read more »

According to the memoirs of one of London’s Police Court magistrates the working class believed that magistrates had the power to divorce married... read more »

On this date in 1856, the white citixens of Dover, Tennessee hanged at least six black slaves in the midst of a regional panic. They could well sense,... read more »

Cannon Street Station, 1878 It was a chance meeting, the sort of thing that can happen on a long train journey. Cesar Blancher was newly arrived in England... read more »

Bobby Wayne Woods was executed by lethal injection in Texas on this date in 2009. A proud bearer of the classic middle name, Woods in 1997 broke into his... read more »

Sergeant Wills and his fellow police officer had arrived at the Hopples pub in King Street, Hammersmith at a quarter past one in the morning on the 16... read more »

The moral of this story is that when you have the opportunity to break out of death row, don’t dawdle. Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 1, 1884 New York... read more »

In early December 1883 Peter or Joseph (there was clearly some doubt as to his real name)* Moriarty made his second appearance before the magistrate at... read more »

On this date in 1958, Angyal Istvan was hanged for the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. A working-class Jew who survived Auschwitz as a boy — his... read more »

According to some sources the expression ‘a bull in a china shop’ (used to refer to a clumsy person) has its origin sometime before it was... read more »