The New Newgate Calendar

St Marylebone Workhouse The year 1834 was an infamous one in English social policy history. It was in that year that the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed,... read more »

On this date in 1985, Kenya air force private Hezekiah Ochuka was hanged for his August 1, 1982 coup d’etat. By ethnicity a politically marginalized... read more »

The late 19th century press was fascinated with new crime-detecting methods. Perhaps still influenced by the scorn that had been heaped on the capital’s... read more »

John George Binet had set up the grand sounding ‘National Detective Agency’ (perhaps modeled on America’s infamous Pinketon’s)... read more »

On this date in 1941, the fascist artist Alexandru Bassarab was killed in World War II — generally believed to be among captured Romanian prisoners... read more »

Although this story is not from one of London’s Police courts it does involve the magistrate system in London. It seems as if when crimes were committed... read more »

(Thanks to the English Catholic Alban Butler for the guest post on three martyrs during Elizabethan England. This entry originally appeared in Butler’s... read more »

Daniel Risbey was in East London to visit his wife, who was an inmate at the London Hospital on Whitechapel High Street. The fifty year-old fisherman from... read more »

A sad selection from the Newgate Calendar: JOSEPH WOOD AND THOMAS UNDERWOOD Two Fourteen-year-old Boys, executed at Newgate, 6th of July, 1791, for robbing... read more »

We are a nation of pet lovers and one supposes that this has ever been so. But this does not mean that everyone, everywhere, sees pets as a ‘good... read more »

AFP dispatches reported that on this date in 2010, Akram al-Samawi was executed in the presence of the family of the victim, Nassiba al-Aghwani, and his... read more »

This is one of those stories that could make a mini drama series all of its own, despite there being very little detail to go on. All it needs is a storyteller... read more »

Messenger. My lord, a prize, a prize! here’s the lord Say, which sold the towns in France; he that made us pay one and twenty fifteens, and one shilling... read more »

Holborn in the mid Victorian period  This blog has noted before that violence towards women was endemic in the Victorian age. The court reports are... read more »

We’ve previously addressed in these pages the 1623 execution of Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt for attempting to assassinate Maurice, Prince of Orange... read more »

Arthur Salvage, in a picture from the Liverpool Echo, 17 September 1931 (via British Newspaper Archive) It was on this day in 1931 that Ivy May Godden... read more »

Given that the Metropolitan Police courts sat six days a week, every week of the year, and most of them from 9 or 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon... read more »

On or very near this date in 1350,* the plague-ravaged city of Visby burned a man remembered as Tidericus (Diderik) the organist. The Gotland capital at... read more »

The Lowther Arcade, Strand  If you are familiar with Piccadilly in central London then no doubt you are familiar with its grand arcades. Arcades like... read more »

On this date in 1896, the Rufus Buck Gang was hanged at Fort Smith, Arkansas for a two-week spree of violence against white Oklahoma settlers. More... read more »

Clerkenwell Prison  Margaret Raymond was someone who needed help. Unfortunately for her she lived in the late Victorian period where support for people... read more »