The New Newgate Calendar

It was reported today that the head of the Police Federation, Steve White, is calling for all police officers to be equipped with tasers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31071922 The... read more »

When my wife and I ‘retired’, we decided to move house and downsize, using some of our earlier investment to buy a second property which we... read more »

From the Newgate Calendar: This unhappy gentleman was a divine of the Church of England, and had been very much esteemed for his learning and abilities.... read more »

On this date in 1801, four Jacobins were executed in Paris after Napoleon’s secret police entrapped them into a plot against the First Consul. After... read more »

The Old Rising Sun on Marylebone High Street Florence Savins was a barmaid at the Old Rising Sun on Marylebone High Street. She was just 19 years old,... read more »

‘In the end’, says Australia’s Prime Minister appealing to the Indonesian government for clemency for Australian drug smugglers facing... read more »

On this date in 1745, Orange County, Virginia was darkened by the smoke from a stake where a slave named Eve died for poisoning her master, Peter Montague. As... read more »

Indianapolis’s Marion County has hosted only four judicial executions in its history. The first two of those occurred on this date in 1879. Though... read more »

On this date in 1989, China executed Teng Xingshan with a bullet to the head for the murder of Shi Xiaorong — an act which became quite embrrassing... read more »

On this date in 1928, Edward Rowlands and Daniel Driscoll hanged in Cardiff for murdering a man whose last words exculpated Rowlands and Driscoll. That... read more »

The Kamikawa region is one of areas that today still has relatively a large population of the Ainu. It is also the site of the most famous land dispute... read more »

(Daily Ohio Statesman, August 22, 1848) The trial in the case of Andrew Tyler, convicted and sentenced to die, at the late term of the Supreme Court held... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1788, John Price Posey was publicly hanged in Richmond, Virginia... read more »

Dutch Anabaptist Anneke Esaiasdochter (better known as Anna Jansz; this was the surname of her husband*) was executed in Rotterdam on this date in 1538. Anna... read more »

In the spring of 1879, A.T, a boilermaker from Hull, was convicted of the attempted murder of his wife, R. According to press reports, R. had lived a 'miserable'... read more »

On January 23, 1751 Lhasa … witnessed another horrible example of Chinese justice. Lobsang Trashi and six other leaders of the rebellion were executed... read more »

On this date in 205, the Roman patrician Gaius Fulvius Plautianus was put to summary execution for aspiring to the purple. Maternal cousin and longtime... read more »

(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. Fans of this here site are highly likely... read more »

This date in 1979 saw the last use of capital punishment in Peru. An Air Force sergeant named Julio Vargas Garayar was shot for selling classified information... read more »

At the Gloucestershire Assizes held in August 1842, George Jacob Holyoake, a socialist lecturer, was sentenced to six months in Gloucester Gaol for committing... read more »

Having looked, last time, at the (traditionally) female malady of hysteria, we turn this time to corresponding (opposing?) aspects of male insanity, focussing... read more »

We have covered in these pages the horrific blood libel trial that sent most of the Jews of Trent to execution for the supposed ritual murder of the child... read more »

Iran carried out two public hangings on this date in 2013 in the city of Pakdasht, according to the National Committee of Resistance of Iran. read more »

On this date in 1949, Dr. Hiroshi Iwanami was hanged on Guam for murdering ten American POWs during World War II. The commanding officer of the naval hospital... read more »

This is part two of my retelling of the Hall Green Tragedy of 1895. For part one, see here. It was not until the day after the deaths that the bodies were... read more »

United States The first U.S. execution of 2013 was that of Robert Gleason, Jr. in Virginia last January 16. Gleason was serving a life sentence for another... read more »

On this date in 1944, Soviet partisan Zinaida Portnova was executed by the Germans occupying Belarus. The youngest-ever female Hero of the Soviet Union... read more »

"News of a shocking domestic tragedy comes from Sparkhill, near Birmingham. On Monday night, groans were heard coming from a field between Hall Green... read more »

If you are student from my History 103 course at Community College of Philadelphia and would like to avoid long lines at the Bookstore, I am sharing links... read more »

(Thanks to Michael DeHay for the autobiographical guest post, originally published — too late for DeHay to see the byline — in the Prescott,... read more »

In the aftermath of the terrible murders by terrorists in Paris, David Cameron and Boris Johnson have been leading the calls for tougher new powers to... read more »

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but,... read more »

As a reviewer of several Pickering & Chatto titles in recent months, I thought readers of the blog might like to know they're having a sale!According... read more »

On this date in 1874, two men and a woman hanged at H.M. Prison Gloucester for unsatisfactory affairs of the heart. Charles Edward Butt On August 17 of... read more »

On this date in 1830, William Banks, the leader of a gang of West Moulsey robbers was hanged at London’s Horsemonger Lane Gaol. Despite a freezing... read more »

1. Meet the new project, which also happens to be just about my oldest project: Gender and Defamation in York 1660-1700 The core of this is research I... read more »

(Thanks to Sabine Baring-Gould for the guest post, from this piece on Helene Gillet‘s miraculously surviving her beheading. -ed.) In the Middle Ages... read more »

Sir Richard Mayne; Metropolitan Police Commissioner (1829-1868) Two weeks after the death in December 1868 of the long-standing Metropolitan Police Commissioner,... read more »

A post inspired by a recent trip I made to Bodmin Jail. Selina Wadge is commemorated in Bodmin Jail by a rather strange, blank faced, waxwork depiction... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1945, Polish Gentile Karolina Juszczykowska was executed at the... read more »

George Smiley’s execution in the Arizona Territory on this date in 1900 was a month late owing to a public relations debacle. The first and only... read more »

Pakistan this morning has hanged at the central jail of Multan two members of the long-banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Sunni militant party. Pakistan has been on... read more »

The reason the Digital Panopticon project is able to trace the lives of convicts in such detail is the growing tendency of British local government to... read more »

Join me at the Boston Public Library on Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 6 p.m., where I will be talking about early American criminals and convict transportation... read more »

Centres of LunacyDavid J. Vaughan Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century Perspectives in Economic and Social History: 36Edited... read more »

On this date in 1865, two Union soldiers were shot as spies at Winchester, Virginia. Union General Philip Sheridan and his famed Napoleon complex* were... read more »

The last-ever hanging in El Paso, Texas, on this date in 1900* was distinguished by an astonishing attempted fight to the finish by the two doomed men. Despite... read more »

This date in 1568 saw the mass execution of 84 people in Valenciennes for participating in the Low Countries’ Calvinist movement against Catholicism’s... read more »

AP caption: “The expression on the face of this Hun posing for the camera standing by the gallows from which a woman is hanging, Jan. 3, 1945 shows... read more »

Dramatization of events in this post for the video game-derived film Assassin’s Creed: Lineage. On this date in 1477, the assassins of the Duke... read more »