The New Newgate Calendar

Five men hanged together at Newgate Prison on this date in 1821. All stood convicted of stealing by means of violence. In four cases, they’d deployed... read more »

This is the last in this series of posts from one week in 1884 and I’m going to finish it with a summary of the reports that appeared in the Morning... read more »

26-year-old Leading Aircraftsman Andrew Brown, Prisoner No. 11421, was hanged at Wandsworth prison on Tuesday the 30th of January 1945, by Albert Pierrepoint... read more »

Today I want to compare two separate but related cases heard this week in 1884 before the police magistrate courts of London. Both concern men acting against... read more »

For this date’s post we return to one of our favorite sources, James Kelly’s Gallows Speeches: From Eighteenth-Century Ireland. We have noticed... read more »

Crime fiction is hugely popular, and for every person who wants to read crime fiction, there’s another who wants to write it. In some quarters, there’s... read more »

We know that very many families today struggle to survive even though we have a well established and supposedly thriving economy and the safety net of... read more »

A quartet of revolutionary socialists were executed by the tsarist authorities at Warsaw Citadel on this date in 1886. Poland’s first socialist party... read more »

Since Friday I have been following one week’s ‘police intelligence’ in the London newspapers in 1884, a year which followed the same... read more »

On this date in 1597, Jaakko Ilkka, leader of a great Finnish peasant rebellion called the “Cudgel War”, was put to death at at Old Isonkyron... read more »

A news report last week suggested that Londoners were up in arms because the police had concentrated so much of their attention on knife crime that burglars... read more »

On this date in 1796 the Polish outlaw Jerzy Procpak was executed. Anticipate Polish in all links to follow. It takes a stretch to reckon this avaricious... read more »

The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 but only adopted its current name in 1878, so in January 1884 (the subject of this week’s series of posts)... read more »

On this date in 1358 — during the height of the great peasant rebellion known as the Jacquerie — a bourgeois named or Perrin Mace or Perrin... read more »

This new book, by Louise Wattis, is part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Histories of Gender, Violence and Victimhood series. It is part of a welcome trend... read more »

Today I am going to begin a week of posts all drawn from the equivalent week in 1884 (when the calendar matched with ours). For some context in 1884 Great... read more »

Georgette Thomas was guillotined on this date in 1887 at Romorantin, followed moments later by her husband Sylvain. This farming couple had burned to... read more »

HMS Cornwall, a floating juvenile reformatory As you may know if you are a regular visitor to this blog space, I teach a module on the history of crime... read more »

French Nazi collaborator Angelo Chiappe was shot on this day in 1945. A right-wing legislator and adherent of the fascist Action Francaise movement before... read more »

Smugglers, by G. Morland Readers last week will hopefully remember that I left you on a cliffhanger as we waited to see what would happen to a man that... read more »

Great Windmill Street in the 1850s, London’s entertainment district  Prostitution is a perennial issue for society and one which shows no signs... read more »

All five of the people executed on January 22, 1892, and all four of the victims associated with their various homicides, were African-Americans. From... read more »

In today’s case (from January 1888) a man was summoned for ‘using abusive language’ and inciting a crowd in Deptford. It is interesting... read more »

The headline in the Burnley Express, 14 August 1895, p.4 (from the British Newspaper Archive) Since 1888, the name of ‘Jack the Ripper’... read more »

From the London Times, Jan. 23, 1867, under a January 22 dateline: The two soldiers (Corsicans) who committed a murder and robbery some time since at Neuilly,... read more »

The Grecian Theatre, Shoreditch (1875) – (Islington Public Library) Reginald H. Burkett of 1 Field Court, Gray’s Inn Road was that most ‘pooterish’... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1823, Giles East was hanged for the rape of a girl, Sarah Potter,... read more »

From news.un.org (here’s a comparable story from CNN, and here from Reuters): The United Nations human rights chief said today she was shocked at... read more »

Not everything that came before the magistrates in London was ‘criminal’; the Metropolitan Police magistracy dealt with a lot of business that... read more »

On this date in 1169, the vizier of Egypt, name of Shawar, was put to summary death as war collapsed the Fatimid Caliphate … a death required to... read more »

might Lewis Wills was a respectable small businessman who ran a trimming workshop in Mile End. At premises in Raven Row he employed a large number of women ... read more »

On this date in 1863, the famed Italian bandit Antonio Locaso was shot in Castellaneta at the tender age of 22. A former goatherd, Locaso supposedly embarked... read more »

Spitalfields (in the early 20th century) by the photographer C. A. Matthew  Sophia Higgins, the wife of a chemist in Spicer Street, Spitalfields was... read more »

On 13th May 1828 Hambry Price was executed in public outside Newgate Prison for the crime of coining, that is making counterfeit coins. He shared the scaffold... read more »

A philosophical Doyle Skillern was executed in Texas on this date in 1985, one of the more galling victims of Texas’s controversial “Law of... read more »

A curious case today, of a man confessing to being involved in a crime that happened some eighteen years before he presented himself in court. John Lane... read more »

Former Haitian president Sylvain Salnave was executed on this date in 1870. Salnave was a general who in 1866 overthrew and replaced president Fabre Geffrard... read more »

For anyone that has read the Famous Five books, or Swallows and Amazons  this story might chime with memories of childhoods past. Today children... read more »

On this date in 1739, two French youths were executed by musketry in the French Louisiana colony for the murder of two Choctaws — a gesture of juridical... read more »

Regular readers of this blog will already know of Lucy Williams’ work – she has been kind enough to write guest posts for me, and those who... read more »

By the 1860s the Metropolitan Police had been established in the capital for a little over three decades. It had been a fairly shaky start, with a large... read more »

Leroy White received a lethal injection in the Huntsville, Alabama death chamber on this date in 2011. White had fatally shotgunned his estranged wife... read more »

A public execution on the roof of Horsemonger Lane prison  Until 1868 executions – the hanging of criminals for murder – took place in... read more »

On this date in 1934 the great Bengal revolutionary Surya Sen was hanged by the British. A schoolteacher affectionately known as “Master Da”,... read more »

Drunk and disorderly was by far the most common offence to be dealt with at the Police courts of the metropolis in the Victorian period. Thousands of men... read more »

The Greek socialite Kyra Frosini was executed in Ioannina on this date in 1800 as an adulteress. Euphrosyne Vasileiou, to use her proper name, was the... read more »

Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 11 January 2019. Records of cases heard in the early modern English Court of Star Chamber offer us rich insight into everyday... read more »

We’ve met London’s small ‘army’ of flower girls before in this blog. The young women that sold flowers at Covent Garden or St Paul’s... read more »

Heli Freymond lost his head on this date in 1868 to an executioner’s sword — the last time that ever happened in Swiss history. (His is also... read more »

In a break from the daily ‘doings’ of the Metropolitan Police courts I thought I’d take a look at ‘other news’ on the same... read more »