The New Newgate Calendar

I’ve written before about pirates – and posted a short video-slideshow thingy on Vimeo about them. I’m fascinated by piracy, and by the... read more »

On this date in 1557, the handless Mapuche cacique Galvarino was executed by the Spanish during the Arauco War. The Mapuche people, still extant today,... read more »

The petition of Ester Cutler (1715) I’ve spent the last couple of months on a mission to find petitions in the Sessions Papers of London Lives. The... read more »

McKay’s Bakery was a Kempton landmark that was run by the same family since 1857. Originally located in a large brick building at the southern end... read more »

On this date in 1986, during the opening months of a guerrilla war that would last until 1992, a 70-man detachment of Suriname soldiers raided the village... read more »

This is the supposed martyrdom date, in the year 764 or perhaps 765, of St. Stephen the Younger in Constantinople at the hands of an iconoclastic emperor.... read more »

I am now two months into my PhD research: I have given my first talk, spent a day in the archives, submitted a conference abstract, sent lots of emails... read more »

In the Musée Départemental Alexandre Franconie in Cayenne there is a room dedicated to the history of the French colonial bagne (prison).... read more »

For many generations from the 14th to 17th centuries, new Ottoman heirs maintained themselves by the cruel practice of preventive fratricide. Enforced... read more »

China on this date in 2009 executed two men for trafficking kidnapped children. “The crimes of children trafficking are on the rise,” said... read more »

The latest interim post (while authoring two separate volumes) is inspired by two recent events. First, the tragic case in New York, in which a woman surgically... read more »

We ask you how the Muscogee Nation came by this country? You came from the west and took the country from another people who were in possession. After... read more »

The Hamilton Gaol was built in the 1830s, at a time when the town’s population of 789 people comprised more than 50 per cent convicts. It was an... read more »

On this date in 1950, Norman Goldthorpe hanged at Norwich prison. Goldthorpe’s was an open-and-shut case. In a drunken fury when his married lover... read more »

On this date in 1825, alleged carbonari plotters Angelo Targhini and Leonidas Montanari were guillotined by Papal executioner Mastro Titta. This excommunicate... read more »

In 1841, well-known convict architect James Blackburn designed the two sandstone watch houses at the entrance to St John's Avenue. Both had an entrance... read more »

German jurist Matthäus Enzlin was beheaded in Urach on this date in 1613. Way back in 1514, a need of funds and political support to crush a popular... read more »

On this date in 1834, the Cherokee James Graves was hanged in Spring Place, Georgia, for murder. He’s the only person ever executed in Georgia’s... read more »

On this date in 1829, the Kentucky town of Greenup strung up martyrs to the slave economy. Our incident begins with a slaver by the name of Gordon who,... read more »

From William Blake’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno Harriet Haines, or Hayes, was a ‘notorious’ character, known as the Wild... read more »

Penal transportation to Australia is a fascinating subject for anyone interested in England’s history of crime and punishment. What we should make... read more »

(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. This post originally appeared on the Last... read more »

Court records document more than policing patterns and criminalised behaviours of the past. While they are crucial to writing criminal justice histories,... read more »

On this date in 1813, 19-year-old Ezra Hutchinson was hanged in the western Massachusetts village of Lenox for raping a 14-year-old named Lucy Bates. Hutchinson... read more »

Tunbridge is the site of Australia's oldest single span wooden bridge. Spanning the Blackman River, the bridge was built by convicts in 1848 and is a rare... read more »

The BBC recently published an interesting post on their website that I linked to on Twitter, but is also worth highlighting here. The story details how... read more »

(As this blog has often enough bestowed its disdain on Puritan holy roller Cotton Mather, one of the never-apologetic architects of the Salem witch trials,... read more »

Prior to the war certain European nations, and especially those now ranged against us, regarded our Easern Dependency as a country where the great Mutiny... read more »

On this date in 1996, Ellis Wayne Felker was elecrocuted for a rape-murder that — despite his classic middle name — he always maintained he... read more »

Built by the Presbyterian church after representations were made to Governor Franklin in the 1830’s.The church was planned after the appointment... read more »

Though not exactly the capital of capital punishment, the Peach State has a foundational place in the modern death penalty regime. It was through a case... read more »

Minutes after midnight on this date in 1996, Georgia electrocuted Larry Lonchar Ten grand in the red on gambling debts, Lonchar in 1986 raided the home... read more »

Laura Bentley was in dire straits. A 41-year-old Londoner, she supported her bedridden mother, who she lived with in lodgings in Delancey Street,... read more »

“So great a concourse of people has perhaps not been seen”* at Edinburgh’s Grassmarket as assembled on this date in 1765 for the execution... read more »

Introduction Home Office and Prison Commission Licences are one of the core sources being used by the Digital Panopticon to trace the lives of nineteenth... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this day in 1800,* a seventeen-year-old mail sorter named Thomas Chalfont was... read more »

On this date in 1954, railway official Ewald Misera and civil engineer Karli Bandelow (German link, as are many that follow) were beheaded in Dresden as... read more »

An unusual and highly memorable Victorian timber building constructed in 1888 as the Commercial Bank of Tasmania and residence. The richly detailed facades... read more »

By Michaela Ann Cameron Me at Brislington House promoting the Convict Parramatta walking tour I developed for the free Dictionary of Sydney Walks... read more »

On this date in 1944, the Gestapo publicly hanged 13 men without trial at an S-Bahn station near Cologne. Heavily bombed by the Allies in World War II,... read more »

by Grace Huxford Lecturer in Nineteenth/Twentieth Century History, University of Bristol At the Carceral Archipelago conference held in September at the... read more »

Elizabeth Morley’s petition for mercy, 1795 In the spring of 1795, Elizabeth Morley (or Morlay) was convicted at the Middlesex Sessions of the Peace... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1945, stripped down to his socks and underwear, 35-year-old truck... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1944, Private Joseph Watson and Technician Fifth Grade Willie... read more »

Captain Henry Frederick Forth arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1833 and for a few years he was employed as Director General Of Roads & Bridges. In 1836... read more »

A murderer named Alexander Provan was put to death on this date in 1765, the very rare* instance of a Scottish execution enhanced with mutilation. Provan,... read more »

On November 6, 1863, Old Geelong Gaol (op. cit.) hosted the hanging of James Murphy. This horse thief, having been put to some light piece of penal servitude... read more »

Fred’s resting place (© Criminal Historian) In the shadow of the Lucy Tower of Lincoln Castle – site of the city’s Georgian and... read more »

To mark Bonfire Night in a somewhat macabre way, here’s a cheery tale from the Western Mail of 5 November 1895 (accessed via the wonderful Welsh... read more »

One century ago today, California hanged two men at San Quentin: Earl Loomis, who murdered a Sacramento candy store proprietress in the course of a robbery,... read more »