The New Newgate Calendar

On the 31st of December in 1460, the Earl of Salisbury was beheaded the day after the Lancastrians routed the Yorkists at the Battle of Wakefield. Salisbury... read more »

On this date in 1757, Catholic priest Andreas Faulhaber was hanged at the order of Frederick the Great to defend the seal of the confessional. Frederick... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) Four days after Christmas in 1868, Thomas Jones was executed in London, Ontario... read more »

On this date in 1905,* the druzhinniki (militia) of Moscow’s insurrectionary Red Presnia district barged into the apartment of 37-year-old police... read more »

From the Salem (Mass.) Gazette, Jan. 18, 1822. Executions — Two Indians,* Ketaukah and Kewahiskin [elsewhere given as Kewaubis -ed.] were hanged... read more »

On this date in 1502, Ramiro d’Orco (Ramiro de Lorqua or de Lorca) was put to death in the main square of the city he had governed mere days before. In... read more »

Around this time in the year 1205, the fleeting Byzantine emperor Alexios V Doukas was put to a dramatic death in Constantinople’s Forum of Theodosius... read more »

On the morning of December 24, 1774, the British 10th Regiment encamped on Boston Common shot a 28-year-old soldier named William Ferguson for desertion. The... read more »

From the testimony of Kate Bates, in the trial of William Atkinson, accused of killing Margaret Gaskin with a red hot poker: “The Deceas’d... read more »

UNWRAP...A Christmas selection box of case histories, events and ephemera, taken from the archives of Victorian criminal insanity... The Evils of Christmas... read more »

Another day, another tale involving the dangers of drink. William Bolton had been out drinking for all of Christmas Eve, to the extent that by 4am, he... read more »

From the Domestic Annals of Scotland (see here or here): A commission composed of country gentlemen and advocates sat in the Tolbooth of Borrowstounness... read more »

Thomas Dennis was indicted for stealing a man’s beaver hat in 1740. On appearing at the Old Bailey, he told a convoluted tale: ” I bought it... read more »

On this date in 1960, 19-year-old Anthony Miller became the 10th and last person executed at Scotland’s Barlinnie Prison.* Miller worked in a team... read more »

On this date in 1875, Whitechapel’s most notorious murderer ere Jack the Ripper arrived on the scene paid for his double life on the gallows of... read more »

Sarah Oldham was a 40 year old married woman, whose husband had abandoned her. She had found love again with a framework-knitter named Edmund Kesteven,... read more »

The first legal hanging in Alberta, Canada, took place on this date in 1879. Generations later, it’s still remembered as one of the province’s... read more »

This series has already stated that Victorians liked to drink at Christmas. This was noted by elements of the 19th century press, and never made more clear... read more »

Several days ago, I broke from reading through the notes of nineteenth-century Russian penal inspectors to admire the 23rd edition of the International... read more »

Dapper highwayman James Whitney was hanged at Smithfield on this date in 1694. A monument to the allures and the perils of a midlife career change, Whitney... read more »

Illustration from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, by S. Eylinge, 1869 (British Library, via Flickr Creative Commons) An article appeared in The Citizen... read more »

There are always two sides of a story – well, kind of. In the trial of Margaret Lawlor, accused of grand larceny in a case brought by Benjamin Tucker,... read more »

We owe this discomfiting executioner’s-eye view from the ranks of German soldiers as they gun down Poles in the town of Bochnia on December 18,... read more »

“On Christmas Day, Mr Cole Northall, a butcher, of the Delph, Brierley Hill, near Birmingham, left home with his family in the afternoon. “On... read more »

On this date in 1954, Eugen Turcanu and 16 other Romanian political prisoners were executed at Jilava prison. Turcanu et al were noted as the truncheon... read more »

We are delighted to announce that we have funding for a three-year PhD studentship, based at the University of Sheffield. The eighteenth and nineteenth... read more »

Many Victorian families seem to have spent Christmas Day either getting drunk, or being drunk. This was not helped when families decided to make life easier... read more »

On this date in 1937, the Georgian poet Titsian Tabidze was executed in Stalin’s purges. “Titsiani”, who co-founded the “Blue Horns”... read more »

“They said before the Justice that I should keep my Christmas in another World, for they were determined to hang me.” Statement of Esther Burnham,... read more »

(Thanks to Ramicles, the pseudonymous 19th century Chicago correspondent of the Providence Press, for this eyewitness account of a December 15, 1865 hanging... read more »

Victoria and Albert with their Christmas tree in 1848 In 1839, in the week before Christmas, several people were brought before the magistrates at Worship... read more »

The executions on December 14, 1793 illustrated above (image from here) date to Revolutionary France’s violent suppression that month of the France’s... read more »

On 17 January 1801, farmer John Shore went on trial at the Old Bailey, charged with the murder of his wife Mary by dragging her 'from one chamber to another'.... read more »

An American hermit Mathews (first name unrecorded) was a 70-year-old widower known as the Norwood Hermit. For 28 years, he had lived in a cave created... read more »

On this date in 1949, two young miners from northern England were hanged together at Durham prison for unrelated crimes of passion: one had ravaged and... read more »

Christmas was a fairly common first name for those in the past - I wonder why people don't tend to call their children that now, when there are some far... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1888, Tsimequor, a member of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, was... read more »

Dorchester Prison Admission & Discharge Registers (Dorset History Centre/Ancestry) From tomorrow, until Christmas Eve, I will be publishing a daily... read more »

Minnesota executed Harry Hayward shortly after midnight on this date in 1895. Dubbed the “Minneapolis Svengali” by the press for his perceived... read more »

On this date in 1965, Andrew Pixley was gassed in Wyoming for butchering the two young daughters of a vacationing Illinois judge. A 21-year-old high school... read more »

“A democratic society or a police state in America– which will it be?” This was the guiding question of the Alliance to End Repression,... read more »

This day in 1919 was the closest Joseph Cohen came to the electric chair in Sing Sing. His walk may have been 7 minutes, or possibly 11 minutes, away,... read more »

The festive period may be the season of good will, but this annual spirit of benevolence is not particularly apparent from the annals of criminal history.... read more »

I, Pierre Rivière...Arguably one of history's most (in)famous cases of criminal insanity occurred in rural France in the late spring of 1835. On 3rd June,... read more »

Most judges are content to inflict their atrocities with a gavel, but on this date in 1578, a magistrate turned freebooter named Kort Kamphues was beheaded... read more »

It is an unexpected pleasure to be back in the Andaman Islands for the first time in almost two years. I have been researching aspects of the Islands'... read more »

On this date in 1975, the wife of East Timor’s Prime Minister was publicly executed on the docks of her conquered country’s capital. By the... read more »

From the French Grandes Chroniques. The numbered footnotes within the blockquote are verbatim from this text. Moreover, it befel in this year [1323] that... read more »

On this date in 1985, serial killer Carroll Edward “Eddie” Cole was executed in Nevada. A smart and troubled Iowa boy, Cole‘s earliest... read more »

George Jacob Holyoake On 24 May 1842, a lecture was given at the Mechanics’ Institute in Cheltenham, bearing the snappy title of “Home Colonisation... read more »