The New Newgate Calendar

Armand Louis de Gontaut, duc de Lauzun and later duc de Biron, an officer in the American Revolution and and the French Revolution, was guillotined during... read more »

1888 was an horrendous year for the people of London, especially the denizens of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. From August to November there had been at... read more »

On this date in 1066, the Jewish vizier of Granada Joseph ibn Naghrela was lynched during a notorious pogrom. His (more illustrious) father, the scholar,... read more »

Edward Oakey was seemingly a man for whom frequent court appearances and even prison were no deterrence, at least when he was under the influence of alcohol.... read more »

(Thanks to Scottish Enlightenment titan David Hume for the guest post on William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford — a Catholic peer who fell victim... read more »

Ann Waring was a confident thief who had a clear modus operandi. In 1876 Ann was 22 years old and she applied for work at a succession of houses in Pimlico.... read more »

On this date in 1763, four thieves hanged at Tyburn to great public indifference. They were of such scanty account that one is hard-pressed to find a newspaper... read more »

When detectives Cook and Lillystone from K Division turned into a Bethnal Green  thoroughfare at half past 9 o’clock in the evening of Saturday... read more »

In the 1840s the biggest name in English boxing was Benjamin Caunt. Ben Caunt (pictured below) was one of the first English prize-fighters to seek international... read more »

Corporal Richard O’Brien gave the following account of the summary execution (or simple mass murder) of Filipino villagers during the furious American... read more »

Egypt today hanged 15 Islamic militants convicted of a 2013 attack on an army checkpoint that killed nine. Hanged in simultaneous mass executions at Borj... read more »

You might be surprised to know that in 1875 there were newspapers on a Sunday. The Police Courts were closed on Christmas Day so this report must have... read more »

I don’t often feel sorry for members of the establishment, let alone the privileged few that served as magistrates in the nineteenth century. I some... read more »

On this date in 820, holiday sentiment cost the Roman emperor his life. In the unsettled aftermath of Byzantium’s devastating 811 defeat at the Battle... read more »

A story from the 1970s Equatorial Guinea dictatorship of eventual Executed Today client Francisco Macias Nguema, via Suzanne Cronjé’s out-of-print... read more »

So another Christmas is upon us and today thousands of people (well men mostly) will be rushing around trying to secure that last minute present for the... read more »

In 1897, the discovery of a little boy’s body in a Warwickshire village laid bare the problems that could face single mothers in Victorian England.... read more »

On this date in 1856, Neapolitan sailors Giuseppe Lagava, Giovanni Barbaolo and Matteo Pettrici* were hanged at Hampshire for a murderous mutiny aboard... read more »

Queen Victoria in the Royal Box of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (after the oil painting by E. T. Parris, 1837) At Christmas 1837 the young Queen Victoria... read more »

From the Chicago Republican, Dec. 23, 1865: Special Despatch to the Chicago Republican. WATSEKA, Iroquois Co., Ill. Dec. 22. Francis Johnson, alias Francis... read more »

Medical students have a long established reputation for high jinx and drink related antics. They study hard, so the saying goes, and play hard so it is... read more »

Striking dockers in the East India Dock Road, 1889 1889 was a big year for British Trades Unionism. It was the year that Ben Tillett (with support from... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this day in 1782, wine porter Patrick Dougherty was hanged at St. Stephen’s... read more »

The Ordinary of Newgate His Account of The Behaviour, Confessions, and Last Speeches of the Malefactors that were Executed at Tyburn on Friday the 20th... read more »

To complement the ‘Criminal Lives, 1780-1925: Punishing Old Bailey Convicts’ exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives, the AHRC Digital... read more »

I’m sure we all have a memory of going to see the dentist as a child, and not always a happy one at that. I don’t remember much about him but... read more »

On or very near this date in 1835,* a Limerick ship’s boy named Patrick O’Brien lost a casting of lots … then lost his life to feed... read more »

Sketches of the Chedworth shooting in the Illustrated Police News, 1 Jan 1925, via British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk). The victim... read more »

Pimlico from Greenwood’s 1827 map – you can see the star shaped Milbank Prison on the right When Maria Jessy York appeared before the magistrate... read more »

By Cassie Watson and Laura Sellers; posted 19 December 2017. Thomas Scattergood, the son of a Methodist clergyman, was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire,... read more »

Recruiting sergeants at St George’s barracks When Sir Robert Peel created the New Police in 1829 he envisaged a force of men that would be uniformed,... read more »

Eight years ago today, Botswana hanged a Zimbabwean man for slaying four. Employed by his cousin Patricia Majoko as a filing clerk at her law firm —... read more »

By the early 600s, Roman and Persian armies had been trading blows for so many centuries that an eternal continuation of their Near East derby must have... read more »

The Strand, London (late 1800s) In 1881 Thomas Carr (originally from Norfolk) owned and ran the King’s Head public house at 265 The Strand.* The... read more »

Thank God, the principles of the cause in which we were engaged will not die with me and my brave comrades. They will spread wider and wider and gather... read more »

William Terriss (© Criminal Historian) Today, 16 December, is the 120th anniversary of a murder that shocked the theatre-going world of Victorian... read more »

In December 1857 a poor man appeared at the Lambeth Police court to ask the magistrate’s advice. In November his elderly sister was so sick with... read more »

On this date in 1950, South Korean police shot more than 100 alleged Communists on a hill outside Seoul. It was just one day amid a weeklong bloodbath... read more »

When an unnamed woman was charged with disorderly conduct at Mansion Police Police court in December 1841 the sitting justice took it upon himself to make... read more »

I have a dictionary of underworld slang on my shelves. It is a fascinating compendium of words associated with crime, criminals and punishment. There are... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1650, 22-year-old Anne Greene was hanged for infanticide. A maidservant,... read more »

From Associated Press reports: MOGADISHU, Somalia — Witnesses say Islamist militants have executed two men accused by the fighters of murder and... read more »

This 1891 article refers back to the moral panic caused by the Ratcliff Highway murders 80 years earlier A couple of people on my Twitter timeline posted... read more »

Many of those that appeared in the dock at London’s many Police Magistrate courts were charged with assault. The registers at Thames Police Court... read more »

On this date in 1868, 60-plus masked and armed vigilantes took control of the New Albany, Indiana jail and executed four members (three of them kin) of... read more »

This case is curious because it sheds some light on late Victorian attitudes towards mental health, alcoholism and class. Mrs Maria Wilkin was the widow... read more »

We’ve just had a weekend of severe weather in which snow caught much of southern England by surprise. Many parts of London were covered in a white... read more »

By this time in 1747, England’s season of crowd-pleasing spectacular punishments for the Jacobite rising of 1745 had all but run its course; indeed,... read more »

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) Most of you will be reading this post on a computer, or a tablet, or perhaps even a smart phone. It is too much of a leap to... read more »

Catholic priest Edmund Geninges (also Gennings, or Jennings) was executed on this date in 1592, along with the layman Swithburne Welles, whose home played... read more »