The New Newgate Calendar
Post Archives
Archives for December 2018
From The Homes, Haunts, and Battlefields of the Covenanters. The martyrs in question, who were among many of that profession in these years, were executed...
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As with so many of the cases I research that involve a male perpetrator, this story involves domestic violence – in this case, a jealous husband...
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Billingsgate Marketing the morning by Gustave Doré, 1872 Drunkenness is usually associated with this time of year. People have plenty of time off...
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We’ve paid tribute before to Christian martyrologies’ adroit remembrances of the dead. December 30 furnishes a crowded example from the Roman...
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If one of the aims of late Victorian press was to provide some titillation for their readers over breakfast then this tale, from the end of 1888 (a year...
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From Yemen Divided: The Story of a Failed State in South Arabia concerning the juridical follow-up to the ouster of Ali Nasir Muhammad during the a civil...
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One of the more unusual crimes to reach the Central Criminal court at Old Bailey was bigamy. I say ‘unusual’ because amongst all the violence,...
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From the Richmond (Va.) Whig, Dec. 28, 1866 … … and the same source on Jan. 1, 1867:
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James Arthur and Timothy Howard worked together at a charcoal factory in New Gravel Lane, Shadwell. They were workmates and drinking buddies but not close...
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In the week before Christmas 1848 a young man named Thomas Pheny walked into a coffee house near Euston Station. He asked the proprietor, Mrs Humphries,...
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On the morning of the 27th December the following malefactors were executed in the Old Bailey, viz., Richard Carrol, a blind man, for breaking open the...
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The Police courts of the Victorian metropolis did not sit on Christmas Day but the newspapers were printed on Boxing day and they carried the stories of...
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At the Fayetteville (Arks.) Court on the 8th inst., John Burnett was sentenced to be hung on the 26th inst., for the murder of Jonathan Selby. -Newark...
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By Cassie Watson; posted 26 December 2018. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century coroner’s juries regularly returned verdicts that appeared to determine...
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Ordered on Foreign Service, by Robert Collinson (The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology) One of the most modern of crimes is the sale of fake goods...
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Happy Christmas! And to celebrate, here’s a nice, festive tale of, um, danger and death in a domestic setting. Like my previous post, this is an...
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On this date in 1973, the government of Mohammed Daoud Khan — himself freshly installed as the first Afghan president, after deposing his cousin,...
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On this date in 1328, Willem de Deken, burgomaster of Bruges, had his hands cut off and his neck strung up in Paris for treason. Belgian illustrator Jean-Leon...
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One of my favorite possessions is a 1961 edition of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of the Underworld (1949) that has the wonderful subtitle: Being...
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On this date in 1572, Antitrinitarian Calvinist Johann Sylvan lost his head in a Heidelberg market. Sylvan — or Johannes Slyvanus — was a...
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In some of the interviews with homeless people and reports of their plights this winter one of the depressing strategies that emerged is that some individuals...
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On this day 138 years ago, a sad discovery was made in Heaton’s Court, Briggate, in Leeds. It was two days before Christmas, and somewhere, a woman...
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(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...
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I imagine that most owners of Indian curry houses have had to put up with a lot of bad behaviour from drunken customers who stumble into their establishments...
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Peter Kudzinowski was electrocuted on this date in 1929 in New Jersey. The son of Polish immigrants to Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal mining country,...
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The Police Courts of London had the power to act summarily (i.e without a jury) in a large number of instances. Many offences were prosecuted at this level...
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From Tyburn Tree: Its History and Annals: The manufacture of silk fabrics was highly protected, but protection did not bring prosperity to the workers....
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The Rose in Hand, Morse Lane. Copyright Stuart Wilding and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License. On Christmas night in 1889, the bar...
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Lower Thames Street in the late 1800s One of the subjects that continues to fascinate my undergraduate students is infanticide. Almost invariably they...
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Monday’s post touched on the subject of prostitution and brothels in central London in the 1880s, suggesting that a young girl of just 14 years of...
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From the out-of-print The palace of death, or, the Ohio Penitentiary Annex: A human-interest story of incarceration and execution of Ohio’s murderers,...
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In December 1895 Edith Fenn appeared before Mr Lane at the West London Police court. Edith was just 15 years old and worked as a kitchen maid at 21 Courtfield...
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On this date in 1591, the Dutch “witch” Marigje Arriens was burned at the stake. A 70-year-old Schoonhoven folk healer, Arriens (English Wikipedia...
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Two mass shootings of U.S. World War II infantrymen in Belgium marked this date in 1944. It was the second day of the Battle of the Bulge, Nazi Germany’s...
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At seven o’clock in the evening of Thursday 15 December 1887 police constable 432D was on duty in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia. As the officer walked...
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On this date in 2010, John David Duty reclined on an Oklahoma gurney with an apology for his victim’s family on his lips, and became a milestone:...
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The Old Bailey Voices data is the result of work I’ve done for the Voices of Authority research theme for the Digital Panopticon project. This will...
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Plan of the London Docks, by Henry Palmer (1831) Sergeant Aram of H Division Metropolitan Police (18H) was stationed in Flower and Dean Street, one of...
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From the San Francisco (Calif.) Call, Dec. 16, 1896. UTAH MURDERER EXECUTED Patrick Coughlin, the Slayer of Two Officers, Shot to Death in Rich County....
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In 1862 there was a moral panic about street robbery. I’ve covered it elsewhere on this blog and it has been well-documented in the work of...
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The modern republic of Turkey executed a woman for the first time in 1931. Fatma Demir (German Wikipedia page: there’s none on Turkish Wikipedia)...
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Today finds me, weather permitting, stumping around Whitechapel with my third year undergraduates. This is an annual occurrence for me; in the past 12...
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On this date in 1856, the Bourbon monarchy of Naples avenged the near-murder of its king … but neither sovereign nor state would much outlive the...
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Goldsmiths’ Hall in the mid-ninetenth century, by Thomas Shepherd It is the time of the year when charities do so much to raise awareness of poverty...
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On this date in 1799, Neapolitan Republican Nicola Fiorentino went to the gallows. A precocious and multitalented scholar, Fiorentino (Italian Wikipedia...
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In 1885 Parliament passed a Criminal Law Amendment Act. Its subheading explained its purpose: ‘An Act to make further provision for the Protection...
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The U.S. states of Illinois, Georgia and California, and the Canadian province of British Columbia, all distinguished December 11, 1903 with hangings....
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In the 1850s transportation to Australia slowly declined before being abandoned in the 1860s. Transportation, which had been the most effective alternative...
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Paul’s Wharf by Joseph Pennell (1884) Very many of the crimes prosecuted at the police courts were easily dealt with by the magistracy who handed...
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It was 120 years ago today that a little girl was found murdered in a field close to her home – a crime that shocked her local community. This was...
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