The New Newgate Calendar

The last day of the 1820s marked the last hanging for forgery in Great Britain: that of Thomas Maynard, at London’s Newgate Prison. Maynard was charged... read more »

For the first part of this story follow this link Ernest Cogdon saw John Broome Tower several times on 31 December 1884. The two men were friends and Cogden... read more »

Here are some of the crime history and crime-related stories that have interested me over the past month. How tattoos became fashionable in Victorian... read more »

Associated Press story from the Gastonia (North Carolina) Gazette, Dec. 30, 1949: RALEIGH, Dec. 30 (AP) — Two Indian farm workers died today in... read more »

On this date in 1661, the French customs officer and writer Jacques Chausson (English Wikipedia entry | French) was burned at Paris’s Place de Greve... 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 »

Japan this morning hanged a Chinese man for a 2003 robbery-murder. With two other Chinese nationals, Wei Wei robbed and murdered a clothier in Fukuoka... read more »

Just after nine o’clock on Wednesday  morning, 8 January 1901, a man’s dead body was recovered from a reservoir at Stoke Newington. George... read more »

Christmas Day of 1943 witnessed the demoralizing beheadings of four Australian POWs in the Japanese camp near Tacloban on the Philippines island of Leyte.... read more »

Happy Christmas! And here’s a festive cartoon (from an 1892 issue of the Kilburn Times) to make you feel jolly today. This being a website looking... read more »

On this date in 1701, the Prussian commander of Vienna Castle was beheaded and then quartered for abetting the escape of Hungarian national hero Ferenc... read more »

Christmas has long been a time for tales of ghostly goings-on. From the quadripartite haunting of Dicken’s Scrooge to the BBC’s M.R. James... read more »

On this date in 1521, the Swedish rebel brothers Lindorm and Peder Ribbing were beheaded in Jönköping. This event fell during the brief reign... read more »

In early September 1887 William Parker (an 18 year-old box maker) and James Hall (also 18 and described as a boot maker), appeared at the Worship Street... read more »

On this date* in 1609, seventeen pirates hanged at Wapping’s “Execution Dock”. Though English, a large number of them had been taken... read more »

The first place I grew up in London was Tufnell Park although, since I left there when I was nearly 8, my memories of it are hazy. My family lived on Lady... read more »

(Thanks to Richard Clark of Capital Punishment U.K. for the guest post, a reprint of an article originally published on that site with some explanatory... read more »

(Thanks to historian William Camden for the guest post, via the 1583 chapter of his Annales. The gentleman in the second paragraph below, Edward Arden... read more »

On Wednesday this week I began a slightly different blog series, which, while it will still focus on London in the nineteenth century will not always use... read more »

Charles Laplace was hanged in a Basseterre prison on this date in 2008, for stabbing his wife to death. It’s the most recent execution carried out... read more »

The image used on the front page of the Illustrated Police News It was a relatively unusual crime, in that the perpetrator was an elderly lady. However,... read more »

On this date in 1953 — six months after the execution of a more notorious couple, the Rosenbergs — two Missouri kidnappers were gassed together... read more »

Today I am straying a new blog series which will look at the smaller events (and some larger ones) associated with London’s streets and the people... read more »

On this date in 1668, Walter Peake or Pake was hanged in front of his own inn, for the drunken murder of his friend (and his occasional lawyer). Our narrative... read more »

(Thanks for the guest post to Paul Lorrain, the Ordinary of Newgate and a pioneer through these ordinary’s accounts of true crime printed ephemera.... read more »

Dutch Jewish aid worker (A)Lex Aronson was hanged on this date in 1975 in Iraq. Aronson (English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) had survived Bergen-Belsen as... read more »

Romanian entrepreneur Gheorghe Stefanescu was shot at Jilava Prison on this date in 1981. He was at the center of one of the largest corruption scandals... read more »

I have a new feature out in the latest issue of Discover Your Ancestors magazine that ties in with my current research on the history of private detectives.... read more »

On this date in 1669, a slave of the Dutch East India Company named Susanna was sewn into a rock-weighted sack and tossed into Table Bay as punishment... read more »

Per the BBC’s report of a Saudi Interior Ministry statement, a woman named Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded for sorcery in the... read more »

On this date in 1994 — the ten-year anniversary of the robbery-murder that earned him his death sentence — Raymond Carl Kinnamon died to lethal... read more »

By Cassie Watson; posted 11 December 2019. As the current election campaign draws to a close amid increasingly shrill claims and counterclaims, I am reminded... read more »

  Captain Joseph Wiggins This one is curious, not for the offence – keeping an unmuzzled dog – but for the circumstances and position... read more »

I went into this with both my eyes open, telling myself that a man who has an ideal must be willing to sacrifice everything for it or else the ideal isn’t... read more »

Most of the gang crime that plagued London in the late 1800s was pretty minor compared with the stabbings and drug related crime experienced by Londoners... 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 »

There was very little Mr Horace Smith could do for the man came to ask for help at his police court in Dalston in December 1889. The man – who said... read more »

From Charles Stanton in Medieval Maritime Warfare: In the months preceding the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, the great Ottoman sultan Mehmed (II),... read more »

Not all stories are exactly what they seem when you start reading them. I found this one, about a Thames lighterman – one of the men that operated... read more »

The Salvation Army is a well-established charity doing good work with the poor and homeless for well over a century. It was set up in London by William... read more »

… courtesy of the Foreign News dispatch in the pages of the Boston (U.S.) Daily Advertiser, Dec. 8, 1900: read more »

Legendary Hungarian outlaw Marci Zöld was executed on this date in 1816. Zöld — Hungarian link, as are most in this post; we’ve... read more »

Some readers may have noticed that my blog posts have reduced a bit in number recently. This is partly because of the pressure of work generally –... read more »

On this date in 1805, Cusco‘s Plaza Mayor hosted the hangings of two colonial Peruvian creoles who had aspired to revive the Incan resistance to... read more »

William Gamgee wanted his two sons to be able to take up a ‘manly’ sport but before he could let them appear on the stage of the Royal Aquarium... read more »

Today is the 50th anniversary of the December 4, 1969 extrajudicial execution of American revolutionary Fred Hampton. Interview with this book’s... read more »

The Royal Aquarium, c.1876 Thomas Clayton and Henry Sealey were on the door at the Royal Aquarium to ensure that only paying punters got in to see the... read more »

Peter Chambers was determined to prove his innocence although his method suggested that perhaps he did ‘protest too much’. He’d been... read more »

On this date in 1917, Black Country volunteer Joseph Bateman was shot for desertion. The 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment private was among the... read more »

Ethnic Hungarians Sass Kálmán and Istvan Hollos were shot in Romania on this date in 1958. Links in this post are in Hungarian. Both were... read more »