The New Newgate Calendar
Post Archives
Archives for December 2019
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...
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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...
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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...
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Associated Press story from the Gastonia (North Carolina) Gazette, Dec. 30, 1949: RALEIGH, Dec. 30 (AP) — Two Indian farm workers died today in...
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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...
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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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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...
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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...
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Christmas Day of 1943 witnessed the demoralizing beheadings of four Australian POWs in the Japanese camp near Tacloban on the Philippines island of Leyte....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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On this date in 1521, the Swedish rebel brothers Lindorm and Peder Ribbing were beheaded in Jönköping. This event fell during the brief reign...
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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...
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On this date* in 1609, seventeen pirates hanged at Wapping’s “Execution Dock”. Though English, a large number of them had been taken...
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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...
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(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...
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(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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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On this date in 1953 — six months after the execution of a more notorious couple, the Rosenbergs — two Missouri kidnappers were gassed together...
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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...
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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...
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(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....
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Captain Joseph Wiggins This one is curious, not for the offence – keeping an unmuzzled dog – but for the circumstances and position...
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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...
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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...
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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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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...
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From Charles Stanton in Medieval Maritime Warfare: In the months preceding the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, the great Ottoman sultan Mehmed (II),...
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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...
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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...
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… courtesy of the Foreign News dispatch in the pages of the Boston (U.S.) Daily Advertiser, Dec. 8, 1900:
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Legendary Hungarian outlaw Marci Zöld was executed on this date in 1816. Zöld — Hungarian link, as are most in this post; we’ve...
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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 –...
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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...
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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...
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Today is the 50th anniversary of the December 4, 1969 extrajudicial execution of American revolutionary Fred Hampton. Interview with this book’s...
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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...
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Peter Chambers was determined to prove his innocence although his method suggested that perhaps he did ‘protest too much’. He’d been...
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On this date in 1917, Black Country volunteer Joseph Bateman was shot for desertion. The 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment private was among the...
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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...
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