The New Newgate Calendar
Post Archives
Archives for March 2014
An edition of the Old Bailey Proceedings
The Old Bailey Proceedings are a rich historical resource, almost unimaginably so. They constitute the largest...
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“Gleaning” by Arthur Hughes
Gleaning was a right of the poor up to the late 18th century, under common law. After a farmer had harvested his...
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The Truk Atoll, in Micronesia, is more commonly known today as Chuuk. It’s a hot diving location notable for the many sunken World War II Japanese...
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The following is the text of a lecture I recently gave to the British Numismatic Society, 25th March 2014. This paper is essentially a summation of my...
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On this date in 1875, a private named John Morgan was hanged for murdering his fellow. The London Times reported the trial (March 12, 1875: Morgan did...
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On this date in 1875, artilleryman Richard Coates (or “Coote”) was hanged for murder. He’d been detailed as a schoolteacher for the Purfleet...
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For the next two days, we draw a pair of odd cases from the ranks of Her Majesty’s men at arms. Recently spooked by debacles in the Crimean War and...
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Yesterday, I was re-reading Bernard Capp’s excellent 2003 book When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England, and tweeted...
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In 1954, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama hired as its pastor a 25-year-old fresh out of Boston University’s doctoral program....
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THE ALIENISTS ARRIVE It is difficult to say when the alienists - OED: "A psychiatrist who assesses the competence of a defendant in a law court" - first...
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On this date in 1878, Joe and Teek* Brassell were hanged in Cookeville, Tennessee. These brothers (their eldest sibling Jim Brassell wisely bowed out of...
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This date in 1913 saw the hanging of Henry Lovell William Clark for a sensational pair of domestic murders in the British Raj. The half-Indian Lieutenant...
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FREE talk at Mshed Bristol!15 May 2014Bristol asylum - inmates and their life stories.Follow this link for detailshttp://www1.uwe.ac.uk/cahe/research/regionalhistorycentre/seminarseries.aspx ...
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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1851, 41-year-old Sarah Chesham was hanged before a crowd of six...
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It was announced in parliament last week that the Royal Mint is to begin minting a new pound coin – bimetallic and twelve sided – with the...
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My Blog post today covers another aspect of my grandfather’s military service during the First World War. Ninety-six years ago, Private Charlie...
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Mary Ann Cotton She’s dead and she’s rotten She lies in her bed With her eyes wide open Sing, sing! Oh what can I sing? Mary Ann Cotton is...
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I came across this quote in the London magistrate Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1797), and liked the attitude expressed...
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Instruction of the Pauper Children in the Metropolitan District School, Sutton, Illustrated London News, 1872 via @La_Lynne. For history of school click...
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On this date in 1860, Ann Bilansky was hanged in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bilansky — her Christian name is given as Ann, Anne, or Anna in various reports...
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On this date in 1819, 16-year-old Hannah Bocking was hanged outside the Derby Gaol for murdering a friend with an arsenic-laced spice cake. She appears...
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One of this site’s recurring themes and criminology’s iconic trappings, the poison arsenic carried off many a soul. Poison has been around...
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We are delighted to be able to announce our first project workshop on Visualising Data, part of our Epistemologies research theme. We anticipate that the...
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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1963, hardened killer Frederick Charles Wood, 51, became the next-to-last...
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Gloucestershire’s County Petty Sessions records have numerous examples of people brought before magistrates for poaching offences, but this return...
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On this date in 1899, Martha Place became the first woman to die in the electric chair. William Place, a widowed insurance adjuster at 598 Hancock Street...
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Before the advent of a national police force, a number of discretionary options were available to a victim of crime in responding to the crime committed...
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Today, Criminal Historian is privileged to have a very timely guest post by Angela Buckley, author of new book The Real Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Story...
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On this date in 1330, the king’s half-brother Edmund of Woodstock lost his head for treason. Edmund was the youngest son of Edward I. That patrimony...
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This interim post is to recommend Dr Nick Hervey's latest blog on criminal lunatics and attacks on Queen Victoria - excellent stuff! http://bethlemheritage.wordpress.com/Why...
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In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Russia’s imperial ambitions in the east drew it inexorably towards conflict with Japan. This was the period when...
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A Victorian depiction of the Pendle witches
In Michael Dalton’s 1618 handbook for Justices of the Peace, The Country Justice, he included a section...
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Just before Christmas in 1871, Detective Jerome Caminada of the Manchester City Police Force, received instructions to track four thieves wanted in Sheffield...
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On this date (most likely) in 1713, Slovakian “Robin Hood” figure Juraj Janosik was hung on a hook in Liptov County for his outlawry. Janosik...
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In recent weeks I have been reading three historical novels, each of which relates to some of my research interests. These works have required me to consider...
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16 January 1840 Walter Tunmore, who has been alone and tearful in his cell, is back with the boys and the prison visitor finds them bright and cheerful....
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Thanks to Aaron Molyneux for the guestpost. It’s just an excerpt of a much more detailed treatment Molyneux first made of this case on PrisonVoices.org....
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Joseph LaPage died on a gallows at Concord, N.H. on this date in 1878 for the horrific murder of Josie Langmaid more than two years before. The 17-year-old...
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Originally posted on History Lab Plus: by Nicola Verdon I spent a lot of time in 2013 trying to make a coherent case that the various, rather haphazard,...
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On this date in 1908, the octogenarian Haitian president Pierre Nord Alexis had a number of political opponents arrested and, that very night, summarily...
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On this date in 1493, Peter Dane was burned at the stake in the Baltic city of Rostock. Dane, the vicar of the church at the small town of Sternberg, allegedly...
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View full page map The debtors’ sanctuaries of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century London were in part a reaction to the threat of imprisonment...
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On this date in 1690, the somewhat comic thieving career of Jack Bird came to an end at Tyburn. Bird ran away from an apprenticeship to serve as a foot-guard...
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Almost all gaol, police and court museums now have websites to advertise their attractions, but they are still primarily places that you have to physically...
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From Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana: Or the Ecclesiastical History of New England from 1620 – 1698: On March 11, 1686, was Executed...
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This date in 1865, just weeks before the final collapse of the Confederacy, a slave named Amy was hanged on a sycamore tree before the courthouse of Darlingon,...
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The Criminal Lunatics Act (1800) gave the Sovereign powers to order the safe custody of criminal lunatics but continued 'no provision for defraying the...
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The history of the insanity defence has been well documented by historians. What follows is a very brief outline of the history of the insanity defence...
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Detail from Mrs E.M. Ward, ‘Mrs Elizabeth Fry Visiting Newgate, 1818′ (1876), exhibited at World Columbian Exposition, 1893 15 January 1840...
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(Thanks to John S. Carbone of Alienists Compendium. Dr. Carbone is also the Director of Mental Health Services and Chief of Forensic Psychiatry for the...
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