The New Newgate Calendar

On this date in 1996, Saudi Arabia beheaded four Muslim militants for a car bomb attack on the Office of Program Management for the Saudi Arabian National... read more »

A little after 1 in the morning on the 27 May 1889 Dr Edward Cooney was called to a house in Bayonne Road, Fulham. His patient was a woman in her early... read more »

The last letter of French Resistance fighter Jacques Decour (an alias for Daniel Decourdemanche) to his family on the morning of his execution, May 30,... read more »

Hackney in the 1840s There were plenty of assault cases heard before the professional police magistrates of London in the nineteenth century and it... read more »

For the first century of its life, Claremont House was owned by wealthy and powerful merchants, businessmen, politicians, a Captain in the English Army... read more »

The early Metropolitan Police (note the stove pipe hats which weren’t replaced with the more familiar helmets until 1863) Thomas Jackson was a ‘powerful... read more »

From The Last Speech and Dying Words of Mr. John Audouin, who was executed at Dublin, on Wednesday the 29th of May last 1728 for the Murder of his Maid... read more »

(Thanks to Lewis Goldsmith aka “Stewarton” for the guest post, cribbed from his The Female Revolutionary Plutarch -ed.) Susan Sorel The Female... read more »

This case is revealing, not only of the way the the fire service operated in the late 1800s but also of the attitude of the well to do towards them and... read more »

On this date in 1791, two Rhode Island thiefs named Thomas Mount and James Williams were publicly hanged in Little Rest (present-day Kingston). A lifelong... read more »

There is a perception that discipline in schools is not what it was and while few would call for the return of the cane and the slipper, some commentators... read more »

On this date in 1755, the French outlaw Louis Mandrin was broken on the wheel. In common with the whole French populace, Mandrin had a beef with the Ferme... read more »

In May 1879 Miss Lowrie was asked to wait in an estate agent’s office while her older lady friend undertook a familial visit to her brother. What... read more »

On or around this date — exactly when is forever obscure* — the former Tour de France cyclist Julien Vervaecke was summarily executed by Polish... read more »

Sarah Gibbons was an elderly resident of Charlotte Street, in what is known as Fitzrovia. Today it would be a smart London address, in the 1880s it was... read more »

From the Jackson (Mich.) Weekly Citizen: A WOMAN’S DEATH AVENGED NEW ORLEANS, May 24. — To-day, between the hours of 1 and 2 o’clock... read more »

London Zoo in the late 1800s Stephen Westbrook was visiting the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s  Park (better know to most of us as London Zoo... read more »

On this date in 1996 — his 19th birthday — Russian hostage Yevgeny Rodionov was beheaded by his captors outside a village in Chechnya. The... read more »

In the nineteenth century the age of criminal responsibility was just 7 (today it is 10). It had been set at 7 for centuries and was not raised (to 8)... read more »

By Kellie Moss The sentence of transportation signified the physical removal, or banishment of convicts, from the wider social body to colonies overseas.... read more »

‘I left the room with silent dignity, but unfortunately I tripped over the carpet.’ (Mr Pooter in Diary of a Nobody, Grossmith... read more »

Attendees at the 1889 Paris Exposition had the opportunity of a dawn side excursion on May 22 to see the French soldier Fulgence-Benjamin Geomay beheaded.... read more »

On this date in 1521, the Tlaxcallan warrior Xicotencatl Axayacatl (or Xicotencatl the Younger) was hanged by Hernan Cortes on the eve of his conquest... read more »

Wapping in the 1890s, from Booth’s poverty map Cash registers weren’t invented until the later 1870s, and that was in America. A busy pub like... read more »

From the Act for the Relief of the Poor of 1662, or so-called “Settlement Act” onwards, various pieces of 17th- and 18th- century legislation... read more »

On this date in 1622, the deposed Ottoman Sultan Osman II was strangled in Yedikule Fortress. A boy-emperor still in his 18th year at death, Osman had... read more »

When a local authority, like the Common Council of the City of London, passes a by-law or establishes a new regulation they are seldom met with much enthusiasm.... read more »

Posted by Sara M. Butler; 19 May 2017. Social historians have long recognized the value of the legal record to gain entrance into the lives of the average... read more »

On this date in 1732, the deposed Dutch governor of Ceylon was executed by throat-slashing in Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) for abuse of power.... read more »

Long Lane, Bermondsey in the 1930s, with its Victorian buildings still standing I have always associated the ‘long firm’ fraud with 1960s... read more »

Elizabeth Peers was not missed. She had been gone all night, and most of the following day, but still she was not missed. This is not to say that her parents... read more »

Digital Panopticon teamed up with the London Historians for a transportation themed ‘History in the Pub’ event, on 16 May at The Sir Christopher... read more »

Digital Panopticon teamed up with the London Historians for a transportation themed ‘History in the Pub’ event, on 16 May at The Sir Christopher... read more »

One hundred years ago today, Otilio Montaño Sánchez was shot as a traitor to the Mexican Revolution. Montaño was a rural schoolteacher... read more »

A workhouse in West London c.1857 In 1834 Parliament Passed the Poor Law Amendment Act ushering in one of the most contentious and unpopular pieces of... read more »

On this date in 1723, Christopher Layer was hanged and quartered at Tyburn for the Jacobite Atterbury Plot In the wake of the hegemonic Whigs’ political... read more »

When Julius Beale hailed  a cab at Regent’s Circus at 1 in the morning it is fair to say he was a little the worse for drink. As the cab headed... read more »

‘I beg for mercy; I am sorry for what I have done’ ‘I was very heavy in liquor; I got this tankard and I did not know how’ ‘It... read more »

‘I beg for mercy; I am sorry for what I have done’ ‘I was very heavy in liquor; I got this tankard and I did not know how’ ‘It... read more »

On this date in 1946, British hangman Albert Pierrepoint hanged seven German war criminals at Hameln Prison. These seven comprised two distinct groups... read more »

Mercer Street, Seven Dials c.1890 When Mrs Lang lost her husband she also lost the main breadwinner and the driving force for the family business. The... read more »

North Quay, Friday 16 October 1835 Sarah Bowles is up early, scouring the streets for bones and paper. She sees William Munsford driving the muck cart... read more »

Victorian society is often described as one in which the sexes existed in ‘separate spheres’, with men occupying a ‘public’ space... read more »

Famous for its Pied Piper, the Saxon town of Hameln (Hamelin) after World War II had the honor or burden of sending off 150+ of the war criminals whose... read more »

On this date in 1946, the British hanged 10 convicted war criminals at Hameln Prison, notably including seven for the “Dreierwalde Airfield murders”... read more »

Eyebrows were raised when George Stanley appeared in the dock at Bow Street in May 1877. He didn’t look like your average thief, in fact he closely... read more »

May 14 is the feast date of St. Victor, a Christian Roman soldier and his co-religionist and possible spouse Corona. Both the city and the century (and... read more »

On this date in 1920, Rickey Harrison of the Greenwich Village “Hudson Dusters” went to the electric chair for a murder committed in the course... read more »

In the eighteenth century the quintessential property crime of the day was highway robbery, and the highwayman was the archetypal criminal. By the... read more »

Henry Skewes The Digital Panopticon team are getting out and about in May and June to talk eighteenth and nineteenth century criminal history and what... read more »