The New Newgate Calendar

(Thanks to Richard Clark of Capital Punishment U.K. for the guest post, a reprinted section from a longer article about capital punishment in Kuwait that... read more »

Here are links to some of the true crime and crime history stories I’ve found interesting this month. When James Baldwin wrote about the Atlanta... read more »

The heartrending and entirely timeless story of a man destroyed for during the three-year witch hunt paroxysm in Mergentheim for having more wisdom and... read more »

by Derek Roebuck, Francis Calvert Boorman and Rhiannon MarklessPublisher: HOLO Books, The Arbitration Press (2019)I haven't written a blog for over 2 years,... read more »

British forces occupying Ireland conducted the Gibbet Rath massacre on this date in 1798, slaying 300 to “500 rebels bleaching on the Curragh of... read more »

Posted by Sara M. Butler, 29 May 2020. On 28 Nov. 1313, chancery issued a royal mandate to the bishop of Ely requesting that he deliver a sum of £50... read more »

A volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire. –Horace Walpole (Source) On the 28th of May in 1754, a wilderness... read more »

On this date in 1780, statistician Johann Heinrich Waser “One of the most spectacular and horrific treason cases of the late eighteenth century”... read more »

Italian patriotic hero Ciro Menotti was hanged on this date* in 1831. Marker in Modena to the martyrdom of Ciro Menotti and Vincenzo Borelli. (cc) image... read more »

The latest Prison Service Journal is the second in a series of special editions offering historical perspectives on a range of prison and criminal justice... read more »

A new blog devoted to a fascinating collection of criminal ‘mugshots’ held by Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives has been launched. Written... read more »

And on the 25 day of May, being the Friday in Whitsun week, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Stephen Hamerton, knights, were hanged and headed; Nicholas Tempest, esquire;... read more »

Etienne-Benjamin Deschauffours (or Duchauffour) was burned at Paris’s Place de Greve on this date in 1726. Although executed on a sodomy conviction,... read more »

On this date in 1701, the pirate William Kidd hanged at London’s Execution Dock; his body was afterwards gibbeted at Tilbury Port. Alhough his famous... read more »

Light Dragoons at Waterloo  On the 24 June 1851 two young lads were brought up before the magistrate at Marylebone Police Court charged with having... read more »

“My client, Johnny Joe Martinez, was executed on Wednesday, May 22. The time of death was 6:30. Two days before, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles... read more »

Norwich Castle, by Andrew Hurley (cc) On this day in 1882, a 19-year-old Norfolk man, described as having a consistently ‘callous and indifferent... read more »

On this date in 1559, an auto de fe in Valladolid marked the onset of an Inquisition purge of nascent Lutheranism in Spain. Now you’d expect to find... read more »

Gladys Cosker was 27, and lived with her mother in Llandaff. This would not have been particularly unusual, had Gladys not been a married woman –... read more »

Nuremberg printer Hans Hergot was beheaded in Leipzig on this date in 1527.* He’d previously published work of revolutionary Thomas Müntzer... read more »

Missouri graced America with her first coronavirus pandemic execution tonight. Aptly emblematic of a moment where crumbling institutions reveal the post-Cold... read more »

Photo of the May 18, 1876 beheading of Gustav Adolf Eriksson Hjert, who with his accomplice in murder Konrad Petterson Lundqvist Tector/Tektor comprised... read more »

Guest post by Katy Barnett, 18 May 2020. This blog has recently featured a fascinating post on whether it is possible to steal a peacock. In this post,... read more »

A 1938 Oregon Magazine retrospective on the May 17, 1865 Salem, Ore. hanging of George Baker and George Beal(e) comes from a compilation of research on... read more »

White Horse Alley, Clerkenwell  in the 1800s Domestic violence (however it is defined) was a depressingly regular occurrence in nineteenth-century... read more »

East Germany beheaded Sylvester Murau by fallbeil on this date in 1956. A blue-collar laborer who served a jail sentence for poaching under the Third Reich,... read more »

(Thanks to Alphonse Lemonon for the guest post, which originally appeared under the title “Civilization’s Thin Veneer: War Shows the Seamy... read more »

The Ordinary of Newgate (in this case, James Guthrie) furnishes us the following “ACCOUNT, of the Behaviour, Confessions, and Dying Words, OF THE... read more »

This chapter titled “The First Hanging in Ohio County, KY” comes from the public-domain 1926 volume Ohio County Kentucky in the Olden Days.... read more »

Click to view slideshow. This rather imposing building (or set of buildings) today looks rather incongruous in the centre of Aylesbury. Located next to... read more »

No assignment in the Third Reich’s war machine, nay not even the fearful eastern front, was as dangerous as service in the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat... read more »

Fish Street Hill in the City Parliamentary legislation in 1848 (collectively known as the Jervis Acts) and the 1850s had allowed for the fast processing... read more »

From Xinhua on May 12, 2012: A 50-year-old man was executed in Beijing Friday for killing two and injuring 14 others in the capital’s downtown area... read more »

(Thanks to Scottish Church of England clergyman Michael Geddes for the guest post. Geddes had occasion to witness the May 10, 1682 auto de fe in Lisbon... read more »

The defense attempted to show that Bainbridge could not have committed the crime because Mr. Herdman’s daughter stated in court that she and Bainbridge... read more »

West Indies planter Arthur William Hodge hanged on this date in 1811 — a distinctive punishment, for the crime imputed was the murder of his own... read more »

Today marks 75 years since VE Day (Victory in Europe) 1945. Historians and commentators are writing all sorts of things about the significance of this... read more »

Just, Prudent, Pious, everything that’s Great Lodg’d n his Breast, and form’d the Man complete, His Body may consume, his Virtues shall... read more »

(Thanks to Sir Thomas More, himself an eventual Executed Today client, for the guest post on the knight Sir James Tyr(r)ell — originally from More’s... read more »

I found this article in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph of 24 November 1896. It details the case of Mary Ann Miller, who sought a separation from her rather... read more »

From the Corvallis (Ore.) Gazette, May 9, 1899: Says that the Clootchman Anna and Okh-kho-not are equally guilty — body delivered to the medical... read more »

In mid June 1888, in what was to become a dreadful late summer and autumn of terror in the East End, a young man appeared at the West Ham Police court... read more »

Horribly, on this date in 1630 nine-year-old “witches” named Christine Teipel and Grete Halman were executed for witchcraft, in either Oberkirchen... read more »

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold... read more »

On this date in 1919, the anarchist writer and intellectual Gustav Landauer was summarily executed — or just murdered — by the Freikorps after... read more »

Al Jazeera journalist Josh Rushing witnessed the May 1, 2012 execution of Oklahoma murderer Michael Selsor, after having interviewed that inmate for a... read more »