The New Newgate Calendar

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Archives for July 2014

On this date in 1868, the Ottoman Turks executed Bulgarian revolutionary Stefan Karadzha. Karadzha was one of several nationalist cheta (guerrilla) leaders... read more »
On this date in 1746,* the English Jacobite Francis Towneley was hanged, drawn and quartered at London’s Kennington Park. This Lancashire Catholic... read more »
On this date in 1938, the Soviet intelligence agent Janis Berzin(s) was shot in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison. A Latvian radical back... read more »
The June issue of the English Historical Review contains a very fine review of The Most Remarkable Woman in England which is all the more enjoyable because... read more »
We’re delighted that our quest to take over the entire known universe of the history of crime continues with a panel session at this year’s... read more »
On this date in 1938, Soviet playwright Vladimir Kirshon was shot at the Kommunarka “special object” shooting range outside Moscow. Kirshon... read more »
Most any sequence of days on the calendar would do for capturing Soviet citizens destroyed in Stalin’s terrible purges of the late 1930s. There are,... read more »
Thursday 30 January 1840 Somberly, Miss Martin calls the two little boys to her. Tomorrow their thirty day sentence will be up and they will leave her... read more »
“Who ME? Eavesdrop? Never!” A bit of eavesdropping never did anybody any harm, did it? We’ve all done it. A chance conversation that... read more »
On this date in 1973, former cabaret star Mimi Wong Weng Siu and her husband Sim Woh Kum were hanged for the murder of Wong’s Japanese lover’s... read more »
On this date in 1847, the execution of Maya leader Manuel Antonio Ay in Valladolid kicked off the Yucatan’s decades-long Caste War. Under Spanish... read more »
On this date in 1785, a Sunderland-area farmer named John Winship was hanged for killing his Grace Smith maidservant with a poisonous draught of corrosive... read more »
An anecdotal and statistical meander through nineteenth century lunacyDavid J. Vaughan Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century EnglandStudies... 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 »
On this date in 1896, John Pryde hanged in Crow Wing County jail for a Brainerd murder over a little bit of money. Pryde had worked all the preceding winter... read more »
On this date in 1995, Nigeria’s military dictatorship struck a bloody blow against the country’s surging crime waves with a mass execution... read more »
By Sarah Longair, Carceral Archipelago Project Researcher. Having been aware of the work of The Clink Charity, an innovative and exciting initiative which... read more »
On this date in 1683 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London the great Whig parliamentarian William, Lord Russell was beheaded with a legendary want of... read more »
Friday 24 January 1840 Tomorrow William Hickling, Walter Tunmore and Robert Harrod will leave the prison. Miss Martin meets them for their final exhortation... read more »
“Accident. Thursday evening, a poor Woman who was crossing the Road near Hyde-Park-Corner, with a Basket of Radishes on her Head, was thrown down... read more »
On this date in 1780, three men were executed in London — John Gamble was hanged at Bethnal-Green, Samuel Solomons in Whitechapel, and James Jackson... read more »
On this date in 1476, a peasant preacher who nearly stirred a revolution was consigned to the flames in Wurzburg. Hans Behem (or similar variations on... read more »
Gloucester Crown Court, opened 1816. (Jill Evans, 2010)   Gloucestershire folk are used to seeing photographs of the frontage of Gloucester Crown... read more »
On this date in 1801, the teenage slave “negro Chloe” — as the press reports almost invariably called her — was hanged at Carlisle,... read more »
On this date in 1651, Wilhelm Biener, late the chancellor of Tyrol, lost his head to the rancor of Tyrol’s landed aristocracy. A barrister by training... read more »
The deadlines for the Liverpool and Sheffield PhD studentships have been extended by a week, to MONDAY 28 JULY. More details here. read more »
On this date in 1517, the Italian cardinal Alfonso Petrucci was put to death for a conspiracy to murder Pope Leo X. Leo had been acclaimed pope in 1513... read more »
Computers are brilliant microscopes. They make it easy to find needles in haystacks. Want to find references to the famous lawyer William Garrow amongst... read more »
On this date in 756, the imperial consort Yang Guifei was expediently executed during the An Lushan Rebellion. The Tang dynasty Emperor Xuanzong, whose... read more »
On this date in 1455, the German knight Kunz von Kauffungen was beheaded at the Freiberg marketplace for the trifling offense of kidnapping a couple of... read more »
A naughty picture Union Hall: J. Price was brought up by Mr Byers, Inspector of Licenses, charged with hawking goods, not having a licence. Mr Byers stated,... read more »
The English diplomat Sir Thomas Roe, envoy to the Mughal Empire from 1615 to 1619 during the reign of Jahangir, recorded in his journal* the unfortunate... read more »
A year ago today, China executed self-made millionaire Zeng Chengjie for corruption. Once the subject of glowing media profiles (Chinese link) for his... read more »
 There is no authentic voice of the eighteenth century criminal trial as no verbatim records were made during this period; what does survive in newspapers... read more »
My grandfather, Charlie Payne (c 1914) I have previously written an account of aspects of the German Spring Offensive in March 1918, based on Charlie Payne’s... read more »
On this date in 1789, Francis Uss was publicly hanged in Poughkeepsie, New York, for burglary. Anthony Vaver, author of Bound With An Iron Chain: The... read more »
On this date in 1654, the gore-soaked annals of Tower Hill added the names of two of Protectorate England’s highest criminals. John Gerard was only... read more »
On this date in 1944, the fascist frogman unit Decima Mas Flottiglia MAS (English Wikipedia link | Italian) executed and publicly gibbeted the partisan... read more »
On this date two centuries ago, there was — or at least, there was supposed to be — a military execution for desertion from U.S. forces during... read more »
Date: 4-6 September 2014 Location: The Edge, University of Sheffield, UK Website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/hri/dhc/dhc2014 The Digital Humanities Congress... read more »
***STOP PRESS***I am delighted to announce that Pickering & Chatto, erstwhile publishers of academic and scientific journals, including on the subject... read more »
On this date in 1962, the Buddhist monk — turned Christian convert in detention — Talduwe Somarama was hanged for assassinating Ceylon Prime... read more »
From the fifth edition of William Nelson’s The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace (London: W. Nelson, 1715, p.374):   Who may not be... read more »
On this date in 1999, Gary Heidnik was executed in Pennsylvania for a horrific spree that saw him kidnap five African-American women to a makeshift torture... read more »
On this date in 1731, Jose de Antequera had his head cut off in Lima for leading a comunero rebellion against the Spanish crown in Paraguay. Antequera,... read more »
On this date in 1589, Hans Volckla of Onoltzbach, alias Hemmerlein, was beheaded by Nuremberg. In early modern Germany’s crazy quiltwork of rivalrous... read more »
When I embarked on my PhD I was already aware that a substantial body of legal documents survive from the eighteenth century for Yorkshire which is held... read more »
From the York Herald and General Advertiser (York, England) of Saturday, Aug. 16, 1817. Five English soldiers being on guard, the 18th of June last, at... read more »
Policing Under Pressure: More For Less, BBC2 June 30th http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/25/police-under-pressure This programme is the... read more »
This date, the second of July, would in 1914 have been the eve of the thirty-first birthday of Franz Kafka, so it seems a fit occasion — shall we... read more »