The New Newgate Calendar

On the last of August in 1816, the Colombian statesman Joaquin Camacho was executed as a traitor to Spain. Blind and paralyzed, he had to be carried to... read more »

The 31stAugust 1888 is etched on the memory of anyone familiar with the biggest crime news story of that year. It was at about 3.45 that morning that PC... read more »

French priest Albert Bruneau was guillotined on this date in 1894 for murder. (Most of the available information about this case is in French, as are most... read more »

‘Merry’ female students at Oxford, in The Sphere, 28 October 1922 (from British Newspaper Archive) Today, I should be making the 40-minute... read more »

When William Canham returned to the livery stable in Moorgate where he worked he was irritated to find that the two horses he had asked to be prepared... read more »

Henri Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves, the “first martyr of Free France”, fell to German guns at the Fort du Mont Valerien on... read more »

London can be a perilous place for visitors, especially if they don’t keep a close eye on their valuables. Thieves operate in crowded streets and... read more »

On this date in 476, the father of the very last Roman emperor was put to death by a Germanic chief … a week before that last emperor was forced... read more »

John Roots had come to London in the late summer of 1848 to get treatment at Guy’s Hospital. The elderly labourer traveled first to Rochester (four... read more »

Peter Williams and Abraham (or Abram) Cox were hanged on this date in 1858* in Auburn, Maine, for the maritime murder of the crew of the Albion Cooper.... read more »

Guest post by Jane M. Card; 27 August 2018. Images from the past are never to be taken at face value since, made according to contemporary visual conventions... read more »

There’s something about the violent deaths of police officers that grabs our attention. These are men and women who dedicate their working lives... read more »

Richard Wright had lost both his legs. How, is not made clear but he may have lost them in an accident, war or through disease. Wright was also elderly... read more »

Saint Alexander, patron of the Lombardy city of Bergamo, has his feast date on August 26 which is also the anniversary of his execution. A character for... read more »

George Jackson had a strange way of helping the late Victorian economy. On Sunday 19 August 1883 he picked up a handful of stones in the Strand and put... read more »

Today’s hanging comes courtesy of a public domain History of Greene County, Missouri, whose account we reproduce in full below: HANGING OF WILLIS... read more »

Mrs Sarah Ann Mott had just come out of a shop in Fenchurch Street and was heading home with her partner to their home in Ratcliffe, east London when she... read more »

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(Thanks to Henry Charles Lea for the guest post on the last person done to death by the Spanish Inquisition, “Beata Dolores”, who on August... read more »

In these days of contactless payments and Oyster cards it’s easy to forget that not so long ago one used to need a ticket to travel on London transport.... read more »

From the London Times, Aug. 25, 1927. (See also reports from public newspaper archives such as California’s.) I could not find any source that directly... read more »

There are moments of genuine comedy in the newspaper reporting of the police courts that offer a clear and (I expect) deliberate palliative to all the... read more »

On this date in 1936, the Spanish politician Melquíades Álvarez was shot by the Republicans. A waffling centrist who disdained “two... read more »

Yesterday’s post concerned the disorderly and violent behaviour of youth gangs in late nineteenth-century London. Given that it is still something... read more »

From the Journals of the House of Commons Die Mercurii, 21 Augusti, 1650 PRAYERS. A LETTER from Henry Roll, Lord Chief Justice, and Robert Nicholas, one... read more »

Throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century the subject of gang crime periodically troubled the newspapers. Concern about ‘roughs’... read more »

On this date in 984, the deposed Pope John XIV* was killed in prison. Pietro Canepanova was his name by birth, and Bishop of Pavia was his rank when elected.... read more »

Miss Elizabeth Cox was disturbed by sounds outside her front door in late August 1831. She opened the door which was next to Mr Ryder’s Yard, Queen... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this date in 1786, five young men were hanged together before a large crowd... read more »

Mr Tahrir-ud-din Ahmed was an Indian student studying in England. He had taken up residence at 1 Colville Gardens in fashionable Kensington and so must... read more »

On this date in 1648, the once-debauched and now-deposed Ottoman sultan Ibrahim I “the Mad” was strangled to make way for his seven-year-old... read more »

While the Victorians didn’t have fingerprint technology or the data gathering capacities of modern police forces this didn’t mean that it was... read more »

North Korean regulars on this date in 1950 committed a notorious mass execution upon 41 U.S. prisoners during the Korean War. The Hill 303 massacre took... read more »

Posted by Sara M. Butler; 17 August, 2018. Setting the Scene The period leading up to the expulsion of the Jews from England in July of 1290 was a time... read more »

In August 1849 Mrs Isabella Blaby was summoned before the magistrate at Thames Police court to answer a charge that she was exposing her neighbours to... read more »

On this date in 1703, the great Camisard commander Pierre Laporte was broken on the wheel. He was already two days dead, but his punishment was shared... read more »

When the housekeeper turned up to work at 5 Queen Street on Wednesday 13 August 1873 she didn’t expect to be surprised. The house was unoccupied... read more »

On this date in 1293, the heretic and alchemist Capocchio was burned at the stake in Siena. Little is known about about this man’s life, but thanks... read more »

As Daniel Vincer was pushing his way up the crowded stairs of the Victoria Theatre (the ‘Old Vic’ as we know it) he thought he felt his watch... read more »

On this date in 1765, Boston patriots lynched the merchant designated as the imperial taxman. They only did so in effigy, but the “execution”... read more »

Mary Adams was at home with her young son when she heard a knock at the door. ‘Go and answer it’, she instructed her lad, ‘it will be... read more »

Taxi driver Ali Reza Khoshruy Kuran Kordiyeh was publicly hanged on this date for a killing spree that earned him the nickname “the Tehran Vampire.”... read more »

Queen Victoria’s Skye terriers, by Otto Weber (1874) In recent years there have been a spate of dog thefts in London and elsewhere. Like many crimes... read more »

Joseph Le Brun starred in the U.K.’s last public execution in the U.K. on this date in 1875. Although capital punishment had been moved behind prison... read more »

Mrs Georgina Weldon In August 1883 a woman appeared at the Bow Street Police court to ask for a summons against a psychiatrist whose name is perhaps family... read more »

(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this day in 1853, Hans M(a)cFarlane and Helen Blackwood were hanged before... read more »

Beggars and vagrants were an endemic problem for the police and magistrates of nineteenth-century London. The Vagrancy Act (1824) empowered the New Police... read more »

One hundred years ago today, the Germans hanged Russian revolutionary Boris Donskoy. Donskoy was not a Bolshevik but a Left Social Revolutionary —... read more »

When Augustus Peake asked to speak to his employer it wasn’t to ask for time off or for a rise, it was to make a deeply embarrassing confession.... read more »

On this date in 1870, William Dickson’s hanging in the Leavenworth jail yard accidentally put the kibosh on Kansas executions for the next 74 years.... read more »