The New Newgate Calendar

Post Archives

Archives for September 2017

On an unknown date in the autumn of 324 BCE, the sudden death at Ecbatana of Alexander the Great‘s closest companion led the grief-stricken conqueror... read more »
On Saturday 29 September 1888 a man appeared at Thames Police Court on a charge of attempted murder. It wasn’t William Seaman’s first appearance,... read more »
From the New York Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 3, 1848: Honesdale, Pa., Sept. 29, 1848. I have just returned from the execution of Harris Bell. He was the... read more »
Understandably in today’s society we are very concerned about child abuse, especially sexual abuse. Aside from the terrorist the chief bogeyman in... read more »
Charles Booth’s poverty map of London, areas coloured blue or black represent the worst level of poverty in the capital; red and gold indicated relative... read more »
On this date in 1654, Flemish sculptor Hieronymus Duquesnoy the Younger was strangled and burned in Ghent for sodomy (sodomy in a church, no less). As... read more »
On this date in 1517, aged magistrate Konrad Breuning was beheaded as a traitor for helping negotiate a landmark limitation of the Duke of Württemberg’s... read more »
As inferred last time, Baker Brown's demise was too slow in coming. Though once the wheels of condemnation had turned, he was soon a doomed man, destined... read more »
Coverage of the Richmond Murder, from the Illustrated Police News of 26 April 1879 I was in London yesterday, firstly to do some research at the London... read more »
Sir Robert Carden by ‘Spy’ (aka Leslie Ward) (Vanity Fair, December 1880) In yesterday’s post I was able to show that a policeman... read more »
Hong Sa-ik, an ethnic Korean officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, was hanged in Manila on this date in 1946 for war crimes against captured prisoners... read more »
 We are delighted to publish this guest post by David Cressy,  who is Research Professor in Arts and Humanities at Claremont Graduate University,... read more »
Sometimes the press reports from the Police Courts inadvertently reveal elements of the summary process which are not otherwise made obvious. For example,... read more »
Spencer Kellogg Brown, a young Union spy during the U.S. Civil War, was hanged on this date in 1863 in the rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia. “>Brown... read more »
I am coming to recognise the names of several of the men that served as Police Court magistrates in the second half of the nineteenth century. Some, like... read more »
September 24 is the feast date in the Orthodox Christian tradition of Peter the Aleut. As one might infer from his sobriquet, Peter the Aleut* —... read more »
Tothill Street, Westminster in the early 1800s (from http://spitalfieldslife.com/2014/04/01/more-long-forgotten-london/) London was a huge draw for... read more »
Four slaves allegedly concerned in Nat Turner‘s Virginia rebellion were hanged on this date in 1831. Turner’s rising had spanned only a couple... read more »
In which I do some cheerleading for the R Project for Statistical Computing. 1. You’re almost certain to find it worth the effort Often, in the endless... read more »
The most common charges heard at the London police courts were those of being drunk and disorderly or drunk and incapable. In fact, whilst being drunk... read more »
The Armenian poet Sayat-Nova (“King of Songs”) was martyred on this date in 1795 by the invading Qajar army. Poet, singer, and legendary wielder... read more »
By Dr. Lorraine M. Paterson   The Launch of Vinasat-1 On April 18, 2008, Vietnamese journalist Danh Đức was standing in the rain at the... read more »
This is the first of several blog posts I’m going to publish about mews (mewses?) in the coming months. I love these little backstreets. They tend... read more »
The nineteenth-century Police Courts were full of assault, much of it perpetrated by men and most of that ‘domestic’ (in other words where... read more »
“Torment me not long, strike off my head in one blow” -supposed last words of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, to his executioner On this... read more »
The Silvertown India-rubber works and the the nearby WT Henley Telegraph cable Works, in North Woolwich in the second half of the nineteenth century At... read more »
At dawn on this date in 1917, 17-year-old Jamaican soldier Herbert Morris was shot in a courtyard behind the town hall in the Flemish town of Poperinge.... read more »
When a relatively straightforward and seemingly uninteresting assault case involving two working-class females makes the news you can be sure something... read more »
(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this day in 2008, 49-year-old Kedisaletse Tsobane was executed in the southern... read more »
London, in fact, knows nothing of real milk, which differs as thoroughly as chalk is unlike cheese, from the spurious stuff we are at present contented... read more »
Daniel Defoe* once summarized early 18th century England’s class strata as The great, who live profusely The rich, who live plentifully The middle... read more »
Bermondsey in a contemporary map (Map of London, by W=Edward Weller, 1868) This blog has discussed the Australian gold rush in previous post (see One... read more »
(Thanks to Lutheran Pastor C.J. Hermann Fick for the guest post on the Protestant protomartyr of Austria, who was beheaded on September 17, 1524. It was... read more »
Parisian women queue for food during the Prussian siege of Paris, 1870 Sometimes the cases that are reported in the London Police Courts reveal glimpses... read more »
The DP homepage A few days ago, I was in the grand surroundings of Liverpool’s St George’s Hall to be at the official launch of the Digital... read more »
(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.) On this day in 1996, Youssouf Ali became the first person executed in the African... read more »
Charles Dickens, perhaps unusually for a novelist, was extremely popular in his own time with his stories being devoured  in serial form by tens of... read more »
On this date in 1982, Iranian revolutionary politician Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was shot in Tehran’s Evin Prison for supposedly plotting to overthrow the... read more »
Following on from the previous post, Isaac Baker Brown - 'the butcher of female genitals' - had happily been depriving female patients of their most intimate... read more »
This is a version of the paper I gave at the Digital Panopticon launch conference at Liverpool in September 2017. In the interests of fostering reproducible... read more »
Prof Barry Godfrey and myself were awarded funding from the Public Engagement (PE) Awards Scheme (2016-2017) by the University of Liverpool to produce... read more »
One of the key themes that is emerging from the Digital Panopticon conference in Liverpool (where I am at the moment) is the critical importance of being... read more »
Alexander Goldenson, an emigre “young, hot-tempered fellow [who] affects the style of dress adopted by the hoodlum element of the rising generation,”... read more »
Victorian housekeeper c.1890 Emma Dunlop was employed as a housekeeper at 60 Cleveland Square in Paddington when she noticed a man descend the steps from... read more »
By Cassie Watson; posted 13 September 2017. The recent spate of acid attacks in London has led to renewed political and media attention on an especially... read more »
  Violence between women was not prosecuted as frequently as that between men, but we shouldn’t think it was a rare event. Lambeth Police Court... read more »
On this date in 1569, the intrepid Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny was hanged in Paris and gibbeted at Montfaucon. Luckily for him, Coligny as these... read more »
In September 1878 the police around Chelsea mounted a special exercise to clamp down on a perennial problem. Large groups of men and boys frequently gathered... read more »
This entry from a diarist in Idaho’s 1860s gold rush arrives to us courtesy of Steven Tanasoca and Susan Sudduth in the Oregon Historical Quarterly... read more »
On this date in 1627, Matthäus Ulicky had his right hand chopped off, and then his head, in Caslav, Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic). Ulicky and... read more »