The New Newgate Calendar

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 »