Prisoners infect judges with typhus – jail fever!
In 1750 three judges busily sentencing some criminals to death caught jail fever off them – and died of typhus a little while later
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Woman buys rope to hang her husband
Dick Hughes is mentioned in the Newgate Calendar as a robber who came to London at the start of the eighteenth century to make money the dishonest way. He’d already been arrested and tried in Worcester for theft. On that occasion he’d been whipped at the cart’s tail “crying carrots and turnips” as he was…
Newgate prison: where the condemned were buried
Another blog post in my current series on Newgate prison – demolished over a hundred years ago and replaced by the Old Bailey court building By the end of the nineteenth century, if you committed a murder north of the Thames – you would face the hangman at Newgate. If you committed it south of…
Newgate Prison: George Cruikshank witnesses a hanging
This is one of a series of blog posts about the once notorious Newgate prison that stood on the site of today’s Old Bailey George Cruikshank was a caricaturist who drew the illustrations for the books of Charles Dickens. He was also vehemently opposed to the death penalty, following something he saw outside Newgate prison….
Newgate Prison: Public hangings in Victorian London
This is the first of a series of blog posts about the notorious Newgate Prison that once stood on the site of the Old Bailey You might assume that hanging people in public had died out in England after the 18th century but in fact, these gruesome events continued right up until 1868. The authors…
Making a living stealing clothes from children
A woman who made a living stealing clothes from children in 17th century London