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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A horrific day trip to Georgian London!
A day trip to Georgian London could have involved going to see a prisoner put to death or watching a live amputation by a well known surgeon
Debtor’s Doom – grim fate for London’s penniless
Grim business being in debt in the old days – a debtor could expect to end up behind bars! London had its fair share of prisons located very centrally and one of them was the Fleet – where debtors were flung. The location is quite hard to imagine now but it would have been roughly…
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: 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