Murder Maps, a "cartographic exposition of the 19th century's most dramatic and intriguing murders from the world's most crime-ridden cities and regions", has just been published by Thames & Hudson.
Murder Maps: A New Book
Deporting people is not the answer to the problem of crime, nor has it ever been.
Clearly we need to have the full details of those individuals who have today been deported from the UK to Jamaica. However, the Home Office was forced to remove well over half of those they wished to deport after last minute appeals that they had not had their cases properly represented by lawyers. Which begs... Continue Reading →
Taking teaching outside the classroom: crime and punishment in situ
On Monday this week I removed my second-year class on crime and punishment from the confines of a Waterside campus classroom (lovely as they are) and transported it to a real life courthouse in the centre of Northampton. Northampton’s Sessions House was built after the fire that destroyed much of the town in 1675.... Continue Reading →
Putting Undergraduates on Trial (this time with feelings)
For several years now I've been putting undergraduates on trial. Before you get excited I only mean as an exercise in understanding the criminal trial in the past, I don't lock them up or send them to Botany Bay! Each year I set an assessment which involves groups of 2nd year History and Criminology students... Continue Reading →
Inside Wandsworth Gaol: A historian’s perspective on prison visiting
As a academic historian who works on the history of crime (and most of that in London) when I was offered the chance to take a peek inside a working English prison I could hardly refuse. I run modules on crime and punishment at the University of Northampton and help students explore the changing nature... Continue Reading →
The ‘Female Blue Beard’?: Rumour and sensationalism in the case of Sarah Dazley
This week is the 175 anniversary of the execution of Sarah Dazley at Bedford Gaol, the first and only woman to be hanged in public at the prison. Sarah’s crime was the murder of her second husband (William) and the suspected killing of her previous one (Simeon Mead) and their son Jonas. Dazley may well... Continue Reading →
Tragedy as ‘Wilkes & Liberty’ results in the death of the innocent
Today is the 250th anniversary of an event well known to historians of eighteenth-century politics, but not, I suspect, to the wider public. Mostly it is recounted as part of the mercurial career of the radical populist John Wilkes, who bestrode the world of politics in the late 1760s and early 70s. The event was... Continue Reading →
‘f****** untouchable’?: the downfall of the Kray Twins in May 1968
On the 8 May 1968 a series of dawn raids were carried out by ‘more than 100’ Metropolitan Police detectives, led by DS Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read. The target of these raids was organized criminal gang that surrounded two East End gangsters that have passed into London folklore and garnered more column inches, True Crime books... Continue Reading →
‘O monstrous traitor! I arrest thee!’: From Guy Fawkes to the Brexit ‘betrayers’ a short history of treason in England
The execution of the Gunpowder Plotters, by Claes (Nicolaes) Jansz Vissche (1606) Today is the 412th anniversary of the execution of Guy Fawkes and his fellow Gunpowder plotters. As every school boy knows Fawkes was arrested on the 5 November 1605 as he prepared to blow up the Westminster Hall and send King James I... Continue Reading →
