A trip to Bristol goes wrong.
Life
1803: A fatal duel at Chalk Farm (no romance involved)
Macho behaviour. Age-old story.
1809: A royal visit to the Great Synagogue of London
To witness a Jewish service of worship
1807: The execution of Holloway and Haggerty: tragedy upon tragedy
Wrongful conviction, followed by execution and multiple deaths.
Life in the King’s Bench Prison
It looked OK but it was really not.
Pride and chemistry: The good work of Professor Klaproth
Chemistry backs up liberal ideas.
The escape of prisoners from Newgate
1816: six men escape on to the roof of Newgate prison.
“Liberty is the greatest blessing” – Eleanor Clift, poor but perfectly informed
Eleanor Clift conducts a one-woman crusade against corruption & greed in public office.
Body snatching in Clerkenwell
1818: An inquisitive child in Clerkenwell makes an alarming discovery.
The murder trial of Robert Hallam
1731: The trial of Robert Hallam for the murder of his heavily pregnant wife Jane who was thrown from a window
The death of an orphan chimney sweep in Somers Town
The plight of London’s chimney sweep apprentices.
A prisoner dies of starvation in Tothill-fields bridewell
The death of John Burden appals the coroner.
1817: Poverty and distress leads to tin miner’s death in a field
The suicide of a Cornishman and the grisly fate of his body.
Regency medicine: Pickling a female head
Regency medicine, 1817: The Lord Mayor helps a sailor when his mother’s head goes missing after she dies in St Thomas’s hospital.
Catch me if you can: The extraordinary career of Charles Price aka The Social Monster
The amazing 18th-century criminal career of Charles Price, forger, imposter, fraudster, con artist and master of disguise.
Blue Bell Hill: A young woman lays down to die and is eaten by maggots
Alarming discovery in a forest.
“Guilty – death”: two executions from 1817
Two executions from 1817: burglary and infanticide reported in The Observer
Adrift in London in 1817: Johnson, a dying black seaman is refused medical help
Turned away from St. Thomas’s Hospital.
Dr. Stephen Geary Wilkes: “The assassin of domestic happiness”
The rake’s progress: Dr Stephen Geary Wilkes, a bigamous philanderer who was described in The Observer in Jan 1818 as an “assassin of domestic happiness”
Plus ça change: Starving to death in Cripplegate
1816: The Observer reports on the death of starvation of a pauper in Cripplegate and pleads for the authorities to show more compassion to the poor
A sensational child abduction case from 1818: Joseph Charles Horsley
Celebrated case of historical child abduction: In 1818 3-year-old Joseph Charles Horsley was abducted in London by his second cousin Charles Rennett
Dissection in hospitals : Private grief v public good
From The Observer, 1818: A poverty-stricken bereaved mother complains after doctors at Guy’s Hospital dissect her child’s body and is arrested.
Stealing food during the Spa Fields riots
Two Old Bailey cases concerning the stealing of food from shops during the Spa Fields Riots in London in late 1816, and their outcomes.
Observer obituary of Jane Lewson, who may have been the model for Miss Havisham
1816 Observer obituary of Jane Lewson, the 116-year-old eccentric who may have been the model for Dickens’ Miss Havisham
1843: A trans iron miner in Scotland
A 1843 story from the British Newspaper Archive about a young woman who trans in order to find work as an iron miner in Scotland
1817: John Hatchard, slavery and libel
The Observer reported on the trial of bookseller John Hatchard for an alleged libel on 7 aides-de-camp in Antigua for inhumanity against a slave