Disturbances across the country
Child-stealing: The case of Thomas Dellow
Missing for 8 weeks.
1812: A man goes drinking, a child goes missing
A trip to Bristol goes wrong.
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.
