Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

An A-Z guide to the history of executions

A real Peaky Blinder mug-shot

In pictures: what did the real Peaky Blinders look like?

The real Peaky Blinders. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A woman on a medieval ducking stool

Q&AQ&A: Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

An 18th-century public execution and crowd

Q&AWhen did people stop attending public executions in Britain?

Prisoner dilemmas. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

19th-century mugshots

The real Peaky Blinders

Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico's left-wing president who in 1940 legalised drugs. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The year Mexico legalised drugs

One of the earliest and most famous examples of extremism comes from ancient Rome. Starting in 264 BC and continuing for more than a century, Rome engaged in a series of wars with neighbouring Carthage. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of extremism – from ancient Rome to al Qaeda

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark. The BBC television drama is putting Cornwall’s coastline at risk of "over-tourism” as visitors flock to the area to visit the show's scenic filming locations, tourism chiefs have warned. (Photo by BBC/Mammoth Screen/Mike Hogan)

Poldark, Peaky Blinders and 6 other historical TV shows that have tourists flocking to Britain

Ruth Ellis and her friend Desmond Cussen, who supplied the gun with which she shot David Blakely. (Photo by Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo)

Ruth Ellis and the hanging that rocked a nation

Charles I. (Photo by World History Archive/Alamy)

King killers in America. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mary Fulbrook and Richard J Evans. (Photo by Fran Monks)

"Many of the Holocaust's perpetrators got away with it": why Nazi crimes went unpunished. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

MK Ultra: the secrets of the CIA's mind-control programme

In 1937, Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most famous aviators, apparently disappeared without a trace during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

From Jack the Ripper to Amelia Earhart: 17 unsolved historical mysteries

Funeral of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme

Who killed Olof Palme?

A 1954 illustration of a woman wearing nylons. Lightweight, easy to conceal and fiercely sought after, stockings were a favourite with smugglers. (Photo by Bridgeman)

Nylon pirates: the postwar craze for cut-price stockings

How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James?

Hallie Rubenhold. (Photo by Fran Monks)

The women killed by Jack the Ripper. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

"For those of noble birth who were condemned to die, execution by beheading (which was considered the least brutal method of execution) was used until the 18th century," says criminologist and historian Lizzie Seal. This illustration depicts the execution of Charles I in January 1649. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of capital punishment in Britain

Jack Sheppard and his accomplice Blueskin rob a home without waking the owner, circa 1720. (Photo by Alamy)

Victorian murder scandal. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Rogues' gallery: Images of criminals incarcerated in prisons including Wormwood Scrubs and Newcastle City Gaol, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their crimes included stealing clothes, money, boots, and leather. Recent research into Victorian mugshot books – and increasing digital access to court and prison records – offers a different picture of Victorian criminality to the one painted by writers such as Charles Dickens, argues Heather Shore. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

Dark secrets of the Victorian Underworld: did hardened criminals stalk Britain's cities?

Cesare Lombroso, described as the 'father of criminology'. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The ‘born criminal’? Lombroso and the origins of modern criminology

Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) was a British statesman who twice served as Conservative prime minister, between 1834–35 and 1841–46. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

5 facts about Sir Robert Peel

The Nuremberg trials have not been universally praised. To some, the trials were a blown-up case of victors' justice. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)

Second World War

A brief guide to the Nuremberg Trials, where some Nazis faced justice after WW2

An aerial view showing the courtroom during the Nuremberg Trials, November 1945. (Photo by Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Forgotten trials: the other side of Nuremberg

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits

An engraving from 'The Illustrated Police News', c1889, imagines Jack the Ripper

Your guide to Jack the Ripper

The Ripper of our nightmares: 5 theories about Jack the Ripper's identity

The ‘Princes in the Tower’: Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, disappeared in mysterious circumstances following the death of their father, King Edward IV. (The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

6 notorious unsolved crimes from history