Crime and punishment

A brief history of capital punishment in Britain

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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

Five theories about Jack the Ripper's identity. (Photo by dreamstime.com)

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

An 1870s illustration of a typical London artisan terraced houses with washhouses, privies and yards leading on to an alley, all dominated by railway viaducts. (Photo by Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Victorian London’s East End: what can a foul murder tell us about life in the city?

Four police officers, members of the Bow Street Horse Patrol, pose for a photograph with a horse.

The rise of the Great British ‘bobby’: a brief history of Britain’s police service

Operators dealing with emergency calls at New Scotland Yard, London, c1956. (Photo by Reg Speller/Getty Images)

5 crimes that changed law enforcement in Britain

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Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and fifth son of King George III

The Duke of Cumberland and his valet: a bloody tale of attempted murder . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.