Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

Painting of an auto-da-fé

Your guide to...the Spanish Inquisition

What was a drunkard's cloak used for? This illustration shows a man wearing the archaic punishment tool designed to punish habitual drinkers. (Photo by Getty Images)

Q&AWhat was a drunkard’s cloak used for?

Painting of Bligh and those loyal to him being cast adrift from the Bounty in a small boat

Mutiny on the Bounty: the incredible tale of how castaway captain William Bligh made it back to England

Photo of JFK in the motorcade

Who killed JFK? The case that can never be closed

Great Fire of London quiz – how much do you know?

The renowned poet Lord Byron has gone down in history for being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But his ancestors were hardly paragons of virtue. (Image by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Adultery, elopement and incest: the scandalous sex lives of the 18th-century Byrons

The scandalous Byrons. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

John Wilkes Booth leans forward to shoot President Abraham Lincoln as he watches a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C, in 1865.

Q&AWhat play was Abraham Lincoln watching when he was shot?

A copper engraving of Margaret Pole's execution

General History

Are these the worst botched executions in history?

The Cato Street conspiracy

Georgian terrorists: the Cato Street Conspiracy. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The rise of the cat burglar

A Burglar Looks In, Picture Post 1950. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burglary: a modern history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Charles Manson stares out from fabric on sale in San Francisco

The afterlife of Charles Manson

The execution of Charles I in 1649.

To kill a king: 350 years of regicide

Portrait of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (Lord Lucan), who disappeared in 1974 following a bloody homicide

The curious case of Lord Lucan + 10 other mysterious disappearances from history

Policemen from Scotland Yard patrolling at night

Real-life Sherlocks: the detectives of Scotland Yard and their curious cases

Thomas Blood stealing the Crown Jewels

The day Thomas Blood stole the Crown Jewels

Child survivors at Auschwitz

Second World War

A brief history of Auschwitz

Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944

The liberation of Auschwitz, 75 years on: what happened and how do we remember the Holocaust?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

"A great social experiment”: a brief guide to prohibition

Members of the Ku Klux Klan march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC in 1925. The Klan of this era was a terrorist group in the precise meaning of that term, says Linda Gordon. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

When the Ku Klux Klan was a mass movement

Hallie Rubenhold photographed in London. "In the 19th century, being both poor and a woman was a terrible combination. The cards were stacked against them," she says. (Photography by Fran Monks)

Hallie Rubenhold: “To most people, the women killed by the Ripper are just corpses. I want to tell a different story”. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was personally invited by Oscar Wilde to play the title role in the upcoming London premiere of his play, 'Salomé'.

6 of London theatre’s most notable historical scandals

Sketch of Guy Fawkes with a lantern kneeling in front of barrels of gunpowder

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot: everything you need to know

5 Georgian ghost hoaxes

Illustration of pirate John Ward

Pirate John Ward: the real Captain Jack Sparrow

Billy Fullerton, gang chief of the Glasgow gang the Billy Boys

Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders?

War criminal? William the Conqueror shown on horseback in the Bayeux Tapestry. The king's Harrying of the North was a military success but a human catastrophe – one that even appalled chroniclers traditionally sympathetic to the Norman regime. (Photo by Bridgeman)

Was William the Conqueror a war criminal? The brutal story of the Harrying of the North

A cartoon from 1862 shows a pair 'garroters' attacking a victim. (Photo by The Cartoon Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Gangs and knife-crime fears: how has Britain responded through history?

The murder of Thomas Becket

Q&A: What happened to the assassins who killed Thomas Becket?