Crime

Microhistories, examining a range of notorious and mundane crimes, can help recover marginalised figures and forge links to wider cultural histories.

When the European powers began exporting convicts to other continents, they did so to create a deterrent and to establish new settlements across the world.

William Kemmler was killed on August 6th, 1890. 

A notorious mass murderer was sentenced to death on July 1st 1915.

How do you avoid glorifying the acts of criminals?

This is an extract from Anna Field’s ‘Masculinity and Myth’, which won the 2014 History Today undergraduate dissertation prize, awarded in conjunction with the Royal Historical Society.

Eynon Smart traces the career of ‘that famous Cheat’, Mary Carleton, known to the Restoration world as ‘the German Princess’.

T.H. Corfe analyses a double assassination in Dublin that long left its scar on Anglo-Irish relations.

A gifted utilitarian, and sometime Member of Parliament, Douglas Hurd writes that John Bowring spent ten tumultuous years in China where he believed in supporting the cause of progress with British gunboats.

The stigma of illegitimacy forced many women in Victorian Britain to hand over their babies to adopters or ‘baby farmers’. Barbara Butcher tells the story of Amelia Dyer, who killed numerous infants she was paid to care for.