Crime

St Peter Port, Guernsey, by Joshua Gosselin, c.1740. British Library/Bridgeman.

Smuggling Under the Cover of Plague

For 18th-century smugglers in Guernsey and the Isle of Man, plague was a business opportunity.

The Otsu Incident

On 11 May 1891 the future Tsar Nicholas II narrowly escaped assassination on a trip to Japan.

Two prostitutes and a procurer, engraving by Bartolomeo Grassi, from Veri Ritratti, 1585. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain.

Sex Workers and Salvation in the Renaissance

Renaissance Florence had a problem: it wanted female sex workers, but it also needed to offer them a way out. The solution was a new brothel district – and a nunnery for former prostitutes

Volkspolizei car, East Berlin, 1976. akg-images/Straube.

An Unreported Murder in East Germany

In 1981, a horrific murder case required police in East Germany to go door-to-door collecting handwriting samples. There was no public outrage, because they were not told about the crime.

‘A Perspective View of the City of Naples’, by Thomas Bowles III, 18th century. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Public Domain.

‘Naples 1343’ by Amedeo Feniello review

Naples 1343: The Unexpected Origins of the Mafia – Amedeo Feniello’s history of the Camorra – has this much in common with the case against them: it’s all about the evidence.

William Price of Llantrisant in druidic costume, by A.C. Hemming, 1918. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

Archdruid William Price Challenges Funerary Rites

There was no law permitting cremation, but there was no law against it either. On 13 January 1884, a Welsh druid took the matter to trial.

Assisted dying illustration © Ben Jones/Heart Agency.

The Long Debate on Assisted Dying

The issue of assisted dying was first put before Parliament in 1936. Many of the same questions remain, but the arguments have changed.

‘Hail! Thou Production most uncommon. Woman half man and man half Woman!’, frontispiece to An Epistle from Mademoiselle D’Eon to the Right Honorable L[or]d M[ansfiel]d, 1778.

The Libellous Letters of the Chevalier d’Eon

Chevaliere d’Eon or Chevalier d’Eon? An 18th-century legal dispute between two French spies unravelled into a public battle about identity.

‘A View of Sydney on Norfolk Island, 1792’. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Public Domain.

Rum and Reform: The Party on Norfolk Island

As convicts celebrated Queen Victoria’s birthday on remote Norfolk Island, debates raged over the purpose of punishment and the merits of Alexander Maconochie’s project of moral reform.