Crime & Law

  • 1593: Christopher Marlowe is killed at Deptford

    On 30 May 1593, Christopher Marlowe was killed at Deptford. The inquest recorded a quarrel at the house of Eleanor Bull. Marlowe had spent the day there with Ingram Frizer, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres. The dispute was said to have been over payment. Frizer stabbed Marlowe above the eye, and Marlowe died from the…

  • 1679: Habeas Corpus Act receives royal assent

    The Habeas Corpus Act received royal assent on 27 May 1679. Habeas corpus already existed. The act made the remedy harder to ignore. Habeas corpus was a way of testing detention. A prisoner could be brought before a court, and the court could ask by what authority that person was being held. Locking someone up…

  • 1701: Captain Kidd is executed at Execution Dock

    William Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock in London on 23 May 1701 after being convicted of piracy and murder. Kidd’s case was awkward because he had not begun as a simple outlaw. He was a Scottish sailor who had been commissioned as a privateer and authorised to attack certain enemy or pirate vessels. Privateering…

  • 1726: Prison reformer John Howard is born

    John Howard was born on 2 September 1726 into a prosperous family in Hackney, east London. He later settled at Cardington in Bedfordshire, where an appointment to a county office led him into the work for which he became known. In 1773 Howard was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire. The position made him responsible for…

  • 1809: First prisoners arrive at Dartmoor Prison

    On 24 May 1809, around 2,500 French prisoners of war arrived at Dartmoor Prison. The prison had been built during the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain needed secure places to hold men captured in the long war with France. Dartmoor did not begin as the civilian prison it later became. Its first purpose was military: large-scale…

  • 1868: Michael Barrett is publicly hanged at Newgate

    Michael Barrett was hanged outside Newgate Prison on 26 May 1868. He became the last person publicly hanged in England. Barrett had been convicted after the Clerkenwell explosion of December 1867. The blast was connected to an attempt to free Fenian prisoners from the Clerkenwell House of Detention. It caused civilian deaths and injuries, and…

  • 1888: Mary Ann Nichols is murdered in Whitechapel

    Mary Ann Nichols was found murdered in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel, in the early hours of 31 August 1888. Nichols, commonly known as Polly, was 43. Shortly before 3.45 a.m., two carmen found her body near a stable entrance. Her throat had been cut and her abdomen mutilated. Police and a doctor were called to the…

  • 1895: Oscar Wilde is convicted of gross indecency

    Oscar Wilde was convicted at the Central Criminal Court on 25 May 1895 and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. The conviction followed a failed libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde had gone to court as the complainant. When the case collapsed, evidence raised there…

  • 1945: Heinrich Himmler dies in British custody

    Heinrich Himmler killed himself in British custody on 23 May 1945 after his identity had been confirmed. Germany had surrendered earlier that month, but the end of the war in Europe did not bring an orderly end to Nazi power. Allied forces were dealing with prisoners, fugitives, displaced people and the remains of a collapsed…

  • 1955: Ruth Ellis is executed at Holloway Prison

    Ruth Ellis was hanged at Holloway Prison on 13 July 1955. She was the last woman executed in Britain. Ellis had been convicted of murdering her partner, racing driver David Blakely. On 10 April 1955, she waited outside the Magdala public house in Hampstead and shot him several times. She did not deny the killing.…

  • 1964: Britain carries out its last executions

    At 8 a.m. on 13 August 1964, Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were hanged at separate prisons in Liverpool and Manchester. They became the last people executed in Britain, although there had been no decision that morning to end capital punishment. Allen was executed at Walton Prison in Liverpool and Evans at Strangeways Prison in…