18th century… Hanging the Slave Traders 1 Oct 2020 Books with the title of The Newgate Calendar were published as early as the mid-eighteenth century. Mostly they were collections of “Last Dying Speeches” of criminals and short biographies of…
19th Century… A Murder-Suicide in Stephen Basdeo’s Victorian Ancestors: The Case of George Leedham (1871) 15 Aug 2020 By Stephen Basdeo I have been doing a lot of work this past year tracing my ancestors and discovering their history. Imagine how delighted (wrong word, perhaps!) I was when…
18th century… The Fine Art of Murder 24 Jul 202024 Jul 2020 Stephen Basdeo This website usually deals with the 'fun' side of crime history by discussing mobsters, outlaws, and highwaymen. Yet not all portrayals of crime and criminals were wild and…
19th Century… Lines Written by a New York Homeless Woman 30 Jun 2020 By Stephen Basdeo I recently came across a fascinating book titled Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life (1891), which formed the basis of another post…
19th Century… Jack’s Story: The True Story of a Poor Boy in 19th-Century New York 24 Jun 2020 By Stephen Basdeo I recently came across a fascinating book titled Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life (1891). Inspired by books such as Henry Mayhew’s…
Author Who Outsold Dickens… Stephen Carver’s “Author Who Outsold Dickens” (2020): Biography of a Crime Novelist 23 Mar 202023 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo When I was doing my MA dissertation on the cultural history of crime, my supervisor, Dr Heather Shore, advised me to read two now largely forgotten novels:…
