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…
16th Century… Gamaliel Ratsey (d.1605): The Man whose Life Kick-started the “True Crime” Genre 18 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo Gamaliel Ratsey was born in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire, during the late sixteenth century.[1] Little is known of Ratsey’s early life; his father, Richard, and his wife had…
19th Century… Blind Justice in Eugene Sue’s “The Mysteries of Paris” (1842–3) 26 Jul 201826 Jul 2018 By Stephen Basdeo In the 19 June 1842, issue of the Parisian magazine, Journal des Debats, a new serialised novel appeared entitled The Mysteries of Paris, which ran weekly until 15 October 1843.…
18th century… ‘The Prince of Pick-Pockets’: George Barrington (1755-1804) 12 May 201712 May 2017 George Waldron, alias Barrington, was born into a poor family at Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. Although destitute, his mother and father made sure to learn that he could read and…
18th century… John Terry (d.1803): A Yorkshire Murderer 29 Apr 201729 Apr 2017 All too often histories of crime focus upon what happened in the big cities such as London, Manchester, and New York. Part of the reason for this is that, as…
18th century… From Barman to Highwayman: The Case of William Hawke (d.1774) 16 Jan 201716 Jan 2017 Not every highwayman throughout history has achieved the fame of Robin Hood (sup. fl. 12th-13th centuries), Rob Roy (1671-1734), Dick Turpin (1705-1739), or Jack Sheppard (1702-1724). The names of most…
