Tag: criminal history
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On This Day in 1851 – Josefa ‘Juanita’ Segovia, rough justice or legal lynching?
Present-day California is often seen as the most liberal, tolerant state in the Union. It‘s sold with images of sunshine, surfing, and hippies; a relaxed, easy-going kind of place where, within reason, anything goes. This is a fallacy. While 1967 might have been California’s ‘Summer of Love’ July of 1851 wasn’t. Certainly not for…
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Les Bourreaux, France’s ‘Executors of High Works.’
I recently had a brief Twitter conversation with a fellow scribe at Crime Traveller and these gentlemen came up therein, so I thought their story might be interesting to look at in more detail. ‘The Executor of High Works’ was a grandiose title for so unrelentingly grim a profession, especially one traditionally inherited by people…
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On This Day in 1901 – Marcel Faugeron at Newgate Prison, Henry Pierrepoint’s First Hanging.
Hangings weren’t unusual at London’s Newgate Prison. In Fact, in 1901 a British prisoner was hanged every few weeks on average. The execution of French Army deserter and murderer Maurice Faugeron, however, was a singular event in British penal history. It was the first time the name Pierrepoint drew attention Not Albert, nor Albert’s…
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I wrote a book.
Originally posted on Crimescribe: ? It’s been quite some time since I last posted ere, but I have been extremely busy with paid work and earning a living. Part of that has been writing my first book. Criminal Curiosities is a collection of crooks, all with something about their crime, trial or punishment that is…
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On This Day in 1924 – Howard Hinton, Georgia’s first electrocution.
It’s common to find ‘Peachtree Bandit’ Frank Dupre, armed robber and murderer executed on September 1, 1921 with Luke McDonald, listed as the last man to hang in Georgia. He wasn’t. That was Arthur Meyers, a murderer hanged at Augusta on June 17, 1931 for a murder committed in March, 1924. McDonald, despite dying with…
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Newgate Prison: Ask not for whom the Bell tolls…
Now here’s a real criminal curiosity, the infamous Execution Bell from London’s notorious Newgate Prison. Accounts of executions, themselves a grim British tradition until the 1960’s, often relate stories of a black flag being raised and a prison bell tolling to announce a prisoner’s death. These are true, at least after public executions ended with…
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Watching the detectives: The arrest of the inappropriately-named Daniel Good.
With Good safely in his grave, the Metropolitan Police had to reconsider having only uniformed officers in their ranks. Had some officers been working out of uniform, they reasoned, they might have caught him far sooner. With that in mind a permanent cadre of non-uniformed officers. the Detective Department, was set up in August, 1842.…
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