This site owes a fair few posts to the Newgate Calendar, a heap of crime stories collected higgledy-piggledy in the 18th and 19th century. For a time, it was one of the books most commonly found in English homes.
Though we have even seen fit to feature it in a series, the Calendar as a source is typically much more interested in moralizing than in journalistic accuracy. Botched years and dates are the least of it; there are stories created from whole cloth, or wantonly transposed from one malefactor to another, and filtered by way of some third-hand source that has completely twisted the details.
Inasmuch as our interest hereabouts runs to the social life of the hanging-tree, we often have reason to welcome the Newgate Calendar’s inventions. But it should be certainly understood that it’s a source requiring care … as the next three posts will underscore.
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December 20, 1689: William Davis, the Golden Farmer
December 21, 1689: The real William Davis
December 22, 1690: The real Golden Farmer
On this day..
- 1583: Edward Arden, Shakespearean kin
- 1769: Three Spitalfields weavers, well located
- 1717: Five at Tyburn
- 1531: John Tewkesbury, Thomas More's unwilling guest
- 1689: William Davis, the Golden Farmer
- 1879: Swift Runner, wendigo
- 1806: Hepburn Graham, HMS St. George rapist
- 1704: John Smith, peruke-maker and highwayman for a week
- 1961: Robert McGladdery, the last execution in Northern Ireland
- 1946: A triple execution in Washington, DC
- 1974: Mun Segwang, errant assassin
- 1786: Hannah Ocuish, age 12
- 1882: Guglielmo Oberdan