Crime and Punishment Week

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The assassination of prime minister Spencer Perceval: a popular murder?

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

First World War

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve

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The big debate: was Edward II really murdered?

Cesare Lombroso, described as the 'father of criminology'. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The ‘born criminal’? Lombroso and the origins of modern criminology

Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico's left-wing president who in 1940 legalised drugs. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The year Mexico legalised drugs

Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages? (Illustration by Glen McBeth)

Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

President John F Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally ride through the streets of Dallas, Texas, prior to the assassination of JFK, 22 November 1963. Included as an exhibit for the Warren Commission. (Photo by CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The assassination of JFK: an eyewitness account

An aerial view showing the courtroom during the Nuremberg Trials, November 1945. (Photo by Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Second World War

Forgotten trials: the other side of Nuremberg

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Your guide to Jack the Ripper

The ‘Princes in the Tower’: Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, disappeared in mysterious circumstances following the death of their father, King Edward IV. (The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

6 notorious unsolved crimes from history

Illustration by Joey Guidone

The big question: has terrorism ever achieved its aims?

Ruth Ellis and her friend Desmond Cussen, who supplied the gun with which she shot David Blakely. (Photo by Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo)

Ruth Ellis and the hanging that rocked a nation

An 1870s illustration of a typical London artisan terraced houses with washhouses, privies and yards leading on to an alley, all dominated by railway viaducts. (Photo by Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Victorian London’s East End: what can a foul murder tell us about life in the city?

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The Library Was King John murdered?